Raising awareness about single-use plastics in supply chains
by James P. Outreach & PR ExecutiveThe topic of removing single-use plastic from our everyday
lives is a heavily discussed topic within many governments and organisations.
Recent activity has been initiated through major media exposure of the ongoing
damage plastic is currently causing to our planet. With grocery stores now
introducing ‘plastic free’ aisles and charging for plastic carrier bags,
worldwide organisations such as McDonalds introducing paper straws, and global
campaigns surrounding plastic waste such as Sky Ocean Rescue there is no
burying your head in the sand regarding the magnitude of the problems we face
today as a global community.
The National Geographic (2018) states:
“Single-use-plastics frequently do not make it to a landfill
or are recycled. A full 32% of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging
produced annually is left to flow into our oceans; the equivalent of pouring
one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute.”
One significantly underestimated source of plastic waste,
which is less glamorous and gathers less media attention than the supermarket
stalls, is that of supply chains. Logistics and supply chains often get missed
out from all the media attention as they are not as exciting or appealing as
other topics of focus and perhaps less obvious in our everyday lives. However
they are still a major source of plastic waste contributing every day to the
issue, in particular the use of plastic pallet wrap.
Apart from pressure coming from consumers and the media,
there is very little pushing companies to make a drastic change to their
habits. It takes roughly a football sized amount of plastic pallet wrap to
secure a normal sized pallet, and once used this plastic is then discarded. Now
scale this up and imagine how many plastic wrapped pallets there are in the
World’s warehouses, and how much plastic is discarded, and you begin to see how
much waste supply chains will contribute every year.
Research from the Independent in 2018 claims that 8,000,000
tonnes of plastic waste enters our oceans each year. Considering that there is
already an estimated 150,000,000+ tonnes floating around our oceans we are on
the tipping point of a global catastrophe. The long lasting effects of this are
many… and they are scary. Plastic in the ocean is believed to kill millions of
marine animals every year (National Geographic, 2018), with marine inhabitants
of all shapes and sizes, from zooplankton to whales, now eating microplastics
within their water. These undetectable microplastics then enter the food chain
where they will end up working their way towards the top, towards you.
Now there are a few companies looking to make a difference
and drive change from board level, applying pressure on supply chain leaders
and managers to change their ways and influence their teams. Sky and Unipart
Logistics recently teamed up with Loadhog to
eliminate over 2 million metres of single-use plastic pallet wrap from the Sky
UK supply chain. Direction from Sky resulted in Unipart using Loadhog’s
innovative pallet lid to secure pallets without the need to use plastic pallet wrap. Sky and
Unipart were able to not only eliminate 100% of single use plastic from their
pallets, but they also saved operational process time and costs as well.
It takes the drive and vision of business leaders to incite a change, and not just in workplace processes, but also workplace culture in order to combat this impending global disaster. It is not only our habits at home that will affect our planet’s outcome, but also our habits in the workplace. There are many returnable packaging solutions available; metal, wood and plastic, which can help remedy the issues highlighted and offer a range of additional benefits too, but ultimately the user must be open to change in order to solve the problem we all face.
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Created on Nov 2nd 2020 07:45. Viewed 379 times.