A ban or taxing the problem of single use plastics sounds like a brilliant opportunity to move the UK away from it's dependency away from petrol based plastics but sadly the devil is in the detail (spoiler alert - it's not looking good).
So what is the plastic tax ?
The plastic tax was originally created to tax out of existence petrol based single use plastics, but the final tax was morphed into a tax that taxes all businesses that won't add 30% recycled plastic to their products, yes really you have to add plastics.
We obviously won't and can't as our products are designed to replace single use plastics with a sustainable and plant based alternative, so we get taxed for supplying the solution and the problem materials just get's recycled until it can't be recycled.
But isn't recycling plastic a good thing ?
Recycling is a much better way of dealing with a problem material than sending it to landfill but it does mean we are just recycling a problem.
The simple solution is to just change the material, why use a material that requires shipping from different parts of the world and then when it has fulfilled it's usage has no positive outcome for the environment it is disposed of in.
The bit that the plastic industry doesn't want you to be aware of thing ( we are telling you a well know secret here) plastics can only be recycled a limited number of times before they are too structurally weak to be recycled, so it will come as no surprise to anyone that we know in our very core that making these single use items from plants has huge environmental benefits when the other option is a huge environmental problem.
So the UK Government haven't thought it through but surely the devolved Governments are looking at the bigger picture ?
Well everyone is singing off very different hymn sheets and sadly the devolved Governments are obsessed at the problem that they can't see the solution.
What's going on around the UK ?
The Welsh Government has recently announced a draft bill to ban single use plastics, which has a huge chasm in details of what this means, so if you can work out whether plant based materials are included, please get in touch as we have no idea.
https://gov.wales/single-use-plastics-be-banned-wales
The Scottish Government have banned single use but what this means at this point is very unclear.
https://www.gov.scot/news/single-use-plastics-ban/
The Northern Irish Government are at the consultation phase, possibly sanity may win the day but the signs aren't good.
So is there an alternative to a complete ban?
Yes many nations , Canada, Ireland, The Netherland, New Zealand and Ireland have all created programs and laws to encourage the move to a more sustainable plant based option.
So what does this mean for The Pure Option ?
It has had a huge effect on what we do and why we do it, we had a huge number of new plant based products in development but sadly we have had to put these on hold as the plastic tax has really added to the cost of the materials our products are made of , it's made a un-even playing field even more uneven.
This means we are really looking at whether the UK and Wales are the right place for us to be based, we love the UK and we love being based in Wales but we are questioning the long term, we don't want to leave the UK but this is looking more and more likely, although I will saying moving to Canada does have it's benefits (minus the winters) , we do miss the amazing pizza.
What can you do about it ?
We hope you care as much as we do and we appreciate that you can sometimes feel powerless but they work for us and we just don't think they are looking at the big picture, so if you want the UK to move in a environmentally positive route, get in touch with the Governments and tell them.
Northern Ireland
