After a week of voting and talking about our Committee’s Choice Word of the Year 2018, Me Too, you have chosen a winner for our People’s Choice. It was a tough call, but word you have chosen to best represent 2018 is…
single-use
The votes this year were incredibly close, much closer than in previous years, with single-use winning by only a handful of votes ahead of Me Too. Both of these terms were clearly needed and have been a significant part of our discourse over the past year, which is reflected in the public vote.
Single-use stands out as a much needed coinage which refers to the environmental impacts of an increasingly consumer-driven society. The increasing public awareness of these impacts, and interest in countering them through everyday actions, makes this a well-deserved People’s Choice winner. From our Committee:
The Committee felt that single-use has taken off partly because it refers to the cause of an environmental crisis that individuals have the power to directly counter in our everyday lives, unlike the death of the Great Barrier Reef, for example. In 2018 in Australia, we have had the big supermarkets getting rid of single-use plastic bags, and the ABC’s War on Waste has ensured we feel a level of guilt if we don’t present our barista with a keep cup.
This was a close count, with many words proving to be very popular with voters. Scraping in at a very close second was our Committee’s Choice of Me Too. This was followed again by hygge and vertical farming. You can find out more about our Word of the Year here.
