UK households throw away nearly 100 billion pieces of plastic packaging a year, according to research by Greenpeace.
The results of one of the largest voluntary research projects into the scale of plastic waste show that only 12% of single-use packaging used by households is sent for recycling.
Greenpeace asked households to count their plastic waste for one week in May. Nearly 250,000 people from almost 100,000 households took part and sent their results to Greenpeace and fellow NGO Everyday Plastic.
The largest share of plastic waste is from food and drink packaging – 83% – with fruit and vegetable packaging being the most common item.
While the UK government publishes data on the weight of plastic waste collected by households, there is no official data on the number of plastic items being thrown away. So the research, known as the Great Plastic Count, is seen as providing significant insight into the scale of single-use plastic packaging waste.
The Big Plastic Count found that 97,948 UK households counted 6,437,813 pieces of plastic packaging waste. On average, each household throws away 66 pieces of plastic packaging in a week, which equates to approximately 3,432 pieces when used in a year.
Assuming the weekly average is typical of every household 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 a year in the UK alone kingdom.
A major study in 2019 found that the proliferation of single-use plastic around the world is accelerating the climate emergency and must be stopped urgently. Almost all plastic is made from fossil fuels, the Center for International Environmental Law study found, and plastic contributes to greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its life cycle, from manufacturing to refining and how it is managed as a waste product.
“This is a staggering amount of plastic waste and should make ministers think twice,” said Chris Thorne, plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK.
“Only 12% of all this plastic is likely to be recycled in the UK, despite public alarm about the problem and recycling efforts. The rest becomes pollution, whether by landfill, 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 a quarter of a million people were prompted to take part in what was an amazing piece of citizen science. He said: “[It] has allowed us to build a unique picture of the plastic problem and collect never-before-seen data… These new figures reveal the responsibility of the government, big brands and supermarkets to tackle this crisis and they need to rise to the challenge now – there’s no time to lose.”
The NGOs are calling on the government to set legally binding targets for the near-total elimination of single-use plastic, starting with a target of a 50% reduction in single-use plastic by 2025. They want a ban on the export of plastic waste by 2025. starting initially with an immediate ban on all exports to non-OECD countries and mixed plastic waste to OECD countries. They are also calling for the immediate establishment of a deposit return scheme.
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The government has been promising such a scheme for years, with Michael Gove as environment secretary first introducing it in 2018. But the scheme has been delayed by consultations and apparent government inertia.
“Pretending we can sort this out with recycling is just industry-washing,” Thorne said. “We create a hundred billion pieces of waste plastic a year, and recycling barely makes a dent. What else does the government need to know before it takes action?’
A government spokesman said: “We want to introduce extended producer responsibility (EPR), a deposit return scheme (DRS) and back-to-back collections in England as soon as practical and have sought feedback on the proposed timelines through consultation. We published the Government’s response to the EPR consultation on packaging in March and will soon publish our response to the DRS and consistency consultations.’
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