Public Domain MaxPixel — An elderly woman harvests apples from a tree The simplest, most effective solutions to the plastic pollution problem may lie in the past. How are we going to solve the plastic pollution problem? This has become a hot topic in recent years as studies and photographs depict the awful extent to which plastic has saturated our planet. We need solutions, we tell ourselves, better ways of doing things and designing products that don’t generate so much waste. As a result, innovation is flourishing. Pressure is mounting on companies to come up with greener forms of food packaging, and on cities to improve their recycling infrastructure. Entrepreneurs are implementing drastic measures to collect the waste circulating in the oceans and turn it into new consumer products. Inventors are coming up with ways to catch plastic microfibres in the washing machine. Heck, someone even invented edible water balls. At first glance, the future looks high-tech and cutting-edge. There’s a sense that we need to move beyond single-use plastics to solutions that only science can give us. But what if we’re heading in the wrong direction? What if the most straightforward answers to our problem lie in the […]
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