Amy Meek from Kids Against Plastic on different types of plastics and reducing our consumption
11/28/2021
We sat down Amy Meek, Co-Founder of Kids Against Plastic to find out how we can make a difference at home and in business in order to be more sustainable.
Tell us about plastics. What are single-use plastics, plastic fashion, convenience plastics?
Plastics are sometimes viewed as a single generic type of material, when actually it’s a lot more complicated than that due to there being lots of different types of plastics in use – different thicknesses, varying rigidity and weight to name just a few of the many properties of the material. And this is why plastics are causing an array of different kinds of pollution that's impacting the planet.
Single use plastics
These are the plastic products that we tend to use for a short amount of time before throwing away. So, our plastic bottles, our plastic bags, items like that, which we often don't really need, especially in the UK, last on the planet for a disproportionate amount of time once thrown away (hundreds of years) compared to how long we actually use them for (10 minutes or so).
These plastics are at the heart of the plastic pollution problem, just because of the amount of them that we're using and throwing away every single day. Once in the environment they persist and pollute the landscape, our rivers and the interconnected oceans, and they are harming many ecosystems and animals as a result.
Plastic Fashion
A lot of the clothes that we see in our shops, in particular fast fashion garments, are made from cheap synthetic materials, particularly plastic. In fact, around 60 per cent of the garments that are on sale today actually contain polyester - a type of plastic. And when we wash these items in our washing machines, thousands of tiny plastic microfibres are shed and flushed into the environment where they attract chemicals and toxins. These toxic fibres are often ingested by small animals and then accumulate through the higher levels of food chains. If humans are at the top of these food chains, these toxins enter our bodies to potentially cause serious health issues.
Soft plastics, recycling and downcycling
The problem with so called soft plastics recycling schemes is that it’s not actually proper recycling at all, it’s instead more accurate to describe it as downcycling.
But what’s the difference?
Well, closed loop recycling is when, at the end of a product’s lifespan, the material making that product is used again to make another product of the same kind. This process requires very little new virgin raw material (if any) and has a much lower energy footprint as a result.
Downcycling is when a product at the end of its lifespan gets broken down and used to make something different to the original product, often with lower grade material e.g. plastic bottles being made into fleeces or cheap carpets. The products might be more expensive, but the material quality is lower, hence why they release microfibres when washed or through wear and tear.
Anyway, back to our soft plastics like our bread bags and other forms of thin plastic packaging. Well, because soft plastics are so difficult – and expensive - to properly recycle in a closed loop, they are usually downcycled. Apart from the issue of plastic fibres, the big downside of this downcycling is that large amounts of virgin raw materials (oil for example) are still needed to make new packaging. The global demand for oil for plastic production is set to increase massively over the next decade because of this demand. This is not good news for our planet.
So, in short, soft packaging recycling is a bit of a red herring that is very misleading for consumers.
What companies that you know of are taking positive steps towards recycling and making a difference?
One of the plastic sectors that is making positive progress with plastic recycling in is bottled water, because a number of companies are starting to transition to fully or partially recycled plastic (from old water bottles) used in the manufacture of new water bottles. This is a change from when we started our charity, because back then, all but one bottled water company in the UK used zero per cent recycled content in bottles – and even then, it was only 12% as a global average, so pretty negligible. So, there has been improvements made by the bottled water industry, but there's still a long way to go, and as I've said, recycling is far from a solution and the best step is to reduce plastic consumption in the first place - and consumers can help achieve that by refusing to buy goods that are not packaged environmentally. Easier said than done, but in the UK, where we have safe tap water, do many of us actually need to buy water in plastic bottles in the first place?
Developments in the bottled water industry have demonstrated that change can happen, we just need to see other plastic manufacturers and other types of plastic products following suit.
How can people take part and get involved with the work that you're doing, maybe making litter picking a part of their everyday lives?
Well, we've got quite a few different ways for people to get involved, and we would obviously love anyone to get involved with our charity. We have our Plastic Clever scheme, which we've adapted for businesses, cafes, Festivals and councils, plus our newly improved Plastic Clever Schools initiative, so if you wanted to help your local school or your local business become more plastic clever, then we've got all the resources and the support that you need to do that.
If you wanted to get more involved in litter picking as well, we've also got an app that we developed with a mapping agency called Esri UK and the help of Ordnance Survey’s Geovation lab, which allows people to log their litter that they've collected, to geotag it to the location and actually see a breakdown of the types of plastic that they've collected and how much of them. It's been really useful for us to use in our own litter picking, but also for us to see the types of plastic that are collected in different locations, and also to see all these pins appear for litter picks around the world, as well, to see other people getting involved.
