THE world is in a plastic crisis. Globally, over 350 million tonnes of plastic are created each year, and the failure to manage the enormous waste is having disastrous effects on human health and ecosystems worldwide.

Most plastic is non-biodegradable; instead, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces until it is no longer visible to the naked eye. These tiny particles never fully decompose and are literally everywhere: in water, soil and air. Because they are light, they are easily transported across long distances. It “rains” microplastics every day, even in the most remote regions of the world. All animal species, including humans, ingest them and the smallest particles – the nanoplastics – can spread throughout the body and possibly reach the organs, including the brain.

The UK is near the top of the chart for plastic waste per person globally – second only to the US. Why do you think this might be?

Just over a year ago, I was one of 224,381 people who took part in the Big Plastic Count. For one week, we counted every piece of plastic waste we discarded: between us, we counted 4,639,685 pieces. If the totals for that week are assumed to be typical, this indicates that UK households are throwing away an estimated 1.7 billion pieces a week or 90 billion pieces a year.

Since 2021, many of the major supermarkets have been collecting soft plastic ostensibly for recycling. But how you ever wondered what really happens to all the crisp packets and salad bags that you pop into their bins?

Between July 2023 and February 2024, a team from Everyday Plastic and the Environmental Investigation Agency attempted to answer this question by placing tracking devices into 40 bundles of soft plastic packaging, which they dropped off at Sainsbury’s and Tesco stores across England. Over the course of 12 months, the trackers revealed that the soft plastic travelled a collective distance of over 25,000km, ending up in various locations across the UK and overseas. Of the tracked plastic that reached a known destination, 70 per cent was not recycled at all - it was either burnt for energy or turned into fuel pellets for industrial use. The rest was downcycled, where waste materials are turned into products of lower quality or value, although little of this was done in the UK.

That doesn’t mean that we should stop using the bins because most of the discarded plastic is at least put to some use. But it would be far better if less plastic – especially single-use plastic – was manufactured in the first place. One thing we could all do would be to stop buying items swathed in plastic and shop where good old-fashioned paper bags are used instead.

Article by CASA (Climate Action St Austell)