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The UK’s recycling rates are around 70% lower than in leading Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) countries with return rates exceeding 90% such as Germany, Finland and Norway. Financially incentivising recycling and reducing waste is important, but our end goal must be a reuse, not throwaway, economy. A DRS that includes glass is key. Glass is infinitely recyclable (although currently energy intensive). Inclusion of glass, as seen in Wales’ proposed model, helps improve resource recovery and reduce...

The idea that plastic will outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050 has become one of the most widely-quoted statistics in environmental discussions. But this disguises the real nature of the problem. Fish make up around 29% of animal biomass on this planet (Ritchie 2024) but calculating their mass in oceans is very difficult. We can estimate algae concentrations from satellite imagery - a proxy for fish food - but actual marine biomass remains uncertain and rather variable. Estimating ocean...

Founded in 1919, the French company Danone includes brands Evian, Activia, Actimel, Volvic, Alpro, and more. In 2020, it sold products in 120 countries with global sales reaching 23.6 billion euros, making it one of the world’s top ten largest plastic packaging producers. Danone claims to be committed to producing products that preserve the planet’s resources whilst also growing its business. This article will examine how committed Danone really is to reducing its plastic footprint. ​ A...

Paper-based packaging. Following the recognition of the harmful environmental and social impact of plastics, paper packaging has been adopted as a sustainable and ‘eco-friendly’ alternative. Paper-based packaging has become the largest source of packaging waste in the European Union, accounting for 41.1% of packaging waste – more than plastic and glass combined. While paper packaging may seem like a sustainable solution, research has highlighted the sustainability challenges it poses. A...

The Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is an environmental policy that will tackle litter and pollution, reducing the environmental impacts of plastics and leading us towards a circular economy. Whilst the UK’s plans are still faltering, other countries are showing us how it’s done. Germany has an impressive 98% return rate for drinks containers! Consumers can return a wide range of containers, including plastic bottles, cans and glass bottles for financial reward. Norway’s DRS was introduced in the...

Ocean plastic is often misunderstood - and misrepresented. Media images of massive garbage patches floating in the Pacific suggest the ocean is blanketed in rubbish. The reality is more complicated - and arguably more concerning. Of the 460 million tonnes of plastic produced annually around the globe (OECD 2022), 353 million tonnes go to waste and only about 9% is recycled in any meaningful way. Approximately 82 millions tonnes of this waste (of the 9%) is mismanaged - either littered,...

The ‘Global Plastic Laws’ database. The Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC) is a non-profit communications and advocacy organisation focused on the impacts of plastic on the environment, wildlife, the climate, human health, and social justice. Recognising the global scale of the plastic problem, the PPC launched the Global Plastic Laws database, which provides extensive information about local, national, and international legislation. While policies are debated and determined behind closed...

For years, companies making misleading environmental claims faced little more than bad press. A campaign group would raise the alarm, a brand would issue a careful non-apology, and the cycle would begin again. In 2025, that changed. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came fully into force on 6 April 2025, giving the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) the power to impose fines of up to 10% of a company's global annual turnover for misleading environmental claims,...

If there’s one thing to take away from the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC 2025) and the ocean plastics crisis, it’s that solutions do exist, but that they’re not scaling, not enforced and not shared equally. Cleanup technology may help in pollution hotspot areas, but they treat symptoms, not causes and are cost intensive. Recycling has a role, but its effectiveness is vastly overstated and most plastics are actually not recyclable to date. Individual actions - whilst valuable - won’t...

October 2025 saw the 13th annual Great Global Nurdle Hunt, a citizen science project with over 1,500 volunteers in 25 countries searching their shorelines for nurdles. Nurdles are the pre-production building blocks of most plastic products. They’re lentil-shaped microplastic pellets, ~2-3mm in diameter, which are melted down in plastic production. Unfortunately, nurdles have found their way into every corner of the world, with this year's hunt reporting that 92% of participating countries...

The Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is an important step towards reducing litter and waste, but real progress means moving away from single-use packaging entirely. There are different types of DRS, some focusing on recycling single-use items, whilst others, particularly for glass, promote reuse. The idea behind DRS in the UK is to incentivise consumers to recycle drinks containers, but focusing on a reuse system is a better option. Recycling plastic doesn’t always work. When it does, it consumes...

When Britain's recycling targets are met on paper, it is worth asking: where does the plastic actually go? The answer is increasingly overseas. Chemical recycling, as we explored in the previous piece in this series, has failed to provide the domestic processing solution the industry promised. That failure has a direct consequence: plastic that cannot be recycled at home gets shipped abroad instead. In 2024 alone, the UK exported 598 million kilos of plastic waste, an increase of 30 million...

The Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), due to launch in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland in 2027, will reward consumers for returning single-use drinks containers. It promises to tackle litter and pollution - but is flawed. The planned DRS covers aluminium, steel and PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles, but excludes many common containers, including milk bottles (HDPE) medicine bottles, syrup bottles and, crucially, glass bottles. Discarded glass bottles can start fires, injure...

The 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) brought ocean issues back into the global spotlight. Delegates from over 100 countries convened to reaffirm commitments to SDG 14: Life Below Water, address overfishing and clamp down on marine pollution. The tone was urgent, the diversity of stakeholders impressive and the pledges ambitious - but the gap between promises and action remains as wide as ever, with a clear lack of dedicated funding to prevent plastic and microplastic pollution. The...

On December 8th, 2023, an environmental crisis occurred off the northern coast of Spain when a cargo ship lost part of its load. In an alarming incident, an estimated 25 tonnes of plastic pellets, commonly referred to as nurdles, were released into the sea. This event elicited concern within the local community and renewed discussion about the environmental risks linked to plastic pollution. Nurdles are small, lentil-sized plastic pellets that serve as the starting material for various...

The petrochemical industry has long championed chemical recycling as the solution to the global plastics crisis. The pitch is straightforward: instead of sending plastic waste to landfill or incineration, break it down chemically back into raw materials and start again. Clean, circular, elegant. The reality is considerably messier. Chemical recycling works primarily through a process called pyrolysis. Plastic waste is heated in the absence of oxygen to produce an oil that can, in theory, be...

UK consumers use 25 billion single-use bottles yearly, over 6.5 billion of which are not recycled. That’s over 17 million plastic, glass, aluminium or steel bottles daily, contributing to polluted beaches, oceans and a growing emissions problem. You might have heard of the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), a simple yet powerful environmental initiative that places a small refundable deposit - around 20p - on single-use drinks containers. Consumers can get their deposit back upon returning the...

In 2016, headlines proclaimed that by 2050, plastic in the ocean could outweigh fish. The science behind this claim is weak - estimating biomass is notoriously difficult - but the message is no less important. The real issue isn’t a race between fish and plastic. It’s the failure of governments, industries and global systems to prevent known harm. At the 2025 UN Ocean Conference (UNOC), governments once again pledged action on marine pollution. But critics, including ClientEarth, argue that...

Coca-Cola has heavily promoted recycling as a solution to the problem of plastic pollution and environmental harm. This has unfairly shifted the burden of responsibility for plastic pollution onto consumers. Coca-Cola can continue to produce large quantities of cheap plastic bottles without any accountability, whilst the public takes the blame for litter. Recycling is a false solution to the plastic problem. Only 9% of plastic has ever been recycled. Many plastics can’t be recycled. Even ones...

For decades, we were told the recycling system was working. Sort your plastics, leave them at the kerb, and trust that they will find a new life. In 2026, that story is falling apart. The UK's plastics recycling sector is in freefall. In 2022, the country had 1.1 million tonnes of plastic recycling capacity. Within just 18 months, an estimated 260,000 tonnes per year of that capacity had been lost due to site closures. In the last two years alone, 21 recycling operations across Britain have...