A ban on 'soya sauce fish' doesn't look like a bad idea

Plastics permeate our day-to-day lives, and hard choices must be taken to seriously restrict them.

- David Fickling

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's action against plastics, to be sure — but as we've seen in the case of disposable shopping bags, such moves often fail or are even counterproductive. Five years ago, a law progressively banning most types of single-use plastics, recent data indicates it is falling well short of its targets. Is a ban on disposable umami dispensers really going to make a difference?

Well, maybe. You will save a huge amount of polymers just by handing out soya sauce in flexible sachets rather than squeezy containers.