The survey (the high number of plastics) was conducted in one week in May, and its results showed that the average household got rid of 66 pieces of plastic during this time. Based on this, regulators – Everyday Plastic and Greenpeace – have estimated that nearly one hundred billion pieces of plastic are thrown into the garbage by households in the UK each year.
The BBC According to the survey, nearly 100,000 households took part in the survey, meticulously documenting every single piece of plastic thrown into the trash during the week.
Recycling is almost ineffective
According to the organizers, survey results show that recycling is not the only solution to reducing the amount of plastic waste. “We generate 100 billion pieces of plastic waste every year, and recycling has little or no impact,” said Chris Thorne, Greenpeace UK’s Plastics Officer.
Participants also recorded the type of plastic they used: Based on the results, 83 percent of food and beverage packaging waste, mostly from fruit and vegetable packaging.
Based on the latest data from the British government in 2021, more than 2.5 million tons of plastic packaging waste was generated in households, of which 44.2 per cent was recycled, half (55 per cent) in the UK, and the rest was transported abroad. The most popular destination is Turkey.
the root of the problem
Not all plastics are easy to sort and recycle. According to the charity Recoup, 61 percent of plastic bottles, 36 percent of plastic containers, and only 8 percent of foil is reused. The results of the survey show that
More than half of the discarded plastic is more difficult to recycle, the so-called soft plastic.
Survey organizers compared their results to data from Recoup and found that only 12 per cent of plastic waste is recycled in the UK.
(Cover image: Hesther Ng/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
