Southgate Global, whose news we include this week, reminded me of the consternation I felt recently when helping a friend prepare guest 'nibbles' by opening pots of shop-bought dips and hummus. I’ve occasionally bought similar when pushed for time, (my own is better!) and always keep the plastic pots which I use regularly for anything from storing leftover food or taking tea/coffee/sugar/spare batteries to festivals etc, to safely carrying home leaves, feathers, stones and the like that my toddler granddaughter collects when we're out. I wash the pots when empty again and pop them into the cupboard until they're next needed, which is always very soon…

A perfect example, in my view, of the ‘reduce, repurpose, re-use, recycle’ mantra. I'm reducing my consumption by not buying new pots for storage and am instead making good use of something that happens to be at hand. 

  

The simple act of opening a few food pots alerted me to how some companies have opted to avoid paying as much plastic packaging tax as they might have done, in a way that has, in my view, backfired in terms of effectively reducing the use of virgin plastic - something the tax was designed to do. In case you're in the dark here, the tax was introduced in 2022 to incentivise businesses to use more recycled content in their plastic packaging, and is applied to packaging that contains less than 30% recycled content. It equates to £223.69 per metric tonne of plastic used. On paper it all makes sense, but when you consider that many companies opted to ‘lighten the load’ by ditching the lids in food packaging pots in favour of unrecyclable, lightweight, thin plastic film which - once peeled back, doesn't seal again, you can see why I used the word ‘backfired’. The lack of a proper seal allows the content to quickly dry out and thus causes extra food waste and potential spillages, and vastly reduces the repurposing options. Then there’s the need to cover the content with something, be it foil or cling-film, which will also likely end up in landfill. 

  

Add to that the accusations that virgin plastic may be being sold by unscrupulous vendors who claim that it's recycled, and you'll understand why I'm so disgruntled.  

  

My picture shows some of the pots that would have previously included a solid plastic lid, which would have enabled people like me to wash and reuse the pots over and over. It is, of course, just a small sample, but it shows how not thinking things through properly, can have unexpected consequences.