The problem with single-use plastic

Single-use plastics are only used once before they are thrown away or recycled. The majority of the plastic waste that ends up in our oceans and environment is single-use.

Single-use plastic statistics

320 million tonnes of plastic items are produced globally every year. That's the same weight as every human on Earth. Imagine how much rubbish that makes!

• More than 7.7 billion single-use plastic bottles are sold in Britain each year
• Around 50 percent of plastics are only used once, then thrown away
• Since it was invented, only about nine percent of the plastic produced has been recycled
• Plastics break down into tiny fragments called micro-plastics. These can never be cleaned up properly. Micro-plastics are found on most of the world's beaches, in oceans, soil and even in the air we breathe
• Around eight million tonnes of plastic flows into the sea every year. That's a rubbish truck load of plastic each minute. Plastics and other rubbish can gather in areas called gyres. The North Pacific Gyre is twice the size of France!
• If nothing changes, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans by weight, than there are fish