In collaboration with purpose-driven agency, Enviral, I produced this video to highlight the results from The Big Plastic Count 2024.
We put our plastic waste in the right bin and assume it’s being taken care of, right? An incredible 224,381 citizen scientists from 77,783 households took part in The Big Plastic Count 2024, including almost 29,000 school pupils.
Here’s what we found:
UK households are throwing away an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of plastic packaging every week. That’s 90 billion pieces a year.
If you counted all the plastic packaging the UK uses in one week, one second at a time, it would take you 53 years and 7 months.
The most counted category was snack packaging (699,932 pieces), closely followed by fruit and vegetable packaging (697,085 pieces).
Over half (58%) of the pieces are being incinerated - that’s up from 46% when we did the count in 2022.
Only 17% would get recycled, 14% would be exported and 11% would end up in landfill.
The UK produces more plastic waste per person than almost any other nation – second only to the US.
These findings reveal both the tidal wave of plastic packaging entering our homes each week and the government’s irresponsible way of dealing with it all.That’s why we’re urging the government, brands, and supermarkets to support a strong, legally binding Global Plastics Treaty to cut plastic production by 75% by 2040.
