Kip Hansen news & commentary — January 21, 2022
This coming October, UK intends to “ban certain single-use plastic items, including cutlery and plates”.
“European Union” passed a ban on single-use plastics in 2018effective three years later.[2021] The neighboring countries of England, Scotland and Wales, each banned a similar list of items last year.
“Rebecca Pow, an environment minister, said in statement“Plastic is a scourge that ravages our streets and beautiful countryside, and I am determined that we will move away from a single-use culture.”
“Steve Hynd, policy director at City to Sea, an environmental organization based in Bristol, said the ban was welcome but “these are the agreed minimum standards.”
He said: “The ban will help Britain catch up with other countries that have implemented similar bans many years ago. “But for Britain to be the true ‘global leader’ in tackling plastic pollution as this government claims, we need them to go even further.”
I am a curious person (yes, both meanings). When an Englishman orders takeaway curry and she intends to eat it on a park bench or perched on the wall overlooking the pebbled beach, what will she use to eat her curry when the shop is closed? Offer her delicious curry too. plastic spoon or fork?
Since the EU has had a similar ban for over a year, I asked a European colleague and asked the same question. Being the same kind of person as me, he doesn’t know. But he had a daughter, and he called her to make the scoop on the streets of Europe, the person recounts: “They used paper (to hold the chips), cardboard (to hold the fries). serving burgers), wooden spoons, forks, and salad knives.” I can assume they use the same wooden cutlery for our takeaway curries.
Given the historical context, Europeans (and others) had spoons carved out of wood, ivory, flint, bones, and horns. Later spoons were cast in tin and other soft metals. But all of those things (except wood – even farmers can have wooden spoons) were quite valuable and in different periods they represented wealth and social status. Today, most household spoons are stainless steel. But these are not cheap enough to be given away.
New York’s famous food vending machines, Horns and Hardart, giving the customer a set of metal cutlery that should have been returned at the end of the meal. My wife has one of those spoons, nicknamed her mother at some point in history.
When I was a child, the Ice Cream Seller gave us simple wooden spoons to eat our little cups of ice cream. Enter plastic spoons (forks and knives), which cost less than a cent each and are available with takeaways.
The problem seems to be that a lot of these cheap plastic items end up in the environment – not because they are plastic, but because people are not careful with their trash. The fact that they’re plastic just means they will break Slower in the wild world.
The claim that “…plastic is a disaster” is just one activist meme – something that is supposed to attract positive attention but is not really true. The problem is not “plastic” but garbage and garbage, some of which is plastic, intentionally thrown into the environment or left out carelessly – such as blowing out of the back of a pickup truck (very common in the US) or from the back of a garbage truck.
In the end, in my opinion, it’s a question (or maybe an impromptu survey):
To our readers in the UK and Europe:
How is the plastic cutlery ban working for you?
What kind of curries to take away (fill in the most popular takeaways in your country) bring you?
What kind of container is the curry in?
What about salads – containers and cutlery?
And your McDs burgers – wrappers and containers?
And of course,
What is your opinion on all this?
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Author’s comments:
I have write about plastic pollution many times. I looked at hundreds of photos of “beach litter” and collected and surveyed beach waste myself (in Florida, USA). I have reviewed the images and reports of “floating fish garbage” (garbage found floating in the ocean). I have not once in any photo or report (or in personal experience) found a plastic spoon. (I once found a plastic knife left by a sunbather on Cape Canaveral Beach.)
Plastic cutlery is not a disaster – anywhere – as far as I can find…certainly not in the advanced countries of Europe and the UK. Nor is it in the United States.
The anti-plastic movement is actually a subset of the anti-fossil fuel and anti-petroleum movement, which at its core is anti-human and anti-civilization.
Now we see that “green” has moved us into the past again— back to wooden spoon — or fork, if you prefer.
Thanks for reading.
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