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Everyday Plastic: What We Throw Away and Where It Goes

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Everyday Plastic: What We Throw Away and Where It Goes Ever wondered how much plastic we use in a year and where it goes? where and year use in a we much plastic how wondered Ever What we throw away and where it goes SUPPORTED BY: About us Everyday Daniel Webb Plastic Daniel has worked in marketing for 10 years Everyday Everyday Plastic is an art across a range of sectors and educational project including art, music, food Plastic: that aims to communicate and drink and sport. the realities of our plastic consumption in a personal He has had a more active interest in what we and relatable way. conservationism since 2015 which led him to launch Everyday Plastic in 2017. throw away Daniel Webb collected every piece Daniel delivers talks on the project of plastic he used in 2017. Having at schools, businesses and events counted, categorised, weighed and and works with major environmental and where photographed the whole collection of charities such as Greenpeace, plastic waste, he turned it into a large- Friends of the Earth and Surfers it goes scale billboard. The giant mural was on Against Sewage. show at Dreamland in Margate earlier this year and officially launched the Everyday Plastic project. Dr Julie By Daniel Webb The project received worldwide media Schneider and Dr. Julie Schneider coverage and has had features in The Guardian, National Geographic, Metro, Julie is an expert in Earth Sky News, BBC and more. One of the Sciences. Having started Disclaimer: The arguments expressed key aims of the project is to improve her studies in Paris in 1995, in this report are solely those of the communication of plastic pollution she went on to complete authors, and do not reflect the opinion and raise awareness within the wider her Masters and PhD at of any other party. public sphere. one of France’s dedicated scientific research The report should be cited as follows: Webb, D. and Schneider, J., 2018. institutions - Université Everyday Plastic: what we throw away Montpellier II - in 2004. and where it goes. Her post-study roles include a geochemistry research fellowship in Taiwan before spending 8 years lecturing and researching in Earth Sciences at the Université Nice Sophia Antipolis. Since moving to the UK, she volunteered to research with Friends of the Earth before moving to CHEM Trust - a charity that works to prevent man-made chemicals from causing long term damage to wildlife or humans. EVERYDAY PLASTIC EVERYDAY PLASTIC Funding Contents Rachel Ward, Kashmir Flint, Kezia Foreword 4 This report is 100% independent and Hanson, Julie Bloomfield, Emma the data collection, research, analysis McArthur, Julia and Barenda In a nutshell 6 and writing has been completed in our Pretorius, Will Hebditch, Andy Aitken, free time without external interests Jon Morales, Sanjay Mitra, Laura Tait, Background 10 or funding. Nick Berry, Jamie Berry, Jo Usmar and to my enthusiastic and encouraging About me 12 Surfers Against Sewage is supporting friends and family. the release and promotion of the report Methodology 14 and have contributed funding to the design. The report has been designed How is this study representative of an by Leap as part of their people and average UK citizen? 16 planet ‘design for change’ initiative. Ever wondered how much plastic we use in a year? 18 Acknowledgements everydayplastic.org [email protected] What is throwaway plastic? 20 The first and biggest thank you goes to Julie Schneider, without whom everydayplastic What use were the throwaway this report would not exist. She has plasticeveryday plastic pieces designed for? 22 dedicated a lot of hard work, free time and energy to this project and fighting But what does the packaging look like? 24 plastic pollution. What type of plastic is the throwaway plastic made from? 26 Thank you to Hugo Tagholm and the team at Surfers Against Sewage for Of the throwaway plastic, how much is supporting the release of this report, recyclable in the UK? 28 as well as their continued and tireless sas.org.uk work against plastic pollution. If 30% is recyclable, how much is actually [email protected] collected for recycling? 32 Thank you to Matt Hocking and the surfersagainstsewage team at Leap for this document’s sascampaigns Of the throwaway plastic, how much is incredible creative and design. recycled in the UK? 33 Everyday Plastic has relied heavily So what about the remaining 96%? 36 on the generosity of a number of volunteers and supporters. In no How much of the recycled plastic is used to particular order, thank you to Libby produce new plastic? 38 Northedge, Jez Leather, Lucy Siegle, leap.eco How much energy, natural resource and raw Ollie Harrop, Ross Walker and Rachel material was used to produce my throwaway Boot, Tess Acheson and Andrew [email protected] plastic waste? 40 Cross, Ian Hall, Meg and Rebecca at leapness Dreamland, Richard Heneghan, Jim leapness The verdict: We’re not being told the truth Biddulph, Matt Verity, Luke Eastop, about recycling 42 Vanessa Brier, Orla Dollman, Jo Bridges, Annie Nichols, Footnotes 48 Helen Pitman, Lisa Goldsworthy, References 49 About our supporters 50 Appendix 52 EVERYDAY PLASTIC EVERYDAY PLASTIC Plastic However, we the public is making a Foreword stand against this threat. Polluted transactions beaches looking like supermarket dominate our lives shelves and supermarket shelves looking like polluted beaches have and are virtually driven an almost unprecedented inescapable. environmental movement. We started with the end of pipe solutions – beach The numbers are startling, even for and countryside cleans where the the most avid fans of the plastic free problem is acutely visible. Then the movement. A massive 4,490 pieces personal choices to refuse plastics of plastic over the course of a year. – Plastic Free Communities, refill On this basis, the UK throws away schemes, refusing straws and carrying 295 billion pieces of plastic annually. a cotton tote bags to name but a few. Throws away! Not reuses, not refills, not Government policy and legislation recycles – throws away! Most of this broadly followed this growing public packaging comes from the food we discontent about plastic pollution. consume and much of it is unrecyclable anyway, irrespective of the complicated However, with almost 1 in 10 barrels of oil and stalling recycling systems the being designated to plastic production, public currently has at its disposal. the oil industry will unquestionably be Only a miniscule amount of the plastic the final target. There lies the epicentre collected for recycling in the UK is of the plastic tsunami. reprocessed domestically – a tiny 4%. Don’t be fooled, the containers in your Make your voice count and let’s keep kerbside recycling aren’t currently fast- up the pressure together, which is a tracked back into new containers on critical component of driving reforms our supermarket shelves. Not that we in government policy, legislation and shouldn’t continue every effort to use business practices. Your everyday current recycling systems. choices and actions make a bigger difference than you think when it comes The public is caught between a rock to plastic pollution. and a hard place, all too often becoming the plastic pollution scapegoats. We’re provided with inadequate recycling systems but have increasing amounts Together, of pointless plastics foisted upon us. This ominous combination virtually we can call for ‘weaponises’ single-use plastics, creating plastic munitions that rain government Everyday Plastic is an incredibly seminal book Silent Spring. down on our streets, fields, forests, powerful representation of a seemingly beaches and oceans. The systems the and business to mundane, easy-to-fix, problem that Plastic transactions dominate our lives public are provided, which incidentally envelopes all our lives, not just every and are virtually inescapable. Daniel’s we pay for through our taxes, haven’t change too. day but almost every hour, every minute project demonstrates the cumulative kept pace with the plastic armada and every second of our existence. A scale and impact of those seemingly Hugo Tagholm CEO, industry controls and profits from. problem that passes through all of our innocuous transactions with single- Surfers Against Sewage hands daily, which has now become one use plastics. How the small choices we of the world’s biggest environmental make can unwittingly build our own To start or join emergencies, the bed fellow of personal plastic monster that shadows Polluted climate change and one that evokes us at every corner shop, supermarket, beaches looking a Plastic Free the pesticides and toxic chemicals café, restaurant and workplace. A Community, please catastrophes of the ‘50s and ‘60s plastic shadow that is consuming the like supermarket which Rachel Carson highlighted in her very ground that we all walk on. shelves. visit sas.org.uk 4 5 EVERYDAY PLASTIC EVERYDAY PLASTIC In a nutshell In 2017, I collected every piece of plastic that I threw away. I wanted to analyse the results of this year-long experiment to help the impact of our plastic consumption resonate on an individual level and with everyday people. This process has 67% of my been integral in shifting my position from being oblivious of throwaway plastic my consumption to being able to quantify it piece by piece. was used to package, wrap and consume food No surprises here. We can buy food 93% of my anytime, anywhere and in abundance, collected plastic especially from supermarkets. And waste was single- most of it comes wrapped in plastic. use packaging Shockingly, 4,177 pieces of plastic were single-use packaging, specifically designed to be thrown away. By simply combining the Oxford English The UK throws Dictionary definitions for single-use away over and packaging, we can offer a fresh take on the definition of single-use 295 billion packaging as ‘a material used to wrap or protect goods that is designed to 47% of the pieces of plastic be used once and then disposed of every year or destroyed’.
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