Gove’s cotton bud ban is feeble. This is how we can wipe out plastic

At least two decades after cotton buds (known in my childhood home as “ear cleaners”) became well known as a public health hazard, never, ever to be placed anywhere near ears, the government has announced plans to ban them, maybe next year. Low-hanging fruit and all that, but like the 5p plastic bag charge introduced in 2015, this is a bit feeble. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good news: because they are small, hard and pointy these nasty pieces of plastic are dangerous for marine creatures, who sometimes eat them, and the sooner we get rid of them the better. The same goes for coffee stirrers and plastic straws, 8.5bn of which are thrown away in the UK each year. I blame dentists for my late conversion to straw-hating: they recommend straws (well, mine did) because sugary drinks are conducted more directly to children’s throats, bypassing teeth. Blue Planet’s footage of albatross nests full of trash may have been (literally) the last plastic straw for my family, but in any case paper ones work fine (although someone may need to invent one sharp enough to pierce the foil-covered straw-hole in juice cartons). However, if Michael Gove’s crackdown on not-very-useful single-use plastic items doesn’t go far enough, what are the items that any plastic-restricting environment secretary should seek to ban?

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/20/michael-gove-cotton-bud-ban-wipe-out-plastic

Posted by admin on Apr 21 2018. Filed under News Worldwide, No Plastic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry