When it comes to soft plastics, Jeremy Cordeaux reckons the whole country is busily treating the symptom while ignoring the cause. On this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion, he offered a solution so simple he seemed almost exasperated no one had said it aloud: stop wrapping things in plastic in the first place.
The Problem In The Bin
Soft plastics are everywhere — the films and wrappers around chocolates, groceries, hardware, nearly everything you buy. Jeremy acknowledged the various initiatives aimed at the damage they do to the environment, and said he was all for reducing that harm.
But he’d noticed something missing from every scheme he’d seen. In all the stories about recycling and processing soft plastics, he said, not one gave a single thought to going to the cause of the problem rather than treating the effect.
Prevent, Don’t Process
That was the crux of his argument. The whole debate, in his view, is aimed at the wrong end — building complicated, costly systems to cope with plastic waste after it exists, rather than stopping it existing at all.
The fix, he insisted, isn’t complicated: don’t wrap things in plastic. We didn’t always, and we don’t have to now. You don’t need a multi-million-dollar industry to manage the problem — you need to prevent it occurring in the first place.
The Way It Used To Be
Jeremy reached into his own memory for proof it can be done. He recalled the old general store at Strathfield — a cross between a hardware store and a grocer — where everything came in bulk. You brought a paper bag or a string bag, got what you needed, and there was no big deal about it.
There’s no reason in the world, he argued, why things can’t be as they were before this plastic-pollution problem existed. The absence of plastic wasn’t a hardship then, and wouldn’t be now.
Pretty Damn Basic
Jeremy’s frustration was really with the complexity we build around avoidable problems. Faced with a mess made by plastic packaging, the instinct is to invent elaborate machinery to clean it up — when the far cheaper answer is not to create the mess.
Pretty damn basic, was his verdict — repeated for emphasis. Classic Cordeaux: cut through the layers of industry and initiative to the plainest possible solution, and ask why no one in charge seems willing to consider it.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
