Plastic is everywhere, and despite our best efforts to recycle, much of it ends up in the oceans and on the land. Greenpeace’s Big Plastic Count is a way to break the cycle, gathering data to help the UK government adopt the strongest targets to reduce plastic waste.
We are inviting schools, community groups, businesses and households to take part, gathering evidence on how much plastic we are really having to throw away. By counting your plastic for one week, citizen science will show the government that it’s time to commit to putting a stop to excess plastic. You can sign up for the Big Plastic Count here.
Greenpeace are launching this initiative with Everyday Plastic. According to Greenpeace:
“Everyday Plastic is a small social enterprise founded by Daniel Webb who decided to collect every piece of plastic waste he generated for an entire year. With the help of a scientific researcher, he developed a unique methodology to analyse his year-long collection of plastic waste to calculate his personal plastic footprint and gain an in-depth insight into what he threw away and where it ended up.
Now, together, Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic are scaling this up and offering the public the same opportunity to get to grips with their own plastic footprint and gather the proof we need to push the government to get it right and set a target to reduce single-use plastic by 50% by 2025 and put a ban on sending our waste to other countries. This year, the government is starting to decide on targets to reduce plastic waste. Using the evidence from thousands of homes, we will reveal the truth about what is happening to the UK’s plastic waste and change the public and media narrative: Reduction is the core solution to the global plastics crisis as well as a shift to a reuse/refill economy.
To do this, we need households, community groups and businesses from all over the country to join in and tally their plastic for just one week – 16-22 May 2022. We also want schools to take part, and to allow for their busy term-time calendars, they’ll be able to choose the week they’d like to run the survey, anytime from now until 22 May 2022″.
Want to learn more. More information on the Big Plasti Count is here. Check out the introduction video here, and a plea from Chris Packam here.
Leave a Reply