Could Steel Be The Answer For Environmentally Conscious Shoppers?
When you visit your local supermarket, it’s staggering the amount of plastic that is used for everyday items, however there could be a solution to ensure our plastic consumption is drastically reduced.
A new trial has been set up to try and eliminate unnecessary plastic packaging, Waitrose have installed a refill station at one of their supermarkets, designed to allow shoppers to refill their own containers with a range of products from a series of dispensers.
Everyday items readily available include pasta, rice and dried fruit, but products including wine and beer have also been trailed. This new initiative has led us here at Tinware to think, could steel be the answer to house everyday items on your weekly shopping trip?
We feel it most certainly could, looking at the image there is one fundamental flaw, the woman in question is using a plastic container to refill her items when she could be using a much more sustainable material in metal. We feel this is a fantastic new initiative that should be trailed not just by Waitrose, but every leading supermarket across the country.
Why should refill stations be introduced into every supermarket?
- Since the 1950’s, 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic has been produced
- By 2015, all the plastic waste generated since the 1950’s – only 9% has been recycled, 12% incinerated and 79% accumulated in landfill sites or the environment.
- By 2050 plastic in the ocean will outweigh fish.
- Plastic that has ended up in landfill or leaks into the natural environment has cause damage to eco-systems on land and sea, causing near permanent contamination.
Supermarkets across the country create more than half the plastic in our households, so initiatives like this are pivotal to ensuring the environment is not damaged further.
Hopefully in the not too distant future, more incentives like will be introduced and more solutions created to tackle the plastic packaging crisis. We hope more organisations…including ourselves can work in conjunction to provide a more sustainable alternative to those that inflict damage on our planet.
To read more about issues surrounding sustainability, follow the following links:
https://tinwaredirect.com/blogs/tips-advice/environmental-impacts-of-plastics-vs-metals
https://tinwaredirect.com/blogs/tips-advice/sustainable-packaging-what-is-it
https://tinwaredirect.com/blogs/tips-advice/metal-the-most-recycled-packaging-material
