Following on from last week's post about the BBC1 programme, "War on Plastic", presenters Hugh and Anita urged all of us watching to leave #OurPlasticFeedback. They wanted us to take any single-use plastic packaging back to the supermarkets we bought the pre-packaged food from and explain why we don't want or need said packaging.
Of course, I obliged and wrote various messages on the packaging before taking it back to Asda. My messages included asking why yoghurt can't come in glass jars that we return, as is customary all over Germany, or indeed why strawberries and raspberries can't come in a cardboard punnet, and why nectarines have to be pre-packaged in the first place.
I must admit I was a little nervous about going up to Customer Services to leave #OurPlasticFeedback. I didn't know who I'd be faced with, or indeed how they'd react. But I was pleasantly surprised when the young guy behind to counter willingly took all my packaging and said he'd pass my feedback on to management. I've no way of knowing if that's what he did, but at least he didn't just laugh in my face!
Hugh and Anita's other request was that we take a picture of our message(s) and share it on social media using the hashtag #OurPlasticFeedback. This sparked quite a discussion on my Facebook page (less so on Twitter but I tend to use the two platforms differently) and has led to us making a few more swaps - more details to come in future posts. But in the meantime - and at the risk of repeating myself - we don't need a few people doing it perfectly, we need lots of people doing it imperfectly.