Britons throw away ≈ 100bn pieces of plastic packaging a year: Survey
4 Min Read
Researchers in Britain's biggest survey of household plastic waste urged immediate action to tackle what they say are "jaw-dropping" findings.
-
DeawSS/Shutterstock.com
A Greenpeace survey showed that nearly 100bn pieces of plastic packaging are thrown away by UK households per year.
Only 12% of the single-use packaging used by households is recycled, as per the results of one of the biggest voluntary researches related to plastic waste.
Households counted their plastic waste for one week in May, as per the request of Greenpeace. Almost 250,000 individuals out of nearly 100,000 households participated and gave their results to Greenpeace and fellow NGO Everyday Plastic.
83% of plastic waste came from food and drink packaging, with the largest proportion being fruit and vegetable packaging.
There are no official figures on the number of plastic items being thrown away, so the research, known as the Big Plastic Count, is seen as giving an important insight into the scale of single-use plastic packaging waste.
It found that across the UK, 97,948 households counted 6,437,813 pieces of plastic packaging waste. On average, each house got rid of 66 pieces of plastic packaging in a week, which is almost 3,432 pieces over a year.
Read more: 8 Million Tons of Pandemic Plastic Waste
Researchers assumed that the findings are typical of every household in the UK and said it could be reasonably estimated that they throw away 1.85bn pieces of plastic packaging every week, which amounts to 96.6bn pieces every year in the UK alone.
A 2019-study found that the rapid increase of single-use plastic around the world is growing climate impacts and hastening the need to urgently stop it. A research by the Center for International Environmental Law found that almost all plastic is made from fossil fuels, and from its production to the refining and the way it is managed as a waste product, plastic leads to greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its lifecycle.
A plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK, Chris Thorne, considered the amount of plastic waste as "jaw-breaking" and commented that it "should give ministers pause for thought."
“Just 12% of all this plastic is likely to end up being recycled in the UK, despite the public’s alarm about the issue and efforts to recycle. The rest becomes pollution, whether through landfilling, incineration or export to countries all around the world, gradually contaminating everything – our water, our food, even the air we breathe.”
A quarter of a million people had been galvanized to participate in what was a great piece of citizen science, according to Daniel Webb, the founder of Everyday Plastic.
“[It] has allowed us to build a unique picture of the plastic problem and gather never-before-seen data … These new figures lay bare the responsibility of the government, big brands, and supermarkets to tackle this crisis, and they must rise to the challenge right now – there is no time to waste.”
The NGOs are urging the government to put targets that legally almost completely eliminate single-use plastic, starting with a target that cuts single-use plastic by half before 2025.
The government has for years promised such a plan, and environment secretary Michael Gove first put it forward in 2018. However, it has been delayed by consultations and apparent inertia in government.
“Pretending we can sort this with recycling is just industry greenwash,” said Thorne. “We’re creating a hundred billion bits of waste plastic a year, and recycling is hardly making a dent. What else do the government need to know before they act?”
“We want to introduce extended producer responsibility (EPR), a deposit return scheme (DRS) and consistent collections in England as soon as is practical and have sought feedback on proposed timelines through consultation. We have published the government response to the packaging EPR consultation in March, and will publish our response to the DRS and consistency consultations shortly,” a spokesperson for the government said.
