The great plastic panic

Has an albatross ever wielded so much influence? The bewildered chick who regurgitated a plastic bag in front of Sir David Attenborough’s camera crew — fed to him by his mother after she had scooped it from the sea — has caused one of those regular ructions in public opinion. The supermarket chain Iceland has announced it would phase out all plastic packaging from its own-brand foods. The compulsory 5p charge on supermarket plastic bags is to be extended to all shops in England and a 25p ‘latte levy’ may be put on coffee cups containing plastic. Plastic ‘microbeads’ have been banned from cosmetic products.

Such initiatives are largely a reflection of a sudden and violent public concern over plastic. It has become the bogeyman among concerned citizens who previously rushed out to buy water butts and composters, or who forsook Tesco for farmers’ markets in order to buy locally sourced food. Just as shoppers now like to be seen going shopping with hessian bags, ministers now carry their coffee around in re-usable bamboo cups. These were given them as a present, it transpires, by environment secretary Michael Gove. It will not be long before people who walk down the street clutching a plastic bag begin to attract disapproving stares. Once, government was content with encouraging recycling of plastic. Now, especially as China has banned imports of waste plastic from Britain and elsewhere, plastic must now be edited out of our lives for good. The supermarkets have eagerly joined in. Tesco has phased out single-use plastic bags from its stores altogether. Marks and Spencer have announced that they’ll discontinue plastic-wrapped £2 ‘cauliflower steaks’ after they caused an outrage on Twitter. Retailers sense the sharp turn in the public mood and are scrabbling to respond.

It’s not hard to see why everyone’s worried about plastic.