It is up to central government to ensure that local government must follow environmentally sound practices in everything it does by withholding grants and support otherwise. This too requires legislation, as commerce and industry geared to profit will fear competition unless all manufacturers and importers have to comply with a set standard. In manufacturing in general over the last three decades almost every product previously made of wood, metal, glass and ceramic have, to an extent been replaced by plasticвЂ¦ often making those products inferior and quicker to fail. Not only does such plastic end up in land-fill but it is often not fit for purpose anyway. We could also legislate to reduce all plastic use in, for example, vehicles. We can also legislate to make plastic the responsibility of the manufacturerвЂ¦ if they want to use it then they must collect it too! After 2021 we can insist that ALL packaging contains at least 50% recycled material. Right now, we can pass a law that by the end of 2021 ALL packaging MUST be re-cyclable, including anything in the postal system. There are clear steps we can take right now that would get us a long way down the road we need to travel. Nothing will change, even in the face of clear public preference, until and unless change is enshrined in law. The billions of pounds, dollars and euros squandered on advertising, a whole industry dedicated to deception, is a waste of human and material resources. Retailers will not remove throw-away plastic or extra packaging in general because they are part and parcel of their marketing strategies. You can get at least three levels of pricing for this in any supermarket but despite the fact that a pure product of identical quality simply cannot be better or worse most people buy branded boxes instead of generic bags. Take healthy porridge oats вЂ“ that is rolled oats with nothing added or taken away. It seems to me to be demonstrably obvious if you visit the вЂeverydayвЂ™ low-cost supermarket brandsвЂ¦almost all those products have less packaging and that may well be where the cost savings are made. The average person has swallowed whole the nonsense that the higher the price the better the quality despite many decades of вЂWhichвЂ™ magazine (and televised blind tastings) demonstrating that the opposite is often true. I am told that a contestant in a well-known jungle programme was ridiculed for paying six quid for a haircutвЂ¦because there is no way you could get a quality job that cheapвЂ¦and that very same attitude informs much of our buying patterns.

In many rural areas the cost to the planet in transport to such outlets outweighs the savings and the supermarkets that deliver still package everything and at least one will ONLY deliver in disposable plastic bags! Yes, there are a couple of cut-price stores offering fresh veg with no plastic, but even those do not offer the old-fashioned brown-paper bag to put it in.

If you are on an average wage, benefits or pensions you cannot afford to shop in artisan food markets or those few retailers who sell loose veg. Most of us do not have a choice of eating healthily at a price we can afford, nor eating for the planetвЂ™s health by avoiding packaging. Lip service changes nothing.ДЁ7% of us rail against single-use plastic and yet are faced with no choice when we go to the supermarket. IвЂ™d bet too that their publicly-owned buildings are not best insulated, equipped with solar panels nor sporting roof gardens and bee-hives. I bet there are hundreds of local councils who have passed these resolutions but have not banned pesticide use even on their own properties. Fine words, resolutions endorsing that we are in climate crisis and вЂcommitmentsвЂ™ to plant billions of trees might give us all hope or they might just be political hot air adding to global warming!

Now IвЂ™m as keen as the next man on tree planting, re-wilding and conservationвЂ¦ but the trouble is the next man needs support and direction currently not forthcoming from government at any level. He has also written for several disability publications.ДЇor our wildlife to survive we must confront climate change, adopt lifestyles that conserve and change our eating, buying, transport and consumer habits radically.

Since the late 1990s he has had articles published in a variety of birding magazines in the UK and USA, and has written eight books. Author and campaigner Bo Beolens has had a life-long interest in the natural world.

Law of the jungle guests