Eco-minded youngster from Hertfordshire encourages others to be mindful of plastic use ahead of nationwide waste survey

An eco-minded youngster from Hertfordshire is urging others to be mindful of their plastic usage ahead of a nationwide waste survey.

Thousands of households and hundreds of teachers from across the East of England have committed to counting a week’s worth of their plastic waste as part of the UK’s largest waste survey starting next week.

The Big Plastic Count, organised by Greenpeace UK and Everyday Plastic, takes place from Monday March 11, when the public has committed to gathering evidence about the extent of the UK’s plastic problem.

And Swing Gate Infant School pupil Lucy Sutton, from Berkhamsted, says by taking part in the count, the school wants to raise awareness of problematic plastic.

She said: "Our school community wanted to take part in The Big Plastic Count because we are horrified at the volume of plastic households are producing. It is staggering to find out that only 12 per cent is recycled in the UK. As an infant school we want to educate children from a young age, so we are using the week as an opportunity to do some cross curricular work to raise awareness."

Nationwide, across all 650 parliamentary constituencies, nearly 80,000 participants have already signed up for The Big Plastic Count 2024, including over 10,000 school classes.

Hertfordshire resident Jennifer Barton said companies needed to take more responsibility over their packaging.

She said: "I've been recycling plastic for a long time. Even when we didn't have a curbside collection, I would trek to the nearest recycling facility. Now I'm older and we are fortunate to have the kerbside collection, but I'm disappointed to hear that not all the collection is actually recycled. I'm also concerned that soft plastics can't go into our collections and it's not easy to dispose of them. More and more, the onus is put on the end user - companies need to be held accountable for unnecessary and unrecyclable packaging. The plastic packaging tax doesn't go far enough."

Almost a quarter of a million people participated in The Big Plastic Count in 2022, that revealed:

• UK households throw nearly two billion pieces of plastic packaging away weekly.
• Just 12 per cent is recycled in the UK, with the rest being burned, shipped abroad, or languished in landfills.
• 83 per cent of plastic recorded was from food and drink packaging waste, the most common item being fruit and vegetable packaging.

Thousands of people shared their results from The Big Plastic Count 2022 with MPs and called for achievable policies to tackle the plastic waste crisis.

Greenpeace is now calling on the government to:

• Reduce plastic production by at least 75 per cent by 2040 and speed up the introduction of innovative reuse and refill models
• Completely ban all plastic waste exports by 2027 at the latest
• Immediately implement an all-in Deposit Return Scheme and Extended Producer Responsibility requirements for recycling and reuse
• End approvals for new incineration facilities.

Visit the Everyday Plastic site to sign up and to read what founder Daniel Webb, who collected every piece of his plastic waste for a whole year, found about what happens to plastic after use.