And that’s the problem in a nutshell.
[quote=“Memphisraines, post:7, topic:2761, full:true”] With regards dairy milk i’m kind of fucked, been drinking 10-15 pints of the stuff for years…”
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Is this weekly? 2 pints a day? I very rarely now drink a large glass of milk (used to as a teenage) although I will use milk in coffee and porridge and smoothies, probably average a pint a day, apparently it’s good for iodine consumption.
soya milk for years…better for the environment…and my gut…
40-50 years ago, we were still using glass bottles for things like milk & soft drinks; but where are we now. Loads of European countries have a deposit system for both glass & plastic bottles used for most drink types; milk comes in cartons etc.
Yeah, it does require buy-in from supermarket/retail chains - but hey…isn’t that what the Govt is there to legislate for. This needs to be a natural progression from the 10p bag thing.
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I stopped testing nuclear weapons years ago.
Unfortunately the world governments have not, so your bag for life and energy saving lightbulb won’t make a blind bit of difference.
Still do our bit here and try to be as conscious as possible. Especially as the twins are 7 now and understand better.
Next car will be electric, save energy where we can, use as little water as poss etc.
This works to a greater or lesser degree in Oz, depending on state vs fed toy throwing. SA, used to have it nailed with 5c returns but other states were slow to follow.
Most adopted the ‘bulk return’ system where loads of cans and bottles were paid for by weight but all it ended up doing was having organised gangs raiding everywhere for everything they could get their hands on.
Most states let it drop. When Coca Cola Bottlers put their cartridge factory in Melb, that had a huge effect on the amount of plastic waste in Oz.
Bottles/cans pale into insignificance when you see the amount of blister packaging in UK supermarkets, I simply couldn’t get over it when we moved here.
The bottle return thing is a bit of a(nother) misnomer. I can’t recall the exact reasons why now, but I’ll dig it out later. I went to a talk from some very highly regarded academics and industry leads for this area. The UK gov are pushing through with a bottle replacement scheme thing, but as you’d expect it’s slow.
I also sat in on a very interesting angle on the whole recycling side of things. Again, I’ll see if the talk is publicly available in case anyone was interested.
We’re pushing the agenda pretty hard within our organisation. Well, you could argue not nearly hard enough, but I don’t want to lose me job! 
. We’re lucky enough to have the top 5 most influential climate scientists in the UK at our uni, all of them inside the top 21 globally. So we’ve got some serious weight on the academic side of things. The hard bit is tying that up with reality and industry.
Take concrete. One of the worst polluting materials globally. Awful stuff when you look at it through that lens. But who are we, the most developed nations, to tell the third world countries that they can’t build with this cheap, freely(ish) available material to try to improve the lives of their citizens, their economies etc. Though I understand there’s about 3 current projects all within the UK looking at lower carbon concrete solutions that are almost ready to trickle onto the market. But as we all know, money talks!
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I know that in some countries that do this like Germany you get some people checking the bins etc for plastic bottles that tourists have discarded. It’s probably a cheap labour market for recycling.
Seem to remember similar in America as well.
There’s loads of quick wins the government could legislate for but refuse to do so. I also think that in Britain, snobbery plays a role too.
One of the biggest offending items surely has to be bottled water. We’ve had water here that’s been drinkable from the taps for over a century yet there’s shelves and shelves of plastic bottles of the stuff from all over the UK and Europe and shipped worldwide. IMO there should be an outright ban on it or as a minimum, shipped to shops in 2000l browsers if people are so desperate.
Instead we have bottles as small as 250ml being made out of plastic, a large percentage of which still goes to landfill.
Also, would it really be so onerous on all governments to introduce standard size glass bottles for everything else? Like the old deposit and return bottles of the past where all liquids could be dispensed and sealed in to and any company could take back bottles from anywhere and clean them for their own use. I’m sure advances in technology could have an eco friendly solution worked out for it.
Just a couple of ones that annoy me and both products I try to avoid.
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I remember being shocked when they started selling water - perhaps it should be illegal to sell regardless of the form.
There are probably some people who have some medical situation, so make it prescription only I sell in bottles, and as you say in big containers.
Clean and healthy it might be, but alas it generally tastes like chlorinated piss, so I will stick with Evian, or if I feel posh that day, Voss.
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Mrs W is very much into bottled water, but as a tight Yorkshireman I generally go for tap water for myself. As long as it’s cold it’s perfectly fine to drink.
There was a big push for public water fountains around London so people could fill up their re-usable bottles from them while out and about, but I think a lot of these were turned off during early COVID. I don’t know whether they’re back up and running again now.
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When I’m away I get a bottle then just top it up, if you go in a cafe or somewhere they’ll usually top it up for you.
A friend also mentioned a website or app for London of places that would top up your own container.
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My work give everyone a reusable Chilli bottle when we join. It’s great, stays on my desk and gets filled up regularly and the water stays cool.
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There’s an app called Refill, which covers the whole country, even rural Wales. I use it when out for long bike rides, and it includes things like Churches with outside taps, so very handy.
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Yep, I use it too… works brilliantly.
Oooh, nice. Doesn’t seem to be many in the places where I seem to keep running out, but will give it a look next time.
Not heard of that before, thanks!
Hah, I won’t drink from taps in my house, so there is zero chance of me using a manky old tap outside a church.
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That does sound good. I remember when I was Ironman training I had to plan routes so I would hit top of Ivinghoe beacon at a certain point as that had an ice cream van that sold bottled water. Didn’t want to take a lock with me and was too scared to ever leave my P3 outside a pub even for a second.
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