The Big Plastic Count Results Report is out

The Big Plastic Count Results Report is out - Greenpeace

the big plastic count results report front cover showing an image of lots of plastic

The CJS team took part in this plastic counting exercise and everyone was surprised to see how much plastic waste they produced.

The results show that UK households throw away nearly 100bn pieces of plastic packaging a year and only 12% of the single-use packaging used by households is sent for recycling. Shocking results from the Greenpeace project.

Some of the key findings:

Nearly a quarter of a million people counted 6,437,813 pieces of plastic packaging waste in just one week.
On average, each household threw away 66 pieces of plastic packaging in one week, which amounts to an estimated 3,432 pieces a year.
If the totals for count week are assumed to be typical, this indicates that UK households are throwing away an estimated 1.85 billion pieces a week, or 96.57 billion pieces a year.
The most commonly counted items were fruit and vegetable packaging (1.02 million pieces), closely followed by snack bags, packets and wrappers (1.01 million pieces), illustrating how difficult it is for shoppers to avoid packaging when purchasing these products.