Guernsey Press

Time to bin throwaway mindset

There’s no doubt that we in the First World have become a throwaway society.

Published

From single-use plastics to disposable coffee cups and fabric-cleaning wipes, our collective focus has in recent times become less about reusing precious resources and more on convenience. Why bother to rinse out a cloth when someone has invented a handy disposable wipe?

The trouble is, all this waste has to go somewhere but we don’t give much thought to what happens after the bin lid closes. But we really should.

There’s evidence that 93% of blockages in UK sewer systems are caused by discarded wet wipes clogging the pipes. Add the grease and soap residues that end up going down the sink and you have the perfect recipe for a fatberg – congealed lumps that don’t biodegrade.

In London it took nine weeks to remove a 130 tonne, 250m fatberg from the Victorian sewer system. It’s an entirely preventable problem and one from which Guernsey is not immune. Guernsey Water has had to put in place a regular maintenance schedule to avoid the build-up of grease and unflushable materials. The company has to remove between one and two tonnes of rag that collects in the filters at Belle Greve every single week and pay to have it put into landfill.

The problem is now so bad in the UK that a standard has been introduced for flushable wipes. Fine to Flush stickers will be applied to products that meet strict guidelines. While this should be welcomed and hopefully result in people taking more care of how they dispose of these materials, it does beg the question why people have to be told they shouldn’t flush this stuff in the first place.

Our mindset as a society needs a radical shift. This isn’t a finger-wagging nanny state telling people what to do, the future of the species and our planet is at stake. There’s alarming and heart-breaking evidence of continents of plastic floating around in the oceans and undigested plastics found in the stomachs of whales and other marine life.

The new pay-as-you-throw waste strategy is already encouraging islanders to think twice about items they purchase, as well as recycling more and considering what happens to their waste. If we – as a species – don’t want to choke in a mess of our own making, we need to up our game – and fast.