Every minute, more than a million plastic bottles are sold. The statement deserves pause for thought. To put it into context, this means a pile every hour taller than the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Every day, half the height of the Eiffel Tower, and every year, a towering mountain of bottles that would easily dwarf Manhattan.
What’s worse is that this widely cited figure, taken from 2016 data, is predicted to rise by 20% by 2021. The more optimistic news? The coronavirus pandemic has caused people to evaluate and change their behaviours for the better. A YouGov survey has found that nearly half of people are now more conscious of making sustainable choices in their daily lives.
According to Lucy Wakelin, senior brand manager at BRITA UK, which commissioned the survey, the results point to a new appreciation of the environment and a heightened awareness of the amount of waste we create in the home. “I think there’s a behaviour-value gap that’s always existed, but it’s definitely narrowed during this period of time,” she says. “We’ve seen that people are acting a lot more on what they’ve said they’ve always wanted to do, but previously life got in the way.”
This attitude shift coupled with the fact that many of us are spending more time at home, could go some way to helping the UK move away from single-use plastics. Where we might have bought a takeaway sandwich and a bottled drink for lunch, people are now more often preparing their midday meal from scratch. With regards to bottled water in particular, since lockdown began, the YouGov survey found that the number of people buying it for use at home has reduced from 42% to 32%. The reasons behind this were primarily around wanting to reduce plastic use at home (59%), but other factors such as saving a bit of money (29%), not wanting to transport heavy bottles (20%) and not being able to access it during lockdown (10%), also came into play.
This reduction is good news as plastic bottles are, according to Helen Bird, strategic engagement manager at the Waste and Resources Action Programme, particularly problematic. “One, because we think you could potentially avoid them,” she says. After all, disposal is not an issue if there’s nothing to dispose of in the first place.
“Also, they’re not always being captured for recycling,” she says, which is especially frustrating because, “of all plastics, that is the one plastic that has really good market value.” Plastic bottles are highlighted in the UK Plastics Pact, a framework that brings together business and government to collaborate on transforming the way plastic is made, used and disposed of. One of its key targets is to eliminate problematic or unnecessary single-use packaging – and while there is much to be done across industry to achieve this, there are lots of steps you can take at home.
Using beeswax food wrap to replace cling film is an easy win, or subscribing to a fruit and veg box scheme instead of buying individually wrapped items from the supermarket. Zero-waste refill shops are also going through something of a renaissance – you can use this database to find one near you.
Another easy step is to forgo bottled water. Consumer purchasing habits are complex, but Wakelin cites taste as one of the main reasons people choose bottled over tap, something a water filter will address. “Filtering will reduce taste-impairing substances like chlorine or heavy metals – and it will, depending on which filter you use, reduce limescale,” she says. If you’re using a filter jug, remember that the cartridges can also be recycled. “We have about 1,900 recycling points across the country,” says Wakelin.
And from a health perspective, tap water – filtered or not – is perfectly fine to drink. It is very heavily regulated in the UK, and rigorously tested. Still, misconceptions abound. For Hertfordshire mum Stacey Phillips, tap water is the norm for her now, although that wasn’t always the case. “It kind of stemmed from one of my friends putting me off tap water, so I started drinking bottled water all the time,” she says. And when she uses her water-filter jug she says she notices an improvement in taste, too.
As she watched her recycling bin overflowing with bottles, she started to question her friend’s advice. “I realised that it was ridiculous, the amount of plastic I was going through. I thought it was not good for the environment and I was a bit embarrassed by it. Now I feel so much better – no more plastic water bottles!”
Bird mentions the waste hierarchy, a matrix commonly referred to in waste and recycling circles, but one that can help consumers too. At the top, in terms of priority, is prevention, followed by reuse and then recycling. “Systems where you don’t need packaging at all have got to be preferable,” she says.
So while it may seem like a drop in the ocean for any one household to change their single-use plastic consumption, such items account for more than 40% of all plastic waste and are flowing at an alarming rate into oceans and waterways. Where clean, thriving and ecologically diverse waterways are concerned, that drop could make a difference.
Want to find out more and change the way you drink filtered water? To discover how a BRITA filter jug could help you in your quest to be more eco-friendly and ditch the single-use plastic, head to BRITA.co.uk
