...and here’s a year’s packaging from ONE household!
DANIEL Webb has clear photographic proof of the avalanche of plastic that households face.
He has kept every tub, bottle, wrapper, bag, pouch and piece of polystyrene from a year of shopping. The results – some of which can be seen above – are a staggering 4,490 pieces of plastic.
More than 70 per cent of it cannot be recycled – meaning burial in landfill where it would remain for hundreds of years. The alternative is incineration, creating greenhouse gases and toxic fumes.
Mr Webb, 36, found that 93 per cent of the plastic he used in a year was single-use packaging, and two thirds was used for food.
Based on national collection rates for recyclable material, only 10 per cent of the plastic he got through would be recycled, with most of this sent abroad. The remainder would be sent to landfill or burned.
If Mr Webb’s consumption patterns are typical, the UK is likely to be throwing away 295billion pieces of plastic a year. ‘We can’t just rely on recycling to fix plastic pollution,’ he said. ‘Most importantly, we need to produce and use much less plastic. Our fastmoving disposable society means that we are using more single-use things than ever, so we need to rethink how we consume.’
Mr Webb, a marketing freelancer from Margate, Kent, has published his findings in a report called Everyday Plastic.
Dr Julie Schneider, who helped with the study, said: ‘It turns out that 70 per cent of Daniel’s plastic waste is not currently recyclable. This needs to be addressed urgently.’