I am pleased that my campaign to reduce the usage of single-use plastics has been covered in the Bristol Post. We are destroying our precious planet, and the Government needs to step up its efforts on this. My 4 recommendations on what the Government should do are:

1. Put pressure on the big coffee shop chains to switch to a recyclable cup. The plastic lining used in most disposable hot drink cups cannot be separated from the paper, making them difficult to recycle. In the UK, 99.75 per cent of all coffee cups go to landfill or are incinerated.
2. Encourage increased recycling to save money. A post-2020 target recycling rate of 65 per cent could save almost £10 billion over a decade for the waste sector and in terms of social costs.
3. Get manufacturers to pay “significantly more” towards the recycling of the packaging used in their products. The UK should operate a “polluter pays” principle on difficult to recycle items such as black plastic, Lucozade bottles with plastic sleeves, coffee cups and Pringles tubes (the five different materials used makes the crisps tube near impossible to recycle).
4. Mandate that all new plastic bottles by 2023 must be made of 50 per cent recycled plastic, thereby creating a market for the recycled end product.