BY AUGUST 1, humans had used up all the natural resources that the earth can naturally produce in a year.

From now on we are using resources that cannot be replaced naturally. We are depleting our resources far too fast.

If we don’t stop, future generations will have major problems. This is one environmental issue we have, another is how the waste we generate is polluting our land and oceans, particularly our waste plastic.

The recent news that up to two thirds of the plastic we try to recycle ends up in landfill or being burned is very bad news.

I would hope that most people try to recycle as much as possible, but if people think there is no point we could end up making things worse not better.

One of the earliest man-made plastics produced in 1856 was made by a chemist called Alexander Parkes, he called his invention Parkesine.

Chemically it was a nitro-cellulose. Cellulose is found naturally in plant cells and when treated with nitric acid it forms nitro-cellulose, a substance that can be moulded.

Parkes won a medal at the great exhibition in 1862 for his discovery, but it had limited use. The world’s first fully synthetic plastic was Bakelite, invented in New York in 1907 by Leo Baekeland, a Belgian-born American chemist. Nearly all the main plastics we use and come across today are made from petrochemicals.

The very properties of plastic that make it useful also make it an environmental menace. It does not degrade easily. One problem is the number of different plastics we use. There are six main types of plastic, from PVC (poly vinyl chloride) to polystyrene. Not all recycling centres can recycle all types of plastic.

Add to this the inability of sorting machines to detect the common black plastic trays used in many microwave meals and we have a wholesome mess.

Plastics can be helpful even when we think that they are unnecessary. For example, why does a cucumber need a plastic outer wrap? Can’t we just buy our cucumbers without a plastic covering?

That must be better for the environment, surely? In some ways yes, but the plastic helps to extend the shelf life of a cucumber. Remove the plastic and food waste increases as the cucumbers begin to rot much faster. Rotting vegetation produces methane and that can also add to our climate change woes.

I find it very hard to follow all the arguments related to recycling and the harm it does our environment if we don’t recycle. The problem is that it’s a very complex thing to try and work out if the methane generated by increased waste from rotting food is greater or less than the environmental harm caused by plastic wrapping if it enters landfill or is incinerated. Add to that the energy cost of making the plastics, versus making paper, versus making biodegradable bags and no matter who you are, it soon becomes impossible to know what the right thing is to do.

Then we have the problem of what we can recycle and what we can’t. It varies from area to area, region by region. In some areas some plastics are separated for recycling, but in other places the same plastics cannot be recycled.

I do know that we must cut plastic use as much as possible. I want my food to have a good shelf life, but I also have no problem with more frequent buying of fruit and vegetables – but here we hit another snag.

Where do all our foodstuffs come from? We want the same availability for all our vegetables and fruits all year round. As a child I recall certain fruits and vegetables were seasonal. The anticipation of the strawberry season was palpable. Now we have strawberries all year long.

As a nation are we willing to pay more for less, but be content that we are saving fuel, energy costs and causing less environmental damage? Given our low wage growth and the ever-present spectre of “austerity” that’s a hard sell, for anyone. Nobody wants to pay more for the basics in life.

Asking individuals to change, to recycle when there’s no guarantee that the recycling will happen, won’t work. We must tackle the problem at source. That means manufacturers must be incentivised to make major changes, reduce plastic and invest in research to find better, more environmentally friendly ways of wrapping and transporting food. For the consumer, it’s all about ease. The easier it is for us to recycle the more likely we are to do it. Nationally we don’t have any joined up thinking on recycling. It’s about time we did.