Editorial: Shop 'til we drop?

When you head out to the shops this week, invest in some sustainable containers and start making a difference. Photo / Peter McIntosh

Chances are most of us will end up at the mall sometime over the next two weeks, particularly with school holidays upon us.

Shopping, once that functional chore, has evolved into a popular pastime.

But as we report today, the experience is changing, with the rise of the ethical shopper.

Driven by a younger generation, the movement tries to lessen the impact of our waste on the environment.

Proponents take their own cutlery to restaurants, cart around reusable coffee cups and take their own Tupperware for takeaway sushi.

For some older readers, there's probably a sense of back to the future, particularly when it comes to filling your own jar with bulk foods at the supermarket.

For others, it all might seem a bit faddish and contrary to the shift towards convenience of past decades.

It's also easy to be sceptical when so many celebrities jump on the bandwagon.

But the numbers in today's story make for stark reading.

More than 90 per cent of plastic is not recycled and 8.3 billion metric tonnes has appeared since mass production began 60 years ago.

The impact on our oceans and the life they sustain is profound (we've all seen the heartbreaking images of turtles eating plastic bags), but it is an impact we are only just beginning to understand. New research has drawn links between high sand temperatures caused by plastic microbeads and the imbalance in the gender of newborn turtles.

And there is the uncomfortable facts of what we do with this waste. New Zealand, like many other countries, dumps huge amounts in developing countries which cannot afford to say no to the money they can charge for being a landfill.

The wheels of government are starting to turn. While that is good news, why wait? As consumers, we are the solution - that is the way of a demand/supply economy. So when you head out to the shops this week, invest in some sustainable containers and start making a difference.