Jaffa Cakes and the sea make biggest waves of the year
PLASTIC POLLUTION, rail delays and the number of Jaffa Cakes in a tin – but not Brexit – have been named among 2018’s statistics of the year.
The list, compiled by the Royal Statistical Society from nominations by the public, is intended to highlight some of the biggest trends and news stories of the past 12 months.
It says the “international statistic of the year” is 90.5 per cent – the proportion of plastic waste that which the United Nations says has never been recycled.
The society chose it to reflect growing concern around the world about levels of plastic pollution, which has been highlighted by such TV programmes as Blue Planet II.
Sir David Spiegelhalter, the organisation’s president and chairman of the judging panel, said plastic waste was “a great, growing and genuinely worldwide problem”.
He added: “This statistic helps to show the scale of the challenge we all face.”
The UK’s statistic of the year is 28.7 per cent – representing the peak proportion of electricity produced by solar power on June 30. It made the sun briefly the country’s number one electricity source.
Dame Jil Matheson, another of the judges, said: “2018 was a landmark year for solar-generated electricity in the UK. In the current climate, in particular, we should commend this highly successful example of public policymaking.”
A less positive statistic to make the winners’ list is 85.9 per cent, which was the proportion of trains on Britain’s railways to meet their punctuality target in the year to September – the worst performance by the rail industry since 2005-06.
McVities’ Jaffa Cakes make the list because of a 16.7 per cent reduction in the size of its festive tube, from 48 biscuits to 40 – an example of “shrinkflation”, when manufacturers reduce the size of their product but not the prices they charge.
The society acknowledged McVities now calls the product a “cracker” rather than a “yard” of Jaffa cakes but noted criticism of the boxes’ content-free sections, which can make the reduction in the number of cakes less obvious.
Hetan Shah, executive director of the society, said: “Statistics help us make sense of the world around us and these numbers tell us how the world continued to change in 2018. The statistics on this list capture some of the zeitgeist of 2018.”