My kitchen cupboards are full again of items I thought I’d finally seen the back of. For the past couple of years, I have not bought a single plastic bag, always taking reusable ones along to the shops.
But despite my best efforts to never use one ever again, they have crept back into my house as an unfortunate consequence of the pandemic.
Whether it’s from online grocery shopping, with items now coming in dozens of bags, to help stem the spread of coronavirus, to Amazon deliveries wrapped in mounds of non-recyclable packaging, plastic use has risen sharply as the nation was told to stay at home.
Nearly 500 people recorded their plastic waste for a week as part of the Everyday Plastic Survey during lockdown. Between them, they collected