Plastic legacy

The abundant usefulness of plastic is tempered by the legacy it leaves when humans have no more use for it.

The material endures because it is durable, lightweight and low cost; factors that go some way to explaining how global production has increased from 1.5 million tonnes per year in 1950 to 245 million tonnes in 2008.

This upward trend is expected to continue, as will the issue of how to deal with waste.

Swindon-based Recycling Technologies maintain that in the EU, more than 47 million tons of waste plastic is produced each year with 13 per cent recycled and 18 per cent processed in Energy from Waste (EfW) plants.

The remainder — including 2.4 million tons per annum from Britain — goes to landfill either here or abroad, which incurs fiscal and carbon costs for transportation.

According to Waste Watch, discarded plastic packaging alone in Britain makes up around seven per cent by weight of the average household’s waste.