A compostable wrapper for your BAA Journal

2018 November 22

Hazel McGee

All being well, members who receive their Journal through the post should have noticed something rather different about this issue.

Following a suggestion by one of our members, the printers will now distribute your Journals in a mailing wrapper that is made of an entirely compostable material – we are advised that being starch-based, no plastic is used in its manufacture. So unlike the previous single-use plastic wrappers, you can dispose of these in your compost heap, your garden waste bin, or in your kitchen food-waste bin. And even if none of these are available and the wrappers have to end up in general waste, they will fully rot away with time.

Few members will disagree with this approach, despite the small additional cost to our funds. However, is it really worth the effort? What difference can a small mailing such as ours make to the horrendous worldwide problem of plastic waste with which we are all so familiar?

Not so much in itself. But our printers didn’t decide to do this on their own – they were prompted by myself and by the editors of other journals which they print, and we in turn were prompted by a member who had seen a similar wrapper used elsewhere. If every BAA member reading this sends a quick e-mail message to two or three of the other publications which come through their door shrouded in plastic every week or every month, a small change could quickly become a torrent, and the third planet from the Sun will be the better for it.

Hazel McGee, Editor, 1994-2018