70% of plastic waste ‘not recyclable’

People in the UK throw away around 295 billion pieces of plastic every year, much of which is single-use and cannot be recycled, a report suggests.

Campaigner Daniel Webb has revealed the extent of the plastic waste an individual gets through in the UK, and how little of it is recycled in this country.

For a year Mr Webb, who lives in Margate, Kent, stored all the plastic waste he threw in the bin, collecting up a total of 4,490 individual pieces of plastic.

Some 93% of the plastic he used in a year was single-use packaging, and two thirds was used to package, wrap and consume food, the Everyday Plastic report by Mr Webb and researcher Dr Julie Schneider shows.

Some 70% was not currently recyclable, the report estimates.

Mr Webb said: “We can’t just rely on recycling to fix plastic pollution.”