My kitchen cupboards are full again of items I thought I’d finally seen the back of.
For the past couple of years, I have not bought a single plastic bag, always taking reusable ones along to the shops.
But despite my best efforts to never use one ever again, they have crept back into my house as an unfortunate consequence of the pandemic.
Whether it’s from online grocery shopping, with items now coming in dozens of bags, to help stem the spread of coronavirus, to Amazon deliveries wrapped in mounds of non-recyclable packaging, plastic use has risen sharply as the nation was told to stay at home.
Nearly 500 people recorded their plastic waste for a week as part of the Everyday Plastic Survey during
lockdown. Between them, they collected 23,000 waste items.
On average, they disposed of 128 bits of plastic a week, up from 99 in similar surveys conducted before lockdown.
The type of waste that increased the most included single-use bags, snack wrappers, delivery parcel bags
and PPE.
While it is completely necessary to stop the spread of coronavirus, it has in turn caused a new tide of plastic waste, with billions of disposable face masks and gloves, and many people believing single-use plastic containers and cups are less likely to carry the virus than reusable alternatives.
But there is a big difference between the materials used for medical PPE and packaging for food and other goods.
Nearly 120 scientists, academics and doctors published a joint statement saying reusable containers, such as coffee cups, are safe to use as long as they’re washed properly, in response to the oil and plastic industry peddling myths which have created these health fears.
Public safety must always come first. But this is why I will be making my decisions, especially now, based on the sound advice of medical professionals rather than those lobbying for an industry that has a history of doing more harm than good to the planet.
