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NEW RULES, NEW TOOLS: HOW YOU CAN REDUCE YOUR PLASTIC FOOTPRINT

It’s time to tackle that plastic footprint. We begin with a fond farewell and the presentation of a metaphorical golden carriage clock in recognition of many years of kind service to one of recycling’s great icons. Unfortunately this is slightly awkward, as the symbol in question does not know about its retirement. But sometimes we must be cruel to be kind.

The National Museum of American History, Washington, only holds artefacts of profound social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. That is to say, if it wasn’t important, it wouldn’t be housed there. So I’m heartened to learn that one of the museums houses a collection of more than 1,500 environmentally themed badges, bequeathed by a Mr Gerald H. Meral, a prolific earth-defender (and clearly a badge-wearer). As someone who loves an eco-badge, I could get pretty excited about this collection, but I’ll spare you 1,500 detailed descriptions of each badge and instead, let’s skip to the main attraction.

The artefact in question carries particular resonance for those of us who consider ourselves pretty sharp recyclers. Against a cream background is set the unmistakable Möbius Loop, the famous arrows, slightly folded at the top, that eternally chase each other, clockwise, round in a circle. Ah, the dear Möbius Loop. Created back in 1970 by Gary Anderson, a student at the University of Southern California, it was rapidly adopted as the internationally recognised universal symbol of recycling. In essence, it indicated that an object could be recycled. As on the iconic badge in the Museum of American History, Anderson’s illustration was often paired with the slogan ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ (which became known as the 3Rs), and very quickly entered the vernacular during the 1970s.

Together, the Möbius Loop and the 3Rs seemed invincible. They instructed generations in the common-sense ways of the ‘waste hierarchy’. After all, what could be clearer than a logical, cascading to-do list in order to avoid waste? In an uncertain world the Möbius Loop and the 3Rs gave certainty. Follow the straightforward three-step guide, choose products that displayed the Möbius Loop, chuck them in the right bin when you’re finished with them and you would tread lightly on the planet. They were ever-present reminders and ecological tools, telling us that materials were not something that should be poured into the ground and forgotten about, but that pre-used items should have a plan, a goal for future use.

It is ironic, therefore, that today I’m forced to declare that I consider the Möbius Loop to be in need of retirement. This has been a long time coming. As the plastic pandemic has unfolded before us, as a society we’ve come to the stark realisation that it isn’t as easy to recycle as we assumed. That’s not easy for some of us to admit – I for one pride myself on being an excellent recycler. But over the last twelve months I’ve seen the Möbius Loop displayed on products from single-use coffee cups (when I know that fewer than one in every thousand is actually successfully recycled) to black plastic ready-meal trays that blend into the conveyor belt at the sorting facility, meaning that in most waste management facilities they can’t be picked out for recycling without a great deal of effort or the arrival of new technology.

The once-cherished Möbius Loop, telling us that something could be, or has the potential to be recycled, now seems misleading. But it is liberally applied. In fact, a brand or retailer can slap the Möbius Loop on pretty much anything they like, because in theory any material can be recycled – it just depends how much energy, time and money you’re prepared to spend doing it! The question is, will it be recycled? Certainly there’s a better chance that your waste will be recycled if you sort it, wash it and get it into the right bin. But we just don’t know. The moral of the story is that just because your local authority accepts an item, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be recycled!

In most of the UK – Wales is a glowing exception – we have a Byzantine medley of systems. From one side of Greater Manchester to the other, you might experience an entirely different set of coloured bins, protocols and collection dates. In our plastic special on The One Show, in April 2018, our host Matt Baker expressed our viewers’ utter bemusement and frustration at the lack of harmony between local authority plastics’ collection. He pronounced it ‘bonkers’. ‘I think we would agree that it is suboptimal,’ said Michael Gove, Secretary of State for the Environment, down the line from the House of Commons, ‘which is,’ he conceded, ‘Westminster-speak for “bonkers”.’ In any case, the well-meaning but simplistic Möbius Loop was never going to be able to shed much light on this carnival of plastic waste practices and processes. In short, there is now too little connection between the venerable symbol and the recycling reality.

In their own inimitable way, industry and retailers have tried to stage an intervention, plugging the gap with . . . yes, more labels! Accepting that the Möbius Loop wasn’t getting the job done, they introduced a new sort of on-pack messaging system. This included ‘advice’, tailored for our patchwork of different recycling regimens. The label is divided into three categories that claim to offer more nuanced guidance to us when we’re trying to navigate our local recycling system: there’s ‘Widely Recycled’, for packaging collected by at least 65 per cent of councils; ‘Check Local Recycling’, for materials collected by between 15 and 65 per cent of councils; and ‘Not Currently Recycled’, for items collected by fewer than 15 per cent of councils. If you like percentages, and working the odds out while you queue for the till, I guess these are a treat. These are not hobbies of mine, but I do respect the fact that these labels are trying to help and reveal a few more clues. To be fair to supermarkets (and as I don’t often give them praise, you may like to note this) the major chains have adopted the new formula labelling with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, large global brands have been reluctant to squeeze these more nuanced labels onto already crowded packaging for the UK market. They say there is simply no room, and want to stick with the Möbius Loop.

Meanwhile, there have even been attempts to reboot the symbol itself and make it more nuanced. In a new spin on the Möbius, when you see light arrows with a dark background (a reversal of the usual) this means that the item is made with recycled material, and that it can be recycled again. But items carrying this symbol are rarer than hen’s teeth. The truth is that very few mainstream products are currently made from recycled material. Just to complicate matters further, you may have noticed other flat arrows with a number, usually between one and seven, moulded into the bottom of some plastic tubs, trays and bottles – these just tell you the type of polymer that’s in the product, not whether it can be recycled! No wonder we are confused!

In my opinion, the 3Rs are failing us on a daily basis – when we are not failing at them. ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ was a bold ideal that carried currency for a long time. But out of the three, ‘Recycle’ has the strongest voice. It doesn’t just cast a shadow across Reduce and Reuse in the hierarchy: it drowns them out. We’ve become fixated on getting to the recycling, forgetting that we need to stop the superfluous flow of waste in the first place.

This is hardly surprising; every time there is a mention of recycling, we hear about league tables and targets. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the goal was to generate as much plastic waste as humanly possible in order to feed recycling league tables, as if we were in the UEFA Champions League. To add insult to injury, the current system of recycling holds so many pitfalls and pratfalls that we’re often set up for failure.

We tried to give the 3Rs and the Möbius Loop a new lease of life. Sometimes you’ll see a little ‘Tidy Man’ popped in the middle of the Möbius Loop. I’ve even seen an encouraging ‘Do the Right Thing’ printed alongside it, too. But honestly, research shows this just leaves us even more confused. We should never be contorted with existential angst in front of the local council wheelie bins and recycling crates on the doorstep. It’s not fair.

In the past, we’ve been bamboozled into complacency. I really don’t believe that as consumers, householders and individuals we are as reluctant to change our habits as is often suggested. I think we’ve been blinded by those with a vested interest in the status quo, and persuaded to put our faith in retailers to move to responsible and recyclable packaging: for the people in power to sort out our recycling infrastructure. And been lulled by their promises that it would all work out in the end. It clearly has not.

Plastics have elbowed their way in from every angle, and as if in a frantic game of pass the parcel, we are the ones who are frequently left with the wrapping (but not the prize). ‘Plastics is the most complex [of] difficult materials to recycle’, according to Douglas Woodring, a global waste expert and the founder of NGO Ocean Recovery Alliance, who also noted, ‘most of the world today does not have the ability to recover materials.’57 For all the assurances and noise that recycling is becoming more innovative and widespread, let’s remember that the global recycling rate for plastic is less than 15 per cent.58 The sorting and reprocessing stages bounce out more bits of plastic along the way. Just five per cent of the material value is what you might call truly ‘recycled’ and retained for subsequent use.59 Given what Möbius and the 3Rs have been preaching to us for over forty years, you’d hope it would be a little better. Fifteen per cent of the globe’s plastic waste is recycled, of which just 5 per cent is actually turned into a recycled object or material. Remember those facts.

Neither the Möbius device nor the 3Rs stand up to muster in this new Age of Plastic. Faced with a tsunami of ever-growing complex polymers and types of plastic packaging, both look hopelessly naive.

I reckon we can do better.

DOING BETTER . . .

The following chapters are the practical bit – part manifesto, part tools and techniques to activate your own agency and play your part in turning back the tide on plastic. Sisters and brothers, we are doing (most of) this for ourselves, by ourselves.

I want to propose a strategy that gets us the best results for every bit of effort that we make.

The speed of plastic production is lightning fast. And this matches the speed of our consumption. In order to turn the tide, we have to slow down the bits of the gargantuan plastic juggernaut that we can control.

Building on the age-old framework of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, I’m proposing four more practical strategies that we can begin to act on today – conveniently, they also begin with the letter R:

Record collect your own data about your consumption, so that you drive your own success

Replace swap out the ecological hooligans that have colonised your store cupboard, gym bag and commute to work, and swap in the cool high-function, low-impact alternatives

Refuse find your steely inner core to form a robust defence that will stop unnecessary plastic getting into your life

Refill navigate the places and products that bring everyday life up to speed without using disposable plastic

Rethink develop a cutting-edge way of solving plastic challenges. You’re part of the solution, not the pollution

Fold in our original three, and I give you our 8R steps:

Record

Reduce

Replace

Refuse

Reuse

Refill

Rethink

Recycle

Granted, it’s a bit harder to remember, but once you focus on delinking your life from plastic, these eight steps will become second nature. Besides, this is all about giving ourselves as many chances as possible to curtail the deadly march of plastic before we even get to Recycle.