Defra plastics announcement “just nibbling around the edges of a giant problem”

In response to the announcement that the government will ban some single use plastic items Nina Schrank, Plastics Campaign Lead at Greenpeace UK said:

This announcement is really just nibbling around the edges of a giant problem. Banning items one by one might produce nice headlines for the government but the reality is it won’t stem the staggering amount of plastic the UK produces each year. That’s only going to happen with a serious strategy to cut plastic production.

As part of this the government needs to announce reuse targets that mean supermarkets have to follow suit, offering reuse and refill solutions to their customers that eliminate the need for disposable packaging. It urgently needs to end the export of waste overseas, which has led to open dumping in countries like Turkey. We also need Defra to end its culture of dither and delay and finally bring in the long promised bottle return scheme which will stop billions of bottles and containers being dumped each year. Anything less fails to live up to the scale of the plastics crisis.