Throw Away Less Rubbish

Packaging

Rubbish

THE THROW-AWAY SOCIETY

The fur trade argument

AGAINST

Many wildlife experts want to stop the fur trade. They say...

o It's wrong to keep wild animals in cages.

o It's wrong to kill animals for fashion and profit.

o It's wrong to kill wild animals in traps.

o It's wrong to sell the fur of rare, protected species. (This is against the law, but it's very common.)

FOR

But the fur trade says...

o People want to buy fur coats and hats.

o Modern fur farms aren't cruel.

o Hunters catch fewer and fewer wild animals every year.

o The trade in illegal furs isn't their fault.

□ Your opinion

Which side do you support?

Give reasons to explain your opinion.

Many countries bury and forget millions of tonnes of rubbish every year. But we don't have to throw away all our waste paper, glass, metal and plastic. We can also burn or recycle a lot of it. In fact waste can be wonderful stuff.

□ The Problem

v The average person in Los Angeles throws away 7 kilos of rubbish every day.

v The average person in the Third World throws away only 1 kilo of rubbish every day.

v Britain throws away 7 million tonnes of paper every year. That's the same as 80 million trees.

v In one year, a European family with two children throws away...

- 50 kilos of paper (that's six trees)

- 60 kilos of metal

- 45 kilos of plastic (that doesn't sound like a lot of plastic, but it is. You need 300,000 supermarket carrier bags to make one tonne).

v In one year, the average person throws away... 71 food cans, 34 cans of pet food and 68 drinks cans.

v Britain produces 8.5 billion cans per year. Half are for food and half are for drinks.

v That's enough to go to the moon and back and half-way to the moon again.

v England and Wales produce 500 tonnes of rubbish every year. This

v costs Ј600 million to collect and bury.

Almost all supermarket food today comes in paper or plastic contain­ers. Some of this 'packaging' is necessary. It keeps the food clean and fresh. It also makes it last longer. But some packaging isn't necessary at all. It's just there to make the food look better.

v In Britain, over 75,000 people work in packaging factories.

v The UK packaging industry sells Ј4 billion of paper and plastic con­tainers every year.

v 28% of domestic rubbish is packaging.

v 5% of all Britain's energy goes into making packaging.

□ The Solution

Here are three ways to beat the throw-away society. All of them are cleaner and cheaper than burying rubbish.

In Denmark, for example, it's illegal to sell drinks in cans. And it's not just governments which can produce less rubbish. It's ordinary people, too. For example, anyone can decide to

... buy products with as little packaging as possible

...use and throw away fewer carrier bags

...waste less paper.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-24