Calls for ban on beauty sample sachets

BEAUTY sample sachets which are “virtually never recycled” and will pollute the planet for centuries should be banned, Joan Bakewell has said.

Free samples given out from the beauty counter might be a treat for customers – but they are headed for landfill, campaigners have warned.

The broadcaster and Labour peer joined calls from 40 experts and crossparty politicians to ban non- food sachets, which are currently not included in single-use plastic bans.

The UK’S ban covers plastic straws, stirrers, and cotton buds. An EU singleuse plastics ban, to come in from next year, also does not include the sachets.

Sian Sutherland, co-founder, of the campaign organisation A Plastic Planet, said they had been forgotten by policymakers. “For me it is the most pernicious use of plastic that has become invisible to us. You look around and you notice the amount of little sachets that are everywhere in our lives,” she said.

The sachets were typically valueless, contaminated and impossible to recycle, she said. The personal care industry produces 122 billion plastic sachets each year, the group said.

“We’ve seen governments across the world crow about bans on single-use plastics, but the sample sachet is a huge piece of the pollution puzzle which every one of them is missing,” she said.

“The hundreds of billions of sample sachets pumped out each year are used to drive instant sales, but will pollute the planet for centuries.”