The west’s throwaway culture has spread waste worldwide | Waste packaging

Packaging - much of it single-use food wrapping - has created a rubbish problem that now pollutes every corner of the world. Manufacturers got us into this mess, but it's up to us to dig ourselves out - and here's how

In 2003, I was told by a restaurant owner on a Thai island that local fishermen used to wrap their lunch in banana leaves, which they would then casually toss overboard when done. That was OK, because the leaves decayed and the fish ate the scraps. But in the past decade, he said, while plastic wrap had rapidly replaced banana leaves, old habits had died hard - and that was why the beach was fringed with a crust of plastic. Beyond the merely unsightly, this plastic congregates in continent-scale garbage gyres in our oceans, being eaten by plankton, then fish; then quite possibly it'll reach your plate ...

This is a worldwide problem - we can't point the finger at Thai fishermen. The west started this. The developing world justifiably yearns for its living standards and, with it, its unsustainable convenience culture.