A major supermarket is switching to clear milk bottle lids to enhance recycling efforts, but wildlife conservation groups say it will save the iconic bowerbird from tragic deaths.
The satin bowerbird, commonly found along Australia’s east coast, is known for building elaborate courting areas adorned with various striking, largely blue, items.
The birds used to find rare blue flowers, but now it’s mainly about collecting plastic blue bottle lids and rings due to all the litter in the landscape.
When they grab the rings, they often flip it backward over their heads and get stuck, leading to death from starvation and thirst.
Wildlife rescue groups WIRES and BirdLife Australia praised Woolworths for switching to clear tops and rings on milk bottles and urged other grocery chains and milk brands to do the same.
WIRES spokesman John Grant said pictures of bowerbirds with these items flipped over their necks are quite distressing.
“The bird pick them up and they immediately flip backwards and get stuck between their beak and their neck, and it can’t flip it back again,” he said.
It comes after a photo of a dead bowerbird, likely a young male, sparked outrage online with speculation that a plastic ring from a milk bottle caused its death.
A New South Wales man discovered the native animal in his backyard with the plastic ring stuck in its mouth and around its head, indicating the bird was likely searching for blue objects to return to its area but got entangled.
Many noted that it occurs often.
BirdLife Australia commended Woolworths for spearheading the effort to protect the bird.
“The satin bowerbird is the one that’s totally obsessed with blue. This will be great news for the welfare of bowerbirds, and potentially other birds too,” BirdLife spokesman Sean Dooley said.
He recommends consumers cut the clear rings so that if they accidentally end up in the environment, they don’t pose a deadly risk to wildlife.
Woolworths is making the change to improve recycling because coloured plastic limits reuse options.
Clear plastic lids can be recycled into clear or coloured plastic, while coloured plastic can only be recycled into dark plastic.
Woolworths anticipates the change will mean around 290,000 kilograms of plastic from millions of milk bottles sold nationwide will be recycled more efficiently each year, including those from fresh milk partner Fonterra’s Cobden site in Victoria.
Fonterra Manager Jenny Phillips stated that transitioning from five different coloured lids to a single clear lid also minimises waste during production changes at their Cobden site in Victoria.
Call for Supermarkets to Unite in Wildlife Protection
WWF-Australia noted minor alterations, like changing colour and composition, aided wildlife by lessening plastic pollution, which also harms marine species like seabirds, turtles, coral, and other marine life.However, WWF-Australia’s ocean policy manager, Kate Noble, urged supermarkets to do more together to limit harm to animals.
“In Australia, we’re not very good at what’s called pre-competitive collaboration, where companies work together to solve design problems that can lead to waste and pollution,” she said, noting the world is now producing double the amount of plastic compared to two decades ago, with most of it either buried, burned, or becoming plastic pollution.
“Fixing this crisis starts with design. Poor design is responsible for the vast majority of waste, including single-use products and products that can’t easily be repaired or recycled,” she told the Epoch Times.
She said it’s about simplifying the types of plastic put into the system.
“Ultimately, as the country with one of the highest plastic waste footprints in the world, Australia needs to clean up its act and significantly reduce the amount of plastic we consume and discard. But improving product design to reduce waste is part of that process,” she said.
