Our Environment

Everyday Plastic: Counting the environmental cost

Images courtesy of Everyday Plastic

When social enterprise Everyday Plastic and charity Greenpeace UK asked 100,000 UK households to document the type and amount of plastic they throw away for seven days, the results were disturbing — but not entirely unexpected.

“I’d like to say that I was surprised. But in reality, my expectations in terms of the key themes were met,” says Everyday Plastic Founder Daniel Webb. “Hardly anything is going to get recycled here in the UK and 83% of the disposed plastic was food and drink packaging. We know that there's a problem, particularly with packaged fruit and vegetables, and that is something that can and should be addressed fairly quickly.”

The 2022 results of The Big Plastic Count — the UK’s biggest nationwide investigation into household plastic waste — makes for grim reading. They reveal that the average participating household threw away 66 pieces of plastic in a week.

Given that this was a self-selecting survey and a sizeable chunk of the participants were Greenpeace supporters — and therefore already engaged on the issue of plastic waste — the true figure across the UK is likely to be even higher.

“If you assume that figure applies to every household in the country, it still amounts to just under two billion pieces of plastic packaging thrown away per week,” points out Dan. “It’s a frightening figure and it just demonstrates how our plastic consumption and superfluous packaging is not sustainable in the long run.”

“You can’t prescribe activism — everyone's different. I'm not the front of the picket line kind-of-guy but I'm still an activist and campaigner. It’s just about trying to galvanise people.”

Daniel Webb, Founder, Everyday Plastic

Despite the scale of the challenge, Dan is motivated to drive awareness among the public and use the evidence to convince the Government, big brands and supermarkets to take action.

“We need to give people clear and true information that they can then use to tackle the problem – whether that’s by making changes at home, or speaking to their supermarket, or local MP.

“There’s a huge opportunity for supermarkets in particular,” he says. “They really want to reduce packaging. But there are long-standing contracts in place that they have to see through and ongoing supply chain issues. They've also got to bring customers along with them.”

Everyday Plastic intends to keep growing the survey sample and expand the data it is able to collect. “The more people who take part in this, the better and more representative the results are,” says Dan. “It must be a year-on-year exercise until we really start seeing change.”

Support for growth

Robert Avis, Counsel at Charles Russell Speechlys, introduced Everyday Plastic to the Firm’s Pro Bono team in 2021 to discuss the ways in which it might be able to support the business.

Initially, Partner and General Counsel David Berry and Trainee Bella Henry worked with Everyday Plastic to assist with reviewing confidentiality agreements and a Joint Venture Agreement as they first explored a collaboration with Greenpeace. The Firm also provided employment advice, via Senior Associate Clare Davis and Trainee Laurence Whymark to help Everyday Plastic develop template employment contracts and policies as its small team began to grow.

As discussions progressed on The Big Plastic Count, our Corporate team worked closely with Everyday Plastic to finalise the project’s collaboration agreement, led by Senior Associate Sam Milne and Associate Tertius Alberts, and supported by Trainee Matthew Carter.

“It was great to work with Dan and have the opportunity to offer my legal skills to a good cause,” says Sam. “I am a trainee supervisor, so I thought that this project would also provide a rare opportunity for someone else on our team to get involved and help with something different to our typical day-to-day work.”