Environmental columnist Martin Cooper writes about Earth Month. 

April is the month for reflection and action on environmental issues facing our planet, and this year the theme is ‘Planet v Plastic’.

Last month, almost a quarter of a million people took part in the Big Plastic Count, run by Everyday Plastic and Greenpeace.

Their findings were published last week and, unsurprisingly, they were not good.

The Hunts Post: Martin Cooper says we are all still throwing away too much plastic.Martin Cooper says we are all still throwing away too much plastic. (Image: Martin Cooper)

Based on those taking part representing most UK homes, households are throwing away around 1.7 billion pieces of plastic per week – that’s 90 billion pieces per year.

So what is happening to all of this plastic?

There’s an improvement on how much is recycled – 17 per cent of plastic is actually turned into something else, up from 12 per cent last year.

Around 14 per cent is exported and 11 per cent of our plastic waste is sent to landfill, however 58 per cent is incinerated – more than half of it!

This is a choice our government is making.

As the cost of putting plastic waste in landfill increases, it is cheaper, financially, to burn the waste – but the environmental cost is even higher.

Incinerating plastic can release more carbon dioxide per tonne than burning coal, polluting the air that we breathe and worsening climate change.

This contradicts our government’s own commitment to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, especially as 18 new incinerators are being built in the UK.

And as I’ve said before in the column, recycling is not the magic wand either.

It still takes fossil fuels and water to turn the waste plastic into something else, and there’s a limit to the number of times it can be recycled, as it degrades with every process creating more microplastics in our land.

So what is the solution?

Governments have started UN negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty which will set a global target to reduce plastic – ideally cutting plastic production by at least 75 per cent by 2040.

And we can do our bit too – by not filling up our recycling bins with plastic and thinking we’re helping, but by making the conscious decision to choose to shop plastic free, and by reusing what we already have.

So as we celebrate Earth Month, remember the small actions we take today can have a big impact on the future of our planet for generations to come