Plastic Disposal – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Campaigns

Plastic Disposal and Recycling

With over 275,000 tonnes of plastic used each year in the UK alone,  it’s becoming more and more important to find sustainable plastic disposal methods and raising awareness of how we can use less plastic in everyday life.

Small changes can make a massive difference in the amount of plastic we use, for example, the 5p charge on plastic bags implemented in October 2015 have resulted in a 78% decrease in the amount of bags used every day in the UK. Other cities have banned plastic bags all together, only allowing reusable or paper bags.

Not only does the charge reduce the amount of plastic thrown away every year it also helps charities. The vast majority of the money charged for plastic bags goes to good causes. Morrison’s alone have already raised £785,000 since October, the money will be going to the Morrison’s foundation and Sue Ryder.

The next thing we need to tackle is the amount of plastic bottles used every day. 15 million plastic bottles are used every day in the UK, and 800 plastic bottles go to landfill each minute. The rest ends up littered on our streets or in our oceans, where it makes up 90% of the oceans litter.

Bristol are leading the way in reducing the amount of plastic bottles in their cities, their ‘Refill’ campaign has already sold 3000 reusable water bottles, which is an estimated 300,000 single-use plastic bottles saved. The campaign works by having free fill up points across the city centre, over 200 cafes, restaurants and museums are participating by putting a sticker in their window to let passerby’s know that they can come in and fill their bottle up for free.

The campaigners are currently working on an app that lets users know where there closest refill point is. They are looking to make refilling the norm, and hopefully significantly reduce the amount of plastic bottles used in the city each year.

It’s not just the plastic industry that are seeing these changes, Starbucks have launched a new incentive for customers to bring in their own cups and flasks to reduce the amount of paper cups used daily in their stores. A discount of 50p will be given to customers who take their own cups.

Currently 7 million paper cups are used every day in the UK, that’s 2.5 billion cups incinerated or sent to landfill annually.  Starbucks, Costa and Pret alike have all been criticised  for misleading their customers with their ‘recycled’ logos on their cups, where the truth is that only 1 in 400 of their cups are actually recycled.

FindaSkip only use companies that dispose of waste responsibly and minimise the amount taken to landfill as much as possible. For a competitive quote visit us at FindaSkip or give us a call on 0800 019 4530.