Stemming the plastic crisis - we join calls for robust Government action

Plastic pollution is one of the defining issues of our time.

It is in the air we breathe, the food we eat and oceans we rely on, visibly polluting our streets, rivers and seas, and is even found metres underground in ice cores, many miles from civilization.

Today, Keep Britain Tidy joined two other environmental charities in urging the Government to map out its plans to tackle plastic pollution and offering support, research, and campaigns to assist the “shared ambition”.

A letter penned by Chief Executive Alison Ogden-Newton OBE – alongside Jamie Peters, Interim Director of Campaigning Impact at Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Steve Hynd, Policy Manager at City to Sea – stressed we are “at a fork in the road in our efforts to tackle plastic pollution”.

Polling by City to Sea and Friends of the Earth shows that nearly three-quarters of British people have experienced “anxiety, frustration or hopelessness” at the amount of plastic that comes with their shopping and 59% think supermarkets and brands are not doing enough to offer refillable, reusable or packaging-free products.

Crucially, 81% of British people want the UK government to make refillable products easier to buy and more widely available, as a main priority for reducing plastic pollution.

The recent Defra consultation on banning some of the most polluting single-use plastics is a useful first step, but it still doesn't meet the urgency the plastics crisis demands.

Many European neighbours have already taken first steps driven by the EU Single-Use Directive such as France which has legislated to ban plastic wrappings from many fruits and vegetables in supermarkets.

In the letter to George Eustace MP, the charities spell out how the next six months will set the direction of travel for many years to come, and that it is therefore essential we adopt appropriate, ambitious and binding targets for the reduction of plastic pollution, including but not limited to single-use plastics.

These include at least a 50% reduction in non-essential single-use plastics by 2025, an overarching plastics reduction target, including but not limited to single-use plastics, and reuse targets of at least 25% of packaging being reusable by 2025, rising to 50% by 2030.

The letter reiterates that while the prevailing image of plastic pollution is that of a floating bottle, most plastic pollution cannot be seen or touched, such as microplastics shed directly into the environment.

Car tyres are responsible for more than 200,000 tonnes of microplastics entering our oceans every year.

Even visible directly littered or flushed plastics are among the plastic that will never enter our waste and resource system and, like tyres, cannot be tackled as a waste and resource issue.

Keep Britain Tidy joins the collective calls to urge the Government to set targets to reduce this, and asked for “reassurance and sight of your plan to tackle plastic pollution in its entirety, not just as a waste and resource question”.

The Plastic Pollution Bill, due back for its second reading on March 18,  and that we believe is one example of a legislative approach to tackling plastic pollution in its entirety.

Keep Britain Tidy welcomes the important steps that this Government has taken in tackling plastic pollution, we urgently need legally-binding targets that show that this government is travelling in the same direction that the science behind the plastic crisis demands.

You can see the entire letter here.