According to latest figures, Brits use around 14 billion plastic bottles every year in addition to the nine billion cans and 5 billion glass bottles they consume on a yearly basis. When neglecting to recycle, reuse and reduce, plastic can take hundreds of years before it can fully decompose.
Discover our latest podcast
An initiative that is making a comeback
And now, in a bid to encourage people to recycle more, a new proposal is being put forward that would see the government offer 20p per recycled plastic bottle. But this isn't the first time the idea has been brought to the table, a few years back, the initiative was proposed as a response to other nations that have introduced similar policies.
Though not much was done about it at the time, interest has been renewed and more details regarding the potential new policy will come out.
The British Plastic Foundation has come out with data that found that the UK recycles about 380,000 tons of plastic bottles each year which is a rather small percentage when compared to the amount of consumed plastic bottles annually.
Essential in reversing the effects of pollution
What's worse, of the 14 billion plastic bottles used by Brits every year, a considerable percentage represent plastic bottles that were used merely once before being thrown out.
When speaking about the proposal, Sam Chetan-Welsh, a Greenpeace campaigner, urged the government to seriously consider the initiative in order to try to reverse the effects of pollution that have made a huge dent on the environment:
Other countries have had successful systems operating for years. So if the UK government delays deposit return, it would raise serious questions about their claims of being a 'world leader' on plastic pollution.
