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Parent Category: Environment

Reduce

The accepted best practice for the environment starts with “reduce” – emphasising the importance of reducing the impacts and resources we use. This can be achieved by selecting products which, through the material they use, have a significantly reduced impact compared with other materials.

Plastic is an excellent way of reducing resources. Most plastics start by using up by-products of the oil refining process which might otherwise be flared off or wasted. At the next stage of manufacture, plastic products need less energy to create because they are easily moulded or formed into useful products and components. And once a plastic product is made it will usually be much lighter to transport than other materials – again saving resources.

In all these ways, we can show that where plastic is used in preference to other materials it saves more resources than it uses. Although plastics are also very durable, most can easily be recycled into other useful products at the end of their initial life.