Buried in Rubbish

During lockdown, people drink and consume more calories. Britain is already an unhealthy nation and the NHS is tasked with repairing the damage caused by obesity, diabetes etc at immense cost. Britain is also one of the dirtiest countries in Europe with 30m tonnes of litter dropped on UK streets a year costing councils 1bn a year to remove. Each day, 15m single use bottles are discarded by British consumers

The key challenge is to change public behaviour and tackle poor health and litter blighting this nation. The average UK person uses 150 plastic bottles a year or over three a week. This year, globally 583bn plastic bottles will be produced but in Europe only 47% is recycled while the rest is buried or burned. The UK exports 2/3rds of poor quality plastic waste to developing countries such as Malaysia where it is then classed as trash and ends up in rivers and the oceans.

As a nation we are addicted to soft drinks in a market worth £5bn a year but I believe the place to start is with the bottled water industry which is as wasteful and unnnecessary as the soft drinks industry at a time in our history when people are becoming more and more concerned about human impact on this planet. The time has come when we need to ask ourselves if we really need bottled water at all?

 

 

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