Supermarket shoppers buying tomato ketchup are being urged to make a change to help cut the amount of plastic waste in our oceans.
In the UK it is estimated that 35.8 million plastic bottles are used every single day on average, yet around 16 million aren’t being recycled.
A wealth of items sold in supermarkets come in plastic bottles, including tomato ketchup which is a staple kitchen product for most UK households.
Research conducted by The Big Plastic Count 2024 found an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of plastic are thrown away in the UK every week – with approximately 60 pieces per household.
Of this plastic waste only a mere 17% is recycled, with the majority (58%) instead being incinerated or sent to landfill (11%).
Food and drink items were found to be the worst culprit for plastic waste, accounting for 81% last year, and experts warn that recycling alone won’t fix the problem.
The Big Plastic Count said: “Even when plastic gets recycled, it ultimately ends up in the same place as unrecycled plastic. Plastic quickly degrades during recycling and can only be re-processed once or twice before it’s landfilled, exported or incinerated.
“Thanks to tens of thousands of people who counted their plastic waste, the evidence is beyond doubt: the only way to tackle household plastic waste is to cut it at the source.”
Tomato ketchup is an everyday item that is bought by millions of households and is more and more often sold in a plastic bottle, making it a big contributor to the problem.
But households that make a simple switch to a glass bottle instead can help reduce the amount of plastic going to landfill and in our oceans.
While there are downsides to glass – it takes more carbon to transport because it’s heavier, it takes more heat to make and to break back down – generally glass is recycled more often and more times, and does not leach toxins into the world when it is discarded.
Glass also has no risk of leaching microplastics into the food chain or the water supplies, and is much easier to recycle. So on the whole opting to switch to glass is going to be better for the world.