Plastic straws; they’re everywhere – literally.
According to Government research, it is estimated that each year in England alone we use 4.7 billion plastic straws.
And not only are they littering our countryside, waterways and oceans, these straws are all over our news outlets and social media feeds, too.
Of course, the latter is no bad thing.
Finally, we are waking up to the disastrous consequences of our addiction to single-use items, which take hundreds of years to break down. In October last year, the Government set out its plan to ban the distribution and sale of plastic straws (along with plastic drink stirrers and cotton buds, too).
Meanwhile many multinational restaurant and cafe chains have pledged to ditch their plastic straws, and campaigns such as The Last Plastic Straw and #stopsucking continue to build momentum.
All of these movements are incredibly important. They help all of us feel empowered to make small changes to our habits for the good of the environment. And the good news is that straws are something we can all give up fairly easily, without it being to the detriment of our lifestyle.
But there’s more to plastic waste than straws.
Let’s think about other, equally ubiquitous but perhaps more ‘hidden’, plastics: receipts.
The thing is – in very basic terms – everyone understands that plastic is bad, but no one has realised that the same chemicals used in single-use plastics (like straws) are also used in receipts.
This is because receipts are printed on shiny thermal paper, which contains Bisphenol A (BPA) or Bisphenol S (BPS). These chemicals are endocrine disruptors and have been classified by the EU as toxic to humans and to the environment.
Furthermore, of 11.2 billion receipts that are printed each year in the UK, 9.9 million are left unused. And the majority will not be able to be recycled because of the risk of transferring these chemicals into other recycled products.
When you consider not only the sheer scale of waste associated with unused receipts, but also the millions of trees, barrels of oil and litres of water that are required to print them, the environmental impact is clear.
So why do so few people care?
Perhaps it’s that, with receipts, the problem is harder to visualise. Unlike plastic straws, there isn’t specific footage to press our emotional buttons and put receipts on the radar, there isn’t a viral film of sea turtles choking on receipts or stories of whales with stomachs full of them.
Perhaps it is simply that receipts are so omnipresent in our lives, lingering in coat pockets, stuffed into wallets, piled up on kitchen worktops, that we don’t even notice they are there any more.
Whatever the reason, we need to start caring about receipts in the same way we have started caring about straws. Because right now, no one does.
The number of receipts wasted each year in the UK alone comes to the equivalent of 53,000 trees. That’s almost as many trees as Sherwood Forest – and more than all of London’s Royal Parks.
Faced with figures like this, the problem can feel overwhelming. But there are small steps you can start taking today, and the good news is it’s not actually that hard.
Only ask retailers for a receipt when you know that you’ll need one. And, if you must have a receipt, think about digital alternatives.
Several UK retailers are already looking at how they can use technology to come up with smarter, more efficient and more environmentally friendly options to the traditional paper receipt. Some give you the option to send your receipt via email. Others use partners to send digital receipts through your banking app.
Educate yourself about the options available, and remember that the responsibility lies not only with the retailer, but with anyone who shops (and I’m pretty sure that’s all of us).
Because even though they perhaps don’t get their fair share of the ‘bad plastic’ spotlight, paper receipts suck just as much as straws.