Plastic pollution: How consumer activism can save the world from scourge of convenience culture's waste

Rubbish, including plastic packaging from British supermarkets, was found in a ditch in the Turkish province of Adana, one of at least 10 known sites in southern Turkey where European plastics have been dumped illegally. (Picture: Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images)

There was a moment this week when I was reminded of the shopping expeditions of my childhood.

Not the big visits into town with my Mum, aunt and Gran. But the weekend morning scamper round the corner to the dairy for rolls, and a pint of milk while Dad picked up the papers.

Occasionally there were eggs to buy too, or a treat and all of it came in what we would now call recyclable packaging. In those days, we just called them a paper bag, a milk bottle and an egg box.

I doubt if any of that was ever exported to be burned in the way that we saw hundreds of thousands of tonnes being destroyed this week in Turkey. A massive funeral pyre of plastic, spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere.

And ironically it came from a misguided attempt to avoid the damage that we all know would have been done to our marine wildlife if that same packaging had been dumped in the sea.

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Plastic. A product that was originally, and with not the slightest hint of irony, seen as a vital component of the convenience culture is, we are surely only too painfully aware, now threatening our existence.

It is strangling and choking our co-habitants of the planet and clogging up our rivers and seas.

Employees work at the Gama recycling factory in the southern Turkish province of Gaziantep (Picture: Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images)

The idea that it was supposed to be recycled is, I know, the defence of those responsible for the export of the UK waste whose incineration was exposed this week. But recycling plastic is not the only, or even best answer.

Because the moment that reminded me of those childhood dairy trips offered a ready, and yes convenient, alternative.

There is a new shop in Corstorphine, close to where I live, where I can take glass jars from home to refill with pasta, grains, pulse vegetables and more.

Alternatively I can collect what I want in paper bags.

Even the shampoo is in soap-like bars encased in cardboard and you can fill your own containers with cleaning products. Glass, paper and proper shopping bags are on sale to carry it home in.

Plastic pollution: How consumer activism can save the world from scourge of convenience culture's waste – Christine Jardine MP