Environmental Issues – Enviro-Mentalist

Sorry, rant coming up

There has been quite a lot in the press recently about our disappearing wildlife – the Guardian and Independent ran just two examples in the last few months.

The State of Nature Report in 2016 gave two main reasons for the decline in UK wildlife – climate change and agricultural practices. One of the best things to do to reduce climate change is to stop flying. Simple. It has more impact than going vegetarian as far as climate change is concerned – halving meat intake for a year would only have the same impact as not going on one return flight to New York. But, of course, there are other environmental impacts related to farming beyond climate change such as pesticide use, monocultures and pollution.

So, in order to help wildlife we should stop flying, reduce our travel in general, eat less meat and be more aware of where our food comes from (and associated food miles) and how it is produced.

Why then, do wildlife NGOs not try and positively influence the behaviour of their members. The BTO has a long standing partnership with Syngenta which manufactures the neonics that have recently been banned for flowering crops in the UK due to their harmful impact on pollinators. As many farmland birds rely on insects for food one can only assume that the use of the neonics is not a positive thing for them either. I cancelled my membership of the BTO when I discovered this. The RSPB magazine (when I was a member) was littered with adverts for foreign holidays round the world. Indeed they even have a section on their website about Eco Tourism which admittedly does push the benefits of staying in the UK or travelling by train. But, it states on the page that 45% of members surveyed had been on three holidays in the last 12 months. I cancelled my RSPB membership because of their constant push of foreign holidays and foreign birding articles. Even my beloved Butterfly Conservation is not immune – they had 5 adverts for foreign holidays in the latest edition of Butterfly, two less than last time I suppose. At least two out of three of the Woodland Trust’s holiday adverts are for train journeys into Europe.

So, I implore those at the conservation charities, and anyone who is worried about the decline in UK wildlife to think about their travel and their food choices, otherwise you are directly contributing to the decline of the wildlife that you purport to conserve.

Avoiding the greenwash of plastic packaging.

I am concerned both at home and at work about the amount of single use plastic in my life. I have ditched the plastic from my milk, reuse all my plastic bags, try not to buy food in plastic wherever possible and refuse to drink out of a single use cup. At work we have slashed the amount of plastic cutlery, got rid of straws and are working on a few obvious quick wins. But, it is not as easy as it should be. In the wake of the recent publicity from Blue Planet 2 packaging companies have been quick to market their green alternatives. These take two forms, one based on plant materials and one with added sparkle (or something or other) to make the polymer degrade faster. Inevitably they tend to cost more than the fossil fuel equivalent.

But, whilst these sound, on the face of it, like a good idea, they are not as green as they would first seem and I have a couple of examples from my workplace to illustrate the conundrum.

Firstly, in our catering department they are keen to try to move away from standard plastics (although arguably less keen to move to reusable items). On their own they replaced their plastic boxes with a corn-starch based material. Now they are considering changing some of the other items for one made from Polylactic acid (PLA). This is also a plant based product that is similar to PET and has the advantage that it is not made from fossil fuels, is compostable and recyclable, and, if it is incinerated it won’t release the toxic chemicals found in many other plastics.

The second type came from elsewhere in the organisation. They had started a trial with a plastic bag that had an added chemical that means it is biodegradable. Again, it is alleged that it can be recycled, but also that it will degrade in landfill.

Both of these solutions to the plastic issue have some fundamental flaws (other than cost):

One of the issues with plastics is that they don’t break down easily, but this gives them a relatively long shelf life. This is not the case if they contain biodegradable plastic, so these greener plastics are less recyclable.
Most food waste in this country goes to anaerobic digestion, for a compostable plastic to be ‘greener’ it would need to go to an industrial composter. I have been told that there is currently only one in the UK.
It is fine that something might break down in landfill, but not that much waste goes to landfill in the UK any more. Usually mixed waste goes to a material recycling facility, this separates out the plastics, metals etc., then sends the rest as energy from waste.

So, whilst these are probably a good idea for a use that cannot be recycled (such as medical devices or packaging that for some reason needs to be incinerated and for which a reusable device is just not practicable or available), or for places where littering may be more of an issue (here I am thinking of the PLA option, not the fossil fuel option with added chemical) for many applications where there are good recycling facilities and where the domestic waste also gets sorted, then these are still not the right answer.

Plastic, food waste and cucumbers

There is quite a backlash about plastic at the moment, particularly in the media. Most of it relating to food as this is probably the most visible and to many people (myself included) the most pointless use of single use plastic. As I have mentioned before, the response of the supermarkets in the main has been to pledge to make their packaging recyclable and any reductions mentioned are usually about weight – which means they will make the packaging thinner, not change it altogether. It might even mean substituting plastic for other packaging such as glass.

However, I have recently heard several people complain that the general consensus of opinion is that all plastics are bad, whereas this, they say, is clearly not so. Plastic wrapped cucumbers are the proof, if any were needed, that plastic packaging reduces food waste (but then so does other types of packaging). And, with around 100kg of food wasted per person in the EU, we certainly need to reduce such waste. But, just because the shelf life of a half cucumber is extended by about a week, this doesn’t mean that it the answer. Back in the 1930s only a few percent of food was wasted. Since the 1950s plastic packaging use has increased and now about 33% of our food ends up uneaten. In fact, a recent report (1) has indicated that in some cases such as trimmed green beans, there is more food waste because the beans don’t naturally conform to the size requirements imposed by a plastic tray. More is cut off in production than would be if the beans were taken home in their natural state and prepared when required. Equally, food in packaging is of a fixed amount – if you are a household of one or two, then the chances are you will struggle to get through a whole bag before it goes off, increasing the likelihood of waste.

In Defra statistics from a couple of years ago the main reason cited for food wasted at home (where the majority of food waste apparently occurs) is, for fruit and veg because they were not used in time. (I think that a lot of this will be salads, but perhaps that’s because I don’t like lettuce, refuse to pay £1 for a bag of leaves that are simple to grow at home, don’t like the massive amount of packaging for just a small amount of nutrition or the idea of the chlorine added to keep them ‘fresh’ and they are prone to give you food poisoning.) But, for home made meals, and for meat, the biggest reason is that too much was cooked. Generosity or eyes bigger than tummies?

Tesco announced this month that they are going to remove the best before date from some of their fruit and veg in a bid to reduce food waste. However, these still remain sweating in their packaging, whereas the loose apples and potatoes et al don’t have any best before dates. It would be easier if they just got rid of all the packaging – but if they did that then there would be extra costs for someone on the checkout to weigh the food – or am I just being cynical? Perhaps supermarkets could start to co-operate and only provide some fruit and veg without the packaging option. After all, a few years ago you couldn’t buy apples in packs of six, so I am sure we can get used to putting them in a paper bag ourselves if that was the only choice.

1. http://zerowasteeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Unwrapped_How-throwaway-plastic-is-failing-to-solve-Europes-food-waste-problem_and-what-we-need-to-do-instead_FoEE-ZWE-April-2018_final.pdf

Reasons for optimism.

A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation about energy (the type typically generated in a power station, not the personal type) that got me thinking. This person was in their 80s and had worked in engineering when younger. He was of the opinion that we (as in the UK) would always need fossil fuels because it wasn’t sunny enough. It wasn’t a long discussion, and a few years ago I would have been in agreement with him. But, it occurred to me, for once I was more optimistic than someone else about a sustainable future.

The reason for my optimism is the pace of change we are seeing. Despite the government for their own peculiar reasons doing everything in their power to stop renewables and promote fossil fuels (see the latest move where they have decided to fast-track fracking planning applications) it would seem that renewable energy in this country and around the globe is on the rise. I personally think renewables will come into their own with improved battery technology, although I admit that brings with it another set of sustainability issues.

So, in the spirit of optimism I thought I would share some recent good news stories that show that there is a momentum growing out there and that we probably do have a lot of the answers, even if we are told things aren’t possible (in no particular order).

1. Windpower generated more electricity than nuclear power in the first quarter of 2018. 18.8% of the UK’s energy was produced by wind; providing up to 43% of electricity on some days. Whilst this was helped by some of the nuclear power plants being turned off, it follows on from the last three months of 2017 where wind and solar combined produced more electricity than nuclear power. It shows what can be achieved despite government policy and a collapse in clean energy investment. Imagine what could happen if we had a government that wasn’t so obsessed with the fossil fuel industry or that believed that renewables were the way forward?

2. A new labelling system is out that allows consumers to be able to identify items in packaging that doesn’t contain plastics. The first use of it has come from Iceland, which has already shown the way by announcing, unlike any of the other supermarkets, that it will remove single use plastic packaging by 2023. This has shown the power of social media and consumer pressure.

3. The EU have voted to keep the ban on the neonicitinoid pesticides that have been linked with the decline in many species of pollinator. An appeal by the manufacturers Bayer and Syngenta has just been turned down. (Although the caveat is that the ruling states that bees must only be exposed to ‘negligible’ levels of harmful pesticides.) Again, huge amount of pressure in the media and by NGOs.

4. More than 10 million people are now employed in the renewable energy industry around the world. In the US, where there has been a recent focus on pushing the fossil fuel industry on the promise of more jobs, there are more people employed in renewables than in fossil fuels in nearly every state. Meanwhile Costa Rica has pledged to ban fossil fuels and New Zealand is banning offshore extraction of fossil fuels.

5. 85% of milk distributing businesses have seen an increase in glass milk bottle sales. MilkandMore, the largest distributor, has seen an increase of 15,000 customers since the beginning of the year – 90% are buying milk in glass bottles.

So, whilst I admit that it was a bit difficult to find positive news stories in the mainstream media, there are a lot of changes out there. From Tesla and batteries, to the Circular Economy efforts of Dame Ellen McCarthy, from smaller organisations finding a market for their more sustainable options to Unilever stating that their sustainable living brands are their fastest growing for the second year in a row, the momentum is growing and, every now and again, even I feel a small tug of optimism that perhaps we can overcome those that don’t think change is possible.

Plastic Pact – is it all its cracked up to be?

On the 25^th April 2018 42 leading companies and a number of industrial organisations launched the Plastic Pact in conjunction with WRAP and the New Plastics Foundation.

4 pledges are to be realised by 2025:

100% of packaging to be recyclable, reusable or compostable
70% of packaging effectively recycled or composted
Eliminate problematic or unnecessary single use packaging
30% recycled content across all packaging

Amongst the signatories were the major supermarkets (with the exception of Co-op and Iceland) and some other big name brands including Pret and Unilever.

A cynic might wonder how much of this is down to China’s ban on all imports of plastic and other waste. The result is that a UK market for recycled material needs to be created (30% recycled content across all packaging) to stop waste management costs escalating and recycling levels stalling or falling. It also requires means waste streams to be easy to recycle so it is worthwhile investing in the recycling infrastructure and technology (eliminate problematic packaging).

Having already looked at the supermarket packaging a few weeks ago I wondered how much of this was new, or was already in their plans?

The first pledge regarding the recyclability or otherwise of the packaging is, for the majority of supermarkets at least, nothing new. Most of the supermarkets, with the exception of Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Asda had already pledged they were going to do just that. (Can one assume that the details of the Plastic Pact were already signed and ready for delivery earlier this year?)

As for the recycled content, this is generally an increase. Aldi and Lidl had already pledged to go further, with 50% made from recycled plastic by 2025, Waitrose were looking at the feasibility of increasing the recycled content, but there wasn’t much from the other supermarkets.

The goal to eliminate problematic or unnecessary single use plastic I think this, if it is monitored and the definition of unnecessary or problematic is not too loose, could be a positive outcome. There had been some plans to remove hard to recycle items such as black plastic trays (which of course will have to go if they are to meet the 100% recyclable, compostable commitment), or to trial some plant based cartons for tomatoes, but, with the exception of Iceland, there had been no plans to eliminate any packaging, just reduce it – this usually comes by reducing weight and making the plastics thinner. If interpreted in the spirit of the commitment, this could really push a change in the supermarkets’ attitudes. But, I don’t think it will mean glass milk bottles back on the shelves or cardboard punnets and paper bags in the fruit and veg aisles.

They haven’t yet said how they are going to do this, and I can’t find details of who will be monitoring it all (hopefully the New Plastics Foundation), but it does hopefully mean that some of the suppliers to the supermarkets will also be working to eliminate some plastics. Of course, this is just a first step and I would personally like to see the use of plastics stopped wherever possible as soon as possible. Whilst I don’t expect to be able to go to Waitrose and buy much other than onions and carrots free from added packaging in the near future, I shall be watching with interest to see whether the promises made last month are kept and whether there is any significant reduction in the almost 1 million tonnes of plastic packaging coming out of the supermarkets each year.

Every Breath You Take – Is Probably Killing You

The World Health Organisation recently released figures showing that worldwide there are 7 million deaths each year due to indoor and outdoor pollution (almost split 50/50). The same report states that ‘9 out of 10 people breathe air containing high levels of pollutants’ with women, children and those working outdoors being the worst affected.

The main cause of outdoor air pollution in urban areas is the burning of fossil fuels, whereas in rural areas it is the use of fertilisers and other agrochemicals. The increase in air pollution also puts a burden on the health services; with air pollution linked to stroke, cancer, heart disease, breathing difficulties and possible brain diseases such as Alzheimers.

The main urban air pollutants of concern are NO_x and PM_2.5 (PM standing for particulate matter). Not too many years ago, diesel cars used to throw out black soot from the exhaust. Now, the particles are too small to see, which means they can get past the body’s barriers and make it further down into the lungs. The fact that the particles are often covered in chemicals and might have metals adsorbed onto them can also promote an immune response, and lead to heart attacks and strokes. The small size of the particles also allows them to cross the barrier into the brain, suggesting a possible link with degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimers.

Within most towns and cities there will be some level of pollution monitoring, whether it is published or not is a different matter. Although, in the UK the main focus is London, as the headlines show, nearly all of us are breathing health threatening levels of major pollutants. In Northampton, the Green Party recently measured the air pollution across the town and found levels of NOx above legal limits right outside the General Hospital. In 2016 the Royal College of Physicians released a report stating that there are 40,000 excess deaths each year in the UK due to air pollution. In addition it causes 6 million sick days a year and has a social cost of £22.6 billion.

You would think that with the overwhelming evidence collected concerning the health impacts of air pollution the governments around the world would be making a big effort to cut pollution. Not so, particularly not in the EU. Whilst there have been some noticeable changes; e.g. congestion charges in London, in the main there has been little movement. Indeed, in the UK, the government has spent £500,000 of tax payers money defending its inaction to provide plans to bring levels of pollution down to those specified by the EU – levels that should have been reached by 2010. The government’s latest move has been to leave the issue up to local councils to resolve in their area. Nor do I see the NHS as a whole making big changes. There are some electric vehicles, lots of travel plans, some car share schemes and quite a few members of staff who cycle or walk to work. But within most Trusts the majority of the conversation is about how to find more parking spaces for staff and visitors, not about how to reduce pollution or find innovative solutions to reduce car usage.

There is perhaps some hope on the horizon (although you will need a powerful telescope to see it) with surveys showing that younger people are less likely to want to buy a car, more people are working from home and the increase in the use of electric cars (up by 11% in the UK last year). Statistics also show a slight reduction in the miles travelled, although the number of cars registered keeps on rising – I have a suspicion that a lot more shorter journeys are being undertaken. But with powerful lobbying from fossil fuel companies and car manufacturers, weak promises from governments to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars some time after they are likely to have stopped being made, and very little commitment to invest in public transport (particularly buses, use of which outside London has declined by more than a third in the last 30 years) I am not convinced that much will change any time soon in the UK.

Disclosure: yes I do have a car, I do drive to work and I hate it (my request to work from home 1 day per week was refused).

Keep it in the ground

April saw the UK manage 76 consecutive coal-free hours of electricity – partly due to renewables and partly due to lower demand. (Coal use increased when the Beast from the East hit and the cost of gas spiked.)

This coincides nicely with a Royal Society of Chemistry book I am currently reading; ‘Coal in the 21^st Century’. My interest is mainly from an Energy Manager’s background; the burning of coal being responsible for 31% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Living in the UK, where coal use has dropped by 80% in the last 5 years, and where coal is expected to be phased out by 2025, I don’t think too much about the direct health effects of coal anymore. (I was born post-Clean Air Act before which the world was in black and white and you couldn’t see the hand in front of your face.) But, whilst climate change is, according to the Lancet, the biggest threat to human health of the 21^st Century, for a lot of the world’s population the health issues related to coal are much more immediate than those from climate change, which sometimes seem distant both geographically and temporally.

Suffice it to say that I am halfway through the book and it has already opened my eyes to the reasons that burning coal for electricity generation is something we should be stopping with all haste.

The issues with coal start with the mining – even ignoring the environmental aspects. Miners themselves, are often exposed to dust, causing Black Lung Disease, with underground mining obviously much worse than surface mining. Then there are the accidents, which when they do happen, often kill many in one go.

The mined coal doesn’t automatically resemble the shiny black anthracite that some of us remember from our childhood. It is brought out along with a lot of impurities and waste which have to be cleaned off. This may be stored on the surface near the mining complex, polluting ground and surface water with toxins and acidic runoff. Those living adjacent to surface coal mines in the USA have an increased mortality due to the toxins emitted from the process. Water is used to clean the coal, the waste from this process is stored in large ponds behind dams. These are not checked for leakage and there have been cases of complete collapse, causing millions of gallons of toxic waste and water to pour into nearby towns.

Burning the coal causes air and water pollution. The air pollution comes from some the expected pollutants, and some lesser known ones. These include PM_2.5 – particulate matter that can make it into lungs, bringing all sorts of nasties with it. PM_2.5 is linked to various cancers as well as stroke, respiratory and heart disease. Also on the list are NO_x and SO_x, causes of acid rain and respiratory problems, Mercury about which I don’t think much else needs to be said (445 tonnes is released each year from burning coal for electricity) as well as Arsenic, Cadmium, Chromium, Lead, formaldehyde and many other metals. Some of these are scrubbed from the air, so at least they aren’t dispersed as far. However, they still end up in the waste ash that comes out of the coal station; its disposal is a major health issue.

The coal ash contains many metals and toxins, in even greater concentrations than in the coal itself. Whilst the toxicological effects of many of them are known individually, there has been little to no research on the synergistic effects of these pollutants combined. The ash is created in huge volumes; in the USA it is estimated that 140 million tonnes are generated each year, this is then stored in dry landfills and wet ponds. The nature of many of the toxins in ash, such as mercury and other metals, means that they persist in the environment, never degrading, and they are likely to remain a problem for decades, if not centuries. The dry landfills are not usually required to be covered, thus exposing nearby communities to airborne pollutants either directly, or as they settle onto land. The wet ponds also have containment issues, with liners not always employed, allowing the water to leach into ground water thus contaminating drinking water, or entering the food chain through contaminated fish. Then, as mentioned earlier, there is the potential for the walls containing the water to break, thus releasing the concentrated toxins into the local water courses and often onto land and into buildings.

There are many examples of coal mining and power generation polluting the local environment and causing health issues cited in the book that I am reading. All of the examples are in the USA where, until recently at least, one would hope there is some degree of regulation. (I haven’t read the chapter on regulation yet.) But the majority of new coal-fired power stations planned or in construction are in India and China, where there are already examples of much weaker regulation for environmental protection (see my earlier post about antibiotic manufacture) and where the local communities are more likely to draw water directly from local wells and to fish from local rivers.

Whilst there are pressing climate change arguments for removing coal from the energy mix, surely the dirty nature of its production and use, and the health impact on all those living nearby make keeping it in the ground even more of an imperative.

Antibiotics in livestock

In the UK, 44% of antibiotics are prescribed to non-humans – that’s livestock, including gamebirds, (37%) and pets (7%)¹. That’s not to say there are likely to be antibiotics in your meat, there is a mandated withdrawal period before any animal is slaughtered for meat or before milk enters the food chain. However, the overuse of antibiotics as a cause of antibiotic resistance applies as much to veterinary use as for human use. Despite the emergence of antibiotic resistance shortly after the discovery of antibiotics in the 1940s, and many reports in the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn’t until 2006 that the use of antibiotics as growth promoters was banned in the EU. The good news is that government targets to reduce antibiotic use in livestock are currently on track. The bad news is that they are finding antibiotic resistant genes in meat around the world.

The Guardian recently reported on an increase in the proportion of chickens found in UK supermarkets that had campylobacter resistant to the antibiotics used to treat it. (Campylobacter can cause serious food poisoning in humans.) Whilst there are differences in many of the bacteria that infect animals and humans, there is the potential for resistance to be transferred between species (horizontal transfer) and there are some bacteria that are shared; Salmonella and Campylobacter being two examples.

It is also worth noting that 83 billion tonnes of livestock manure is spread onto land each year in the UK, and in one gram of manure there are 1×10¹¹ bacteria, which means that if just 1% of the bacteria have resistance to antibiotics, then there are more resistant bugs than there are grains of sand going onto UK fields each year.

So, given that it might be a problem, what are the supermarkets doing about it? To date, there are only three supermarkets publishing data on the use of antibiotics in their supply chain; Marks and Spencer, Waitrose and Asda, all seem to have less than the sector average which means someone is using more than average. With the exception of Lidl, all of the supermarkets publish their policy online; many contain the same aims. Most are targeting a reduction in the amount used in their supply chain, although some are only just starting to monitor and establish their baselines. All of them say that they will only allow the use of antibiotics under veterinary supervision. But some of the pledges are not entirely clear; for example, Aldi state on their website that they don’t support the use of antibiotics as prophylactics (used to treat an animal to prevent disease e.g. if others in the herd are ill), but then in their policy they state that prophylaxis is only permitted under veterinary supervision. Sainsbury’s have something similar on their website.

But, most concerning to me is the stand on CIAs – Critically Important Antibiotics – antibiotics important to human health. Only M&S states that they prohibit the use of these, including Colistin, the last resort antibiotic for humans. All of the other supermarkets mention them, but they only go so far as to state that they can only be used as a last resort. Whilst these antibiotics only make up around 1% of the total use in animals, M&S seem to be saying that they don’t need to be used at all. With the first bacon labelled as being raised without antibiotics hitting supermarket shelves², perhaps change is on the way?

https://www.farmantibiotics.org/science-facts/antibiotic-infographs/human-vs-animal-antibiotic-use/
https://farming.co.uk/news/antibiotic-free-meat-goes-on-sale-in-uk

The Impending Antibiotic Crisis – Who’s to blame and what can we do about it Part 1

In 2009 The Lancet said that Climate Change was the biggest threat to human health of the 21^st Century. I would say that Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is close behind. Following the description of AMR as a catastrophic threat by the Chief Medical Officer in 2011 there seems to have been more of a focus from governments on the issue. Indeed, during antibiotic awareness week last year there were even radio adverts with catchy ditties. The UK government published its five year AMR strategy in 2013, interestingly they are about to need a new one!

The main issue is that bacteria and other microscopic organisms can evolve to have resistance to our currently used antimicrobials and have done since shortly after the widespread use of penicillin. We are also not currently bringing any new drugs to market, possibly because there’s not a lot of profit to be had in it. We depend on antimicrobials for both human and animal health. Without antimicrobials there will be no safe surgery, no chemotherapy and no caesarian sections. We will be back at the point where there is the potential to cut yourself in the garden or even bite the inside of your own mouth and a few days later have died from the infection. Despite this there is not even much funding for the research into new antimicrobials. In the business as usual scenario it is estimated that by 2050 more people will die worldwide from antimicrobial resistant infections than from cancer; including 390,000 in Europe.

Most bacteria in a colony are killed by the antibiotics, but some with a resistance remain. These no longer have to compete with the other bugs so can multiply more rapidly and the population grows, AMR develops. For a brilliant depiction of this, see the excellent MIT video. Antimicrobials can get into the environment during production, during use and in the waste. Therefore, there are many areas that need action and there doesn’t seem to be agreement on how big each of the problems is and how to tackle them.

The government, in its action plan, has recommended better stewardship of the antimicrobials we currently have. Public Health England have recently said that one in five GP antibiotic prescriptions is inappropriate But, within the EU, the number of antibiotics prescribed varies massively. The standard measure is the Defined Daily Dose (DDD) per thousand of the population per day. In the UK we currently stand at a level of 22.84 (as of the last available figures published for 2015). This means that on average each of us in the UK gets 4 days of antibiotic treatment each year. However, the DDD for the Netherlands is 11.7 – half that of the UK. Do those living there get sick less often? Do they have better hygiene or vaccination standards which means that people don’t have the bugs in the first place and therefore don’t need the antibiotics? Or does this mean that rather than 20% of antibiotics being unnecessary we are closer to 50%? For the record France and Belgium have DDDs of over 30.

The UK government aims to cut innapropirate prescriptions by 50% by 2020 (that is inappropriate prescriptions, not antibiotic use), but will this be enough to make a difference, will the reduction in the level of antibiotics in the system reduce the probability of resistance in human pathogens ? It is not clear that these levels will be enough, and the 2% reduction in all prescriptions for antibiotics that was achieved from 2013-2015 is certainly not likely to make any impact.

Part of the issue of incorrect prescription comes back to the fact that in many cases antibiotics are prescribed for things that are not bacterial infections – flu (proper flu, manflu and diva flu) being a case in point, but other illnesses do not always have an obvious cause and look like an infection. Also, when a patient is prescribed an antibiotic which doesn’t cure the infection, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t worked, the non-resistant bugs will have been killed, but a different antibiotic is needed to kill these double-hard b******s, therefore promoting further resistance.

There is debate about whether hospitals are a major source of antimicrobial resistance, after all they use a lot of antimicrobials every day. In fact in one conference with four speakers, one didn’t mention it, one said that the bugs were so diluted and disperse when they entered the waste water treatment plant (WWTP) that it wasn’t a problem, another said that there was resistance found in waste water treatment plants to antibiotics that are only used in hospitals, and another pointed to a far bigger problem, but one that the health sector could again help deal with. Which one is right?

The issue with the antibiotics from hospital is not to do with the way they dispose of them – all waste medicines are incinerated, but it is to do with poo – we don’t metabolise all of the antibiotic, so much is flushed away. The problem with hospitals is therefore perhaps not how much they use (only about 10% of that DDD) but what they use. As they use some of the last resort antibiotics then resistance to these has a higher probability of occurring in the waste water from hospitals.

Most of the antibiotics in use come from the community and again get flushed to the WWTP. So, again is this a problem? Unfortunately yes. Unlike us mammals who can only pass our genes between the same species, bacteria can pass genes between different species (known as horizontal transfer). Therefore different bugs can pass on different characteristics, such as resistance to drugs, to completely unrelated species – including potential human pathogens such as E Coli. The WWTP can act as a big mixing vessel and unfortunately they are mainly set up to take solids out of the water and some chemicals, not bacteria. In fact, they rely on bacteria to do some of the work of cleaning up the water – will the antibacterials in the water affect these bugs?

Once the water has been cleaned up, the sludge is then put onto the fields, along with anything living in it – will it then end up back in the food chain?

However, one of the biggest causes of antimicrobial resistance in the environment is from the production of the drugs themselves. Most of these are manufactured in China and India where the outflows into the local rivers are not monitored or regulated. Studies have found levels in some waste water that were as high as would be found in patients being treated with the antibiotics. With the movement of people and food round the world in a matter of hours, it takes little time for antimicrobial resistant genes formed from these effluents to find their way to major centres of population.

In the UK government strategy on AMR, there is little mention of the role of the pharmaceutical industry’s impact on the environment, most of the emphasis is on finding new drugs:

“Industry has a corporate and social responsibility to contribute to work to tackle AMR by finding ways of extending the life of antibiotics, making the supply of effective antibiotics sustainable, facilitating society in being better custodians of these valuable resources and using them optimally both now and the future. “

Most pharma companies do not disclose how much they or their third party manufacturers discharge. And, here’s where the Health Sector comes in. Whilst it continues to reward companies for bringing in cheaper alternatives, rather than for having a sustainable supply chain, there is little incentive for companies to clean up their act. In Denmark and Norway this is changing with hospitals creating incentives for pharma companies to improve pollution control during their procurement of drugs. It is time the UK government and NHS followed their lead.

Supermarket Pledge

Following on from Blue Planet 2 Teresa May set out her vision for plastic free aisles in supermarkets. Judging by the amount of tweeting about the subject, as well as the general opinion (see last week’s post) that suppliers have a responsibility to reduce packaging, it would seem that this is a vision shared by a large percentage of the population. So it is interesting to note that there is now such a thing – the first plastic free supermarket aisle has been introduced – unfortunately in the Netherlands, but did Ms May specify that it was in British supermarkets that she wanted to see the plastic free move?

There then followed a flurry of announcements from supermarkets pledging various things over the space of a month as well as pointing out how much they had reduced their packaging since whenever. All very laudable, but the thing most noticeable is that with the exception of Iceland, none of them have committed to removing plastic packaging from any of their own brand products, and none of them have pledged to put pressure onto their supply chain to change from plastic.

Supermarkets (and they are not the only purveyors of plastic) will claim that plastic packaging can reduce food waste by extending the life of food (and of course food is not the only thing wrapped in plastic). For example on M&S’ website they claim that ‘1gm piece of film can double the life of a cucumber, apples and bananas ‘ But Apples already have a long storage life and bananas are shipped around the world in perfect health and I don’t often see lots of loose bananas going off in Waitrose. I would argue that, judging by the mushrooms being sold off sweating under film in their plastic punnets that their shelf life is not enhanced (I rarely see loose mushrooms going off mainly because they sell out very quickly or do they stock too few?). Likewise, potatoes and bread seem to sweat and go off more quickly in plastic. In some products, e.g. Cheese I can taste the plastic on the slices from the outside of the block – possibly due to chemicals leaching from the film into the fats? More on that in another post.

But this is what they say, and not necessarily what they do – the advent of social media has resulted in the outing of various poor examples of packaging – for example the Metro headline ‘Marks & Spencer is being slammed by shoppers and scientists for selling apples in a plastic tube to fit in car cup holders.’ and from Sky News ‘Lidl has come under fire for selling peeled onions wrapped in “unnecessary” plastic packaging. ‘.

The majority of the supermarkets have reduced their packaging, or at least the weight of their packaging – they have made thinner films or thinner card, or, like Asda have switched from glass to plastic bottles for their vinegar. Not necessarily a move in the right direction. There are some good moves such as removing the plastic lining in boxes of tissues and polystyrene boards in pizza boxes (which makes sense from a health perspective as well).

So, the majority of the pledges include a reduction in packaging (that will be packaging weight, not necessarily the items in plastic), making their own brand packaging widely recyclable, reusable or compostable by some time in the mid-2020s, supporting Deposit Return Schemes and phasing out single use plastic bags (now that the government has done the hard bit and made them charge for them). To be fair Lidl has been charging for years and has already removed them from their stores. I don’t see a backlash from consumers yet? Cotton buds and drinking straws get a mention, as do the almost impossible to recycle black plastic trays – but, I am not sure why the supermarkets find these so difficult to get rid of – I can only assume it is aesthetics rather than necessity – especially for things like baby sweetcorn!

The widely recyclable is also open to interpretation. The supermarkets have the same frustration as I do – try telling people what they can and can’t recycle at work when even in the same county there are different collections. But, there are things that all councils will collect – such as plastic bottles, and yet only 58% are recycled – the rest are landfilled, littered or incinerated. So, is the widely recyclable the answer, rather than elimination? Statistics would suggest not. One of the big things they can do (and some are looking at this) is to make their packaging from one plastic only which does increase both its value and its recyclability. I’d like to see more of a commitment to this too.

But, by talking about the difficulty and inconsistency in recycling, they are passing the buck. In a recent survey on Moneysavingexpert.com for over half of the examples they bought, the cost of buying fruit and veg without packaging was higher than with packaging. And, that is assuming that you can actually buy fruit and vegetables not wrapped in plastic (not always the case).

So, good for Iceland (although most of its sales are prepackaged food which in itself is an issue) and shame on the rest of the supermarkets. Although they are all pledging to increase the recyclability of their packaging, or to reduce the packaging (and, with about 1 million tonnes of plastic being generated by the supermarkets they have a lot of work to do), none seem to be giving the consumer the option of going completely plastic free, even for fresh food. As with most environmental improvements, perhaps a change in the law is required – if Ms May really does want a plastic free aisle, she might have to legislate for it, just as they finally did with the single use plastic bags.

Things you can do to reduce your plastic:

Buy fruit and veg at the market – often this is cheaper (I have started doing this as Waitrose seem to have fewer and fewer items not in plastic)
Switch to glass bottles from the milkman (but this is more expensive and doesn’t work for everyone)
Take your own bags to the supermarket for fruit and veg
Leave the plastic wrapping at the supermarket – let them pay for it rather than the cash strapped councils
Don’t buy bottled water – buy a reusable bottle instead
Buy in glass rather than plastic e.g. Vinegar