A ban on ‘soya sauce fish’? It’s not such a bad idea

AT DIFFERENT ends of the planet, the past week has seen separate examples of how we are failing to get to grips with our plastics problem.

In Geneva, attempts to hammer out a United Nations deal to end plastic pollution fell apart for the second time in nine months, after the US joined a bloc dominated by oil exporters in refusing to countenance a cap on production or regulation of potentially toxic additives. That’s a sign of how global environmental negotiations are increasingly getting bogged down in a procedural morass.

In Adelaide, the government of the state of South Australia is days away from a ban on “soya sauce fish”: those cute little containers handed out by Japanese takeaway restaurants in much of the world to season your sushi. That is action against plastics, to be sure – but as we have seen in the case of disposable shopping bags, such moves often fail, or are even counterproductive.