Plastic waste - are supermarkets doing enough?

Greenpeace has suggested that the UK's supermarkets are still doing relatively little to reduce waste plastics, contrary to what they would have us believe.

Indeed their latest piece of research suggests that the total weight of plastic waste has increased relative to 2017. The ten biggest retailers produced 900,000 tonnes of packaging and 2bn plastic bags in 2017.

"The supermarkets sold 2.1bn plastic bags in 2019, including 1.58bn “bags for life” which are intended to be reusable. This equates to almost 57 “bags for life” per UK household in 2019, more than one a week, and is a 65% increase since 2017”

The supermarkets themselves, of course, suggest that they are continuing to take steps to reduce the amount of plastic waste in their packaging.

You can read the report here