This is a guest piece by an active campaigner on plastic pollution and one who is pushing, as we are, for action from above.

The person behind the petition that asks for the CEO’s of all major UK super markets to drop or change the use of plastic for food wrapping, to no wrapping where it not needed, compostable if it is possible and as minimum recyclable. CrowdLeaf.org.uk are fully behind this and we offer a range of green and environmentally responsible products in the CrowdLeaf Store.

The petition can be found at : https://www.change.org/p/stop-supermarkets-using-unrecyclable-food-packaging

My name is Simon Goldsmith, I started a petition to ‘Stop Supermarkets using non-recyclable food Packaging’ because l got so annoyed when trying to recycle and reading on most of the plastic packaging ‘This plastic is not currently recycled’.

This made me think how much of our supermarket food packing is not currently recyclable. I found a large majority of it is the fruit and veg and to be honest 90% of this does not need any sort of packaging.

This made us change the way we shop, to finding a farm shop and buying all our fruit and veg from there. I appreciate this is not achievable for everyone, as some farm shops can be considerably more expensive and not convenient.

The final push for me was on our family holiday to Porthtowan in Cornwall. We were shocked by the micro-plastics on the beach.

As a consumer, we can’t choose how our food is packaged, the Supermarkets have an environmental obligation to make the packaging environmentally friendly. A consumer needs to be able to trust and respect the corporation they are buying from.

I understand the Supermarkets don’t package the food themselves but they have the power to make the producers comply.

Hopefully my petition will raise awareness and put pressure on the Supermarkets to change.

The more single-use plastic that is produced means it will eventually end up in landfills in developed countries and rivers and oceans in developing countries, then getting moved around the world’s oceans.
I believe the plastic problem needs to be tackled at both ends, one to reduce the amount of plastic being produced and two to clean up the current plastic in circulation in the oceans.

Currently in the UK there is no service industry cleaning our beaches, only volunteer organisations like Surfers Against Sewage.
I would like to setup a service industry which cleans our beaches in the UK and provides a use for the plastics. The only way the plastics are removed from the ocean is if the beaches are cleaned on a regular basis, currently the plastics get washed up and then moved again by the tides.

This is a serious problem as the fish are eating the plastics and we are eating the fish, the whole food chain is being affected. The effect the plastics are having on the wildlife is detrimental, and this is only getting worse.

I would like to be able to do more and the petition is just a starting point.