Call to Count Plastic – thebigplasticcount.com/join-in 

Dear Editor,

Between 16th – 22nd May, Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic are running the Big Plastic Count, and members of Greenpeace Swansea are taking part. This will be the UK’s biggest ever investigation into household plastic waste, and what really happens to our recycling. We need to take much faster action to clean up the plastic pollution, which spoils Swansea, and harms our climate, nature and health. This year, the government is starting to decide on legal targets to reduce plastic waste. Greenpeace Swansea volunteers want them to set a target to reduce single-use plastic by 50% by 2025 and ban dumping our waste onto other countries.

I’m fed up with the amount of plastic I end up with every time I do a supermarket shop. Why do we need bananas wrapped in plastic anyway? I also see so many plastic bottles and other pieces of plastic packaging around Mount Pleasant that people have dropped, or which have blown out of bins and recycling bags. I regularly do a litter pick there and end up with a bin liner full! Of course, people shouldn’t drop litter, but it’d be better if we didn’t create so much single-use plastic in the first place. If we take our drinks bottles back to the main Tesco Superstore in the Marina, Swansea we receive a small refund. We need far more of these schemes all over the city, resulting in far fewer dropped around the place.

The UK produces more plastic waste per person than almost any other country, only the USA is worse. On top of this, plastic production is actually increasing – it’s set to double by 2040. Reduction is the core solution to the global plastics crisis, and to do this, we need to transition to reusable packaging which caters to everyone’s needs. Due to entanglement, ingestion and ecosystem damage, hundreds of species of sea creatures could be at risk of extinction due to plastic pollution.

Greenpeace volunteers have been taking action on plastic pollution for years, including handing back single-use plastic to Swansea Marina supermarket and we carried out a community beach clean in February this year, and collected a dozen bags of rubbish, the majority of which contained plastic bottles which should have been recycled, or even better, not produced in the first place. 

We, like lots of other Swansea residents, are trying to do their bit, and Government, supermarkets and brands need to do theirs to cut plastic too.

Schools, community groups, businesses, local residents – sign-up to join us here – thebigplasticcount.com/join-in Kathy OakwoodMount PleasantSwansea