UK households bin nearly 100bn pieces of plastic a year, survey finds

12 July 2022, 15:57

UK households throw away almost 100 billion pieces of plastic every year, according to a major survey.

Nearly 100,000 households across the country counted every piece of disposable packaging they used over the course of a week in May.

An average of 66 pieces of packaging were disposed of every week - 83% of which was food and drinks packaging.

If scaled up across every home in the UK, this suggests Britons are chucking out 96.6 billion pieces of disposable plastic a year.

Just 12% of this will be recycled in UK facilities.

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The Big Plastic Count, launched by Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic, surveyed homes representing around a quarter of a million people.

The most common item was fruit and veg packaging, the survey found, followed by snack bags, packets and wrappers.

The two charities are now calling on the Government to set legally-binding targets to cut single-use plastics by at least 50% by 2025.

They want to see disposable plastics almost entirely eliminated in future.

The two charities say it is the first time plastic waste has been measured in individual pieces.

Around 46% of discarded plastic is incinerated, and the remaining 25% is dumped in landfill, the survey found.

Just 12% will be recycled in UK facilities, with a further 17% shipped abroad for processing.

A 2020 study published in the US journal Science Advances found the UK produces the second-largest amount of plastic waste per capita in the world, second only to the US.

Greenpeace criticised the Government's claim back in 2020 that 46% of domestic waste plastic is recycled.

It said plastic shipped abroad is being included in government statistics as "recycled" when much of it is illegally dumped or burned in developing countries.

Daniel Webb, founder of Everyday Plastic, described the Big Plastic Count as "an incredible piece of citizen science".

"This is a big moment in the fight against plastic waste," he said.

"These new figures lay bare the responsibility of the Government, big brands and supermarkets to tackle this crisis."

Greenpeace UK plastics campaigner Chris Thorne called on the Government to "turn off the plastic tap".

"This is a jaw-dropping amount of plastic waste and should give ministers pause for thought," he said.

He added: "We're creating a hundred billion bits of waste plastic a year, and recycling is hardly making a dent."

As well as steep cuts in single-use plastic, Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic want to see a ban on plastic waste exports, a deposit return scheme on drinks containers, and a moratorium on new incineration capacity.

According to trade association Plastics Europe, the world economy produces more than 350 million tonnes of plastic each year - more than the total mass of all mammals on Earth.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "We are going further to tackle single-use plastics through our landmark Environment Act.

"We have restricted the supply of plastic straws and cotton buds, banned the supply of plastic drinks stirrers and are finalising proposals to introduce a deposit return scheme which would capture plastic bottles.

"Packaging producers will be expected to cover the cost of recycling and disposing of their packaging through the introduction of extended producer responsibility, and this year we introduced a world-leading plastic tax to help tackle plastic waste."