Broken Biscuits

Tag: sustainability

  • Little Miss Giggles and 70,000 tonnes of Plastic

    Little Miss Giggles, a McDonald's Happy Meal toy.

    I’ve been listening to the excellent BBC podcast The People vs McDonald’s presented by Mark Steele, retelling the story of the McLibel case. In the 1990s, the McDonald’s Corporation sued two members of London Greenpeace over claims made in a leaflet they were handing out to the public in a London street.

    Before the trial, leaflets were being given out on a north London street, to a couple of hundred people on the average Saturday afternoon. After McDonald’s incredible own goal, which became the longest legal trial in British legal history, costing McDonald’s millions of dollars, the health, and environmental issues associated with fast food came to worldwide attention – great work McDonald’s!

    What's wrong with McDonald's leaflet, published by London Greenpeace.

    Fast forward to 2021: The children at the next table in the Food Court already have the toys they got with their Happy Meals, so, disappointed, they leave them sitting in a pile of half-eaten chips and waste packing.

    They’re undoubtedly cute in their own way. However, Little Miss Giggles here is 63 grams of non-recyclable plastic. Mr Tickle is a little lighter at 58 grams. McDonald’s own figures state that between 2018 and 2022 (a period that included the global pandemic, when many restaurants were closed), worldwide sales of Happy Meals exceeded 5.7 billion. An average of 1.14 billion plastic toys a year.

    A McDonald's Mr Tickle Happy Meal toy.


    Not all Happy Meal toys are equal, but if they all weighed as much as Little Miss Giggles, that’s 71,190 tonnes of non-recyclable plastic per year. How many of those end up in the bin before they’re a day old? That’s seventy-one thousand, one hundred and ninety tonnes of plastic that will still exist long after those children have passed away. In fact, Little Miss Giggles will likely be indistinguishable from that photo in a thousand years.

    Global plastic production increases year on year. In 2023 (the latest date I could find reliable figures), the world produced 413.8 million tonnes of plastic, of which 91.3% was fossil-based (oil basically).

    Earlier this year, an article in Nature Magazine stated that a researcher at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque “estimates that he can isolate about 10 grams of plastics from a donated human brain. That’s about the weight of an unused crayon”. There is nowhere they have not reached; microplastics have recently been found in the placentas of premature children..

    Could it be time to accept that the world only needs a certain number of plastic toys? I hate to sound like your stressed parent at Christmas, but can’t we just play with the billions of plastic toys we already have?

    Stay safe out there. N.

    BTW. If you’re interested in the McLibel campaign I’d recommend the documentary mentioned in the podcast made by Franny Armstrong of Spanner Films.

  • Plastic Bottles: 10 Million a day in the UK!

    A montage of plastic water bottles found on the street in Gravesend.

    I don’t know what made me first notice them. But when I did, I realised that they were everywhere. If I go for a half-hour walk from home, I’ll usually see three or four discarded water bottles. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you’re all drinking so much water; good hydration is important. But when you buy bottled water, you are driving a chain that’s having a significant impact on our environment.

    A discarded plastic water bottle with a red cap.

    In 2021, UK consumers drank 2.5 million litres, or 10 million bottles of water, per day. That’s a lot of plastic. This figure is expected to grow 15% by 2027. If those bottles end up in a landfill, and about 25% do in the UK, they will take somewhere between 400 and 1,000 years to break down.

    A discarded plastic water bottle that has been twisted.

    Apart from the environmental impact of all that plastic, there is the carbon produced in trucking that water and plastic around the country. Our local water company, Southern Water, charges about a third of a penny for two litres of water. Buy the same two litres from Aldi, and you’ll pay 129 times as much. UK tap water undergoes rigorous testing; it truly is as good as, or better than, bottled water.

    A discarded plastic water bottle in beautiful light.

    Apart from the convenience, there really is no upside to bottled water. It costs more, damages the environment on a global scale and litters our streets locally.

    Reduce, Reuse, Refill: Invest in a reusable water bottle and make a long-lasting impact.

    www.refill.org.uk a campaign to reduce single-use packaging.

    Take care out there. N.

  • Less

    A pair of well-worn Wells Lamont gloves.

    I’ve become less interested in acquiring new stuff and more appreciative of things that last. I recently read Patrick Grant’s book Less, where he argues passionately against the throwaway culture of fast fashion and for buying quality that lasts and can be repaired. In my lifetime, the world has changed from one of hand-knitted jumpers and TV repair shops, to one where we just throw things away, to make way for the new model. I’m sure some of this is an effect of ageing, but there’s no doubt the planet can’t cope with our current rate of consumption.

    I can’t deny, there’s something amazing about living in a Joe 90 world (a reference for the kids), where you can get an instant message from the other side of the planet on your watch. In the 1980s, Casio launched a calculator watch, and I really wanted one. I wanted one so much it hurt. If my parents had relented (they didn’t), I’m sure, for a while, I would have been entranced. But how long would that fascination have lasted? I suspect the same will be true of today’s smartwatches. Who really needs to log their REM sleep, and is it even healthy to do so? Yes, you can get an iMessage on your watch. Until the operating system is updated or the battery dies.

    “Wildlife accidents aside, I’ll probably never need another pair, and there’s something very reassuring about that.”

    I was in the middle of cutting the grass when this came to mind, and I found myself looking more closely at the gloves I was wearing. They’re made by Wells Lamont, an American brand, whose website tells me have been making gloves since 1907. This is actually my second pair; I foolishly left the first pair outside where a fox thought they’d make a great chew toy, and it seems they weren’t wrong. So, on a work trip to Dallas a few years ago, I bought these. I can’t remember where, but they weren’t expensive. Wildlife accidents aside, I’ll probably never need another pair, and there’s something very reassuring about that.

    In the future, I’m aiming to consume less. When I do need to buy something, I’ll follow Patrick Grant’s lead in trying to shop locally and choose things that last.

    Let me know if there’s something you own that you aim to keep forever.

    N.

    PS. I’m thinking about moving away from Gmail to a smaller provider that’s not going to scrape my data. Is there a service you’d recommend?