Pet Products and Plastic Pollution

So plastic pollution is big news at the moment as it should be. As consumers we have power over what we use and buy but single use plastic is everywhere and so much of it is not recyclable.
With this is in mind we started a non-recyclable plastic collection at the beginning of the year. Using a jar or bottle you collect all your plastic waste that can not be recycled. This way you can actually see how much plastic you are consuming, the tiny plastic film on the new peeler I bought, the wrapper on the celery, that used sandwich bag!

It was only a day or so before I started to look not just at the packaging on my own food and products but the pets as well. The dogs have raw bones and frozen nuggets that come in plastic bags. The reptiles have bugs that come in plastic tubs or frozen food in plastic wraps. Even the long stem feeding hay that I get for my two sensitive tummy rabbits comes in a bag which can not be recycled. The Christmas toy I got for my dogs didn’t have a plastic label or plastic wrapping but it did have a plastic tie which attached the toy to the label. It might seem like a tiny little thing but how many tiny little bits are there?!

The moment you start paying attention to it you realise that plastic really is everywhere! I had quick whip round my main pet areas; the freezer, the pet room, the treat box etc and in every area there were several products that come in plastic packets or wraps. Some of the packaging, like the feeding hay clearly says on it that it is not recyclable but many other of the products had no information at all. It seems strange to me that there was a complete lack of information. The more you think about it the more overwhelming it becomes and I know that it can seem as though we can’t possibly make a dent in the problem alone, ‘a drop in the ocean’ as they say.

But maybe if we all make a small change, if we all ask our suppliers and manufacturers of our pet products “why is this in plastic?”, “can it be recycled?”, “maybe you should collect all the plastic waste from your products and pay to safely dispose of it!” I’m not trying to sound pretentious, I am just as much a consumer as anyone.

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Here are a few interesting links, including to the National Geographic study that I mentioned:

• https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment
  
• Plastics: Source to Sea
  

I’d like to know the reasons companies have for using plastic packaging. Is it to do with cost and ease of production, or is it about transport, logistics, shipping and preserving products? Are companies considering alternatives? What can we as consumers do to make an entire industry change?
Honestly, I don’t really know what the answer is. But I do know that since the rapid production of plastics began in the 1950’s the amount of plastic produced, thrown away and put in landfill or burned is horrific! An article published last December by National Geographic together with the Great British Royal Statistical Society (yes that’s a thing) stated that the amount of plastic produced was 8.3 billion metric tons in the past 6 decades. Most plastic takes 400 years to degrade and only around 12% is incinerated. Just imagine every dog toy label, treat wrapper, flea treatment pipet that you have ever used. Every toothbrush you’ve ever owned, all of it produced in the past 60 years still exists probably in a landfill, not to mention all the dog poo bags before bio-degradable ones were available!