Plastic is so over. So why do some fashion houses still treat it as cool?

At the risk of sounding naively optimistic, there have been days when it’s felt like the enthusiasm to push back on avoidable plastic waste is unquenchable. There are moments when it seems possible that we can ward off the day when there are more bits of plastic in the sea than fish – currently slated for 2050 unless we change our ways. Certainly there’s unprecedented interest in uncoupling our lives from plastic.

Since the start of the year, I’ve been reporting non-stop on our changing attitudes. I’ve been shuttling between plastic-free aisles and zero-waste shops, assessing supermarket shelves and going through people’s bins. I’m now such a fixture at the nation’s MRFs (materials recovery facility, pronounced “murf”), I’ve been issued with a business card featuring a picture of a rat. This – it was cheerily explained to me – I should hand to my GP in the case of unexplained illness.

Obviously we are aeons away from a solution (or even a strategy) in the UK to correct the fact that we’ve been sending off 70% of our plastic waste for mysterious reprocessing overseas for years. Now that China has shut its doors to most of this waste, our plastic addiction and its effects, particularly on the marine environment, have been thrown into sharp relief. Everywhere we’re looking for possible solutions. This week we’ve had an event at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre on packaging initiatives (OK, probably one for the enthusiast) and the opening of a zero-packaging aisle in a Dutch supermarket. Still much to discuss; but overall we are in the middle of an epic awakening.

Source: theguardian