Britons throw away almost 100 billion plastic containers a year

This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the climatic table collaboration.

UK households throw away almost 100 billion plastic packaging a year, according to a survey by Green Peace.

Results from one of the largest voluntary research projects on the scale of plastic waste show that only 12% of single-use packaging used in households is sent for recycling.

Greenpeace asked households to count their plastic waste for a week in May. Almost 250,000 people from almost 100,000 households participated and sent their results to Greenpeace and the NGO Everyday Plastic.

By far the largest proportion of plastic waste came from food and drink packaging (83 percent), with the most common item being fruit and vegetable packaging.

While the UK government publishes data on the weight of plastic waste collected from households, there are no official figures on how much plastic items are thrown away. The research, known as the Big Plastic Count, is therefore seen as providing significant insight into the scale of single-use plastic packaging waste.

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The Big Plastic Count found that 97,948 households across the UK counted 6,437,813 pieces of plastic packaging waste. On average, each household threw 66 pieces of plastic packaging in one week, which equates to an estimated 3,432 pieces when applied for one year.

Assuming the weekly average is typical of all UK households, the researchers said it could be reasonably estimated that households throw away 1.85bn plastic packaging a week, which is equivalent to 96.6bn pieces a year in the UK alone. the United Kingdom.

A benchmark study in 2019 found that the proliferation of single-use plastic around the world is accelerating the climate emergency and must be stopped urgently. Nearly all plastic is made from fossil fuels, research from the Center for International Environmental Law has found, and plastic contributes to greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its life cycle, from production to refining and disposal. how it is managed as waste. product.

“This is a staggering amount of plastic waste and it should give ministers pause,” said Chris Thorne, a plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK.

“Only 12 per cent of all this plastic is likely to end up being recycled in the UK, despite public alarm about the problem and efforts to recycle. The rest becomes pollution, either through landfills, incineration, or export to countries around the world, gradually contaminating everything: our water, our food, even the air we breathe.”

daniel webb, founder of Everyday Plastic, said that a quarter of a million people had been encouraged to participate in what was an incredible piece of citizen science. He said: “[It] it has allowed us to build a unique picture of the plastic problem and collect data never seen before… These new figures highlight the responsibility of the government, big brands and supermarkets to face this crisis, and they must rise to the challenge right now. – There is no time to lose.”

NGOs are calling on the government to set legally binding targets to almost completely eliminate single-use plastic, starting with a target of a 50 percent reduction in single-use plastic by 2025. They want an export ban of plastic waste by 2025, initially. starting with an immediate ban on all exports to non-OECD countries and mixed plastic waste to OECD member countries. They also call for the immediate creation of a deposit return system.

The government has promised such a plan for years, with Michael Gove as environment secretary, first introducing it in 2018. But it has been delayed by consultations and apparent inertia in the government.

“Pretending that we can solve this with recycling is just greenwashing the industry,” Thorne said. “We are creating a hundred billion pieces of plastic waste a year, and recycling is barely making a dent. What else does the government need to know before acting?”

A government spokesman said: “We want to introduce Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) and consistent levies in England as soon as practical and have sought comment on the proposed timelines through consultation. We published the government’s response to the EPR packaging query in March, and will publish our response to the DRS and consistency queries shortly.”