Plastic not-so-fantastic: how to reduce packaging waste

Some of you may have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of the Pacific Ocean roughly 1.6 million square kilometres in size that contains between 45 000 to 129 000 metrics tonnes of plastic waste, mostly in the form of microplastics – fingernail sized or smaller bits of the material. The patch has increased 10-fold in size each decade since 1945, and has a twin in the North Atlantic Garbage patch. Growing awareness of the patch and other environmental consequences of plastic waste, like seagull bellies full of plastic lids or turtles trapped in beer nets from six packs, has led to an increasing eco-consciousness around plastic packaging and a desire to use less of it. But as with many policy challenges, the situation can be more complex than a simple slogan like reduce, reuse, recycle. To explain these nuances, my guest this episode is Dr Jack Pickering, a freelance researcher who recently completed a postdoc on waste in the UK food system at City University London. Jack is a qualitative researcher with a PhD from the University of Cardiff in Wales in human geography. He has been working in interdisciplinary teams using mixed methods to understand the causes of waste, people’s beliefs about it, industry attitudes, and how to improve the situation.Jack’s Linkedin Profile:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-pickering-6170a4209/? Jack’s paper on consumer attitudes to plastic packaging: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17530350.2023.2281398 Mark Miodownik lab’s work on composting in the UK using citizen science:https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2022.942724/full Sarah Greenwood, packaging expert:https://scgreenwood.co.uk/ Mike Munger on recycling, especially of glass:https://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/06/03/michael-c-munger/recycling-can-it-be-wrong-when-it-feels-so-right/ Lesley Henderson and team’s plastic mythbusters toolkit:https://www.coastalpollutiontoolbox.org/ Max Liboiron’s website (Jack wanted to note that Max is an indigenous/first nations person and avoids using the word ‘Canada’ – an oversight on our part in the episode):https://maxliboiron.com/