Households in the UK throw away around 100 billion pieces of plastic packaging a year, according to a Greenpeace survey.
The results of one of the largest voluntary research projects on the scale of plastic waste show that only 12% of disposable packaging used by households is sent for recycling.
Greenpeace asked households to count their plastic waste for a week in May. About 250,000 people from almost 100,000 households participated and sent their results to Greenpeace and another NGO Everyday Plastic.
The largest proportion of plastic waste comes from food and beverage packaging, 83%, and the most common item is fruit and vegetable packaging.
Although the UK government publishes data on the weight of plastic waste that is collected in households, there are no official figures on the number of plastic items that are thrown away. Therefore, the research, known as the Great Plastics Count, is considered to provide a meaningful view of the scale of disposable plastic packaging waste.
The Big Plastic Count found that 97,948 households in the UK had 6,437,813 pieces of plastic packaging waste. On average, each household threw away 66 pieces of plastic packaging in one week, which is about 3,432 pieces when applied over a year.
Assuming that the weekly average is typical of all households in the UK, the researchers said it could be reasonably estimated that households throw away 1.85 billion pieces of plastic packaging a week, which equates to 96.6 billion pieces in year only in the UK.
A historic study in 2019 found that the proliferation of single-use plastics around the world is accelerating the climate emergency and must be stopped urgently. Almost all plastic is made from fossil fuels, according to research by the Center for International Environmental Law, and plastic contributes to greenhouse gas emissions at all stages of its life cycle, from its production to its refinement and the way it is managed as waste. product.
“This is a staggering amount of plastic waste and should give ministers a break to think,” said Chris Thorne, a plastics activist at Greenpeace UK.
“It is likely that only 12% of all this plastic will end up being recycled in the UK, despite public alarm about the problem and efforts to recycle. The rest becomes pollution, either through dumping, the incineration or export to countries around the world, gradually polluting everything: our water, our food, even the air we breathe. “
Daniel Webb, founder of Everyday Plastic, said a quarter of a million people had been encouraged to participate in what was an amazing piece of citizen science. He said, “[It] it has allowed us to build a unique image of the plastic problem and gather unpublished data … These new figures expose the responsibility of the government, big brands and supermarkets to face this crisis, and they must face the challenge now same. – There is no time to lose. “
NGOs call on government to set legally binding targets to almost completely eliminate disposable plastic, starting with the goal of reducing disposable plastic by 50% by 2025. They want a ban of plastic waste exports for the year 2025, starting initially. 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.
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The government has promised this scheme for years, with Michael Gove as Environment Secretary first presenting it in 2018. But the scheme has been delayed by consultations and the government’s apparent inertia.
“Pretending we can fix it with recycling is just a green wash from the industry,” Thorne said. “We’re creating one hundred billion plastic wastes a year, and recycling does nothing. What else does the government need to know before it can act?”
A government spokesman said: “We want to introduce extended producer responsibility (EPR), a deposit return scheme (DRS) and consistent collections in England as soon as practical and we have sought feedback on the proposed deadlines through the We have published the government ‘s response to the EPR packaging inquiry in March and will publish our response to the DRS and coherence inquiries shortly. “