A shocking report has laid bare Britain’s plastic crisis, with households throwing away a whopping 1.7 billion pieces of rubbish every week.
The Big Plastic Count, a study organised by Greenpeace, asked 225,000 participants to count how much rubbish they threw out in seven days.
The study found that UK households throw out 60 pieces of plastic packaging every week, which equates to 90 billion pieces of waste thrown out each year across the country.
Sadly, only 17 per cent of that rubbish ends up being recycled domestically, with 58 per cent of the UK’s waste being incinerated.
Laura Burnley, project lead for the Big Plastic Count at Greenpeace, said: ‘If I started counting every bit of plastic packaging the UK throws away in a year, it would take me until 2077 to count every piece.’
A shocking report has found that UK households throw out 1.7 billion pieces of plastic waste each year, much of which is burned or exported abroad (pictured)
Since 2022, when Greenpeace conducted the first plastic count, there has been a growing public push to reduce the amount of plastic waste generated.
A recent Greenpeace study found that 74 per cent of Britons polled supported reducing the UK’s plastic use.
However, the amount of plastic generated this year is almost the same as in 2022 – suggesting that very little real progress has been made.
Ms Burnley said: ‘Our national survey shows tidal waves of plastic packaging leaving homes every week.
‘The problem is huge, and the challenge of fixing it can feel overwhelming.’
Snack packaging was the most commonly thrown-out piece of rubbish, with the participants counting 699,932 pieces in just seven days.
This was closely followed by plastic fruit and veg packaging with 697,085 pieces being counted.
In total, 81 per cent of all the rubbish thrown out by UK households was packaging for food and drink.
The study also found that only a very small part of the UK’s plastic waste is recycled in the UK.
Households counted the waste they used each week and found that they threw out 60 pieces on average (pictured)
The majority of UK waste is now incinerated, with rates of incineration up 12 percentage points from only 46 per cent in 2022.
However, this is not a clean solution to the issue, as burning plastic produces more carbon dioxide per tonne than coal.
Dr Cressida Bowyer, a plastics expert from the University of Portsmouth, says: ‘It’s clear from these results that the plastic waste problem is not getting any better, and that recycling is not going to solve it.
‘New thinking around packaging choices, backed up by legislation, is urgently needed.’
Of the remaining waste, 11 per cent ends up in UK landfills while 14 per cent is exported to other countries where it ends up in vast dumps.
Rubbish from UK supermarkets has been found in landfills as far as Indonesia (pictured) as only 17 per cent is recycled domestically
Out of all the UK’s rubbish 58 per cent is now incinerated. Burning rubbish produces more CO2 per tonne than burning coal
Greenpeace’s investigations have found plastic waste from UK supermarkets being burned in Turkey and in dumps in Indonesia.
Rudy Schulkind, Political Campaigner at Greenpeace UK, says: ‘The worst affected are the marginalised communities and People of Colour who are more likely to live near incineration sites or to be harmed by the waste we dump in countries in the Global South.’
This study comes ahead of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee Meeting for a Global Plastics Treaty later this month.
In 2022, 175 countries agreed to produce legally binding plastic legislation by the end of 2024.
Under this UN initiative, countries will have a legal obligation to place limits on the production and usage of plastic.
Greenpeace is calling on the UK government to support the introduction of legally binding targets and call for a reduction in plastic production of 75 per cent by 2024.
Ms Schulkind says: ‘This year, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally secure a global, legally binding target to radically reduce plastic production’.
