Packaging

I bought some sliced turkey in a plastic tray with vacuum sealed plastic film on top. I couldn't open it. The seal was so tight I had to attack it with a knife despite the fact that it had a corner tab to aid opening. I regularly cannot open bottles & jars. Opening a tin of anchovies is life threatening. Opening tetra packs of soya milk always, always, ends up with milk spilt. The frustration levels are high. I have 5 completely different tools to help me with this problem. 

Then there is the guilt about all of the packaging that can't go into the recycling wheelie bin. Plastic is the obvious problem. Not least because of how many different types there are.

Unrecycled & much recyclable plastic either goes to landfill, what a bizarre rabbit hole that was to go down, or is exported to poorer countries. Did no one consider that dumping waste in the ground couldn't go on for ever & was a very bad idea? "The UK exports around 60% of the over 2.5 million tonnes of plastic packaging waste it creates. Turkey is the main destination for this waste. British plastic waste (is) being dumped and burned in Turkey, causing “irreversible and shocking” environmental and human health impacts"- UK Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

The food & food retailing industries have a lot to answer for. They have changed the world landscape. They have created mountains, huge pits, lakes & rivers of plastic waste with little or no consideration of the consequences of their actions. All for their convenience & profit. It's about time they paid the price of cleaning up the mess. They can't rectify a lot of the damage to species & environments, but possibly nature could recover in time.

But we, the public bear responsibility too. We haven't questioned what we were buying & the impact unnecessary, non biodegradable, packaging might have. We have opted for convenience too. Now we all know what we have done. So we all have a responsibility to do something about it. We must not just complain, we must refuse. We must take all the packaging back to the store of origin & make them deal with it responsibly. 

We have to live symbiotically with our planet & stop destroying it. There isn't another option. We humans are too destructive.