Campaigners are calling on the UK government to set legally binding targets for at least 25% of packaging to be reusable by 2025, rising to 50% by 2030, as part of a series of measures to tackle plastic pollution.
Campaigners from Friends of the Earth, Keep Britain Tidy and City to Sea are also calling on ministers to set a target for at least a 50% reduction in non-essential single-use plastics by 2025, alongside an overarching plastics reduction target, including but not limited to single-use plastics.
The group said this would ensure progressive reduction in the overall use of all non-essential plastics and build towards preventing plastic pollution of the environment as far as possible by 2042. They said this must also address harder to tackle plastics from vehicles tyres and brakes and from clothes among others, as well as the specific problem of microplastics.
The campaigners made the demands in a letter to environment secretary George Eustice to mark the end of a Defra consultation on banning some of the most polluting single-use plastic items, such as cutlery, plates and polystyrene containers.
In the letter, the campaigners said proposals to ban certain single-use items was a “useful first step” but one that didn’t “meet the urgency the plastics crisis demands”.
They said the bans needed to be implemented “with as much urgency as possible” citing the fact that many European countries have already taken this first step under the EU Single-use Plastics Directive.
They also noted how some countries have gone even further, like France which has legislated to ban plastic wrappings from many fruits and vegetables in supermarkets. The group urged the UK government to do the same.
