Given our love of online retail, it is not surprising the UK is one of the world’s largest producers of packaging waste, at 2.4 million tonnes a year. The good news is 70 per cent of this is recycled.
While single-use plastics have dominated headlines, the industry’s carbon footprint results from many factors, notably excessive use of cardboard and non-economical production processes. Coronavirus has exacerbated the issue, causing our consumption of disposables to skyrocket and our recycling bins to fill up.