Use Less Plastic

Izzy: Hello, and welcome to the Carbon Copy Podcast. I’m Isabelle Sparrow and today I’m joined by special guest co-host Daniel Webb, Founder and Director of charity, Everyday Plastic. 

Dan: Hello 

Izzy: In our current podcast series, Do Something Bigger, we’re exploring different ways people can make a positive impact for climate and nature where they live or work. The series accompanies our year-long campaign, 25 Big Local Actions in 2025, and we’re covering everything – from rewilding to renewable energy – so if today’s topic isn’t your thing, do have a listen to previous episodes that are more relevant to you AND subscribe, to make sure you don’t miss the next ones. 

So, to today’s action, which is Use Less Plastic. Something I think we are all very aware that we need to do – but that sometimes can feel really quite tricky. 

Dan, before we hear from our guests, can you talk a bit about your organisation, and why this issue is so important? 

Dan: Absolutely, so Everyday Plastic, we’ve been going since 2018 and we’re really about challenging the system that’s driving the plastics crisis and we use research, data-led insights and campaigning to do so. I think what’s really important for us is kind of unpicking the complex and often unequal impacts of plastic and its ties to kind of wider social and environmental justices. In terms of the problem, I mean, it’s a vast, multi-layered complex issue. I think what’s really important to kind of say is that the plastics crisis is a crisis. Plastic production is set to triple by the year 2060. Plastic is a fossil-derived material. So emissions will rise at the same time and a lot of fossil fuel companies and chemical companies are really hedging their bets on plastics as the world shifts to more renewable energy and electric transport. Not only that, you know, there’s massive health impact. We talk about microplastics, a kind of stealth-like hazard that is kind of wreaking havoc on our bodies, on the environment as well. In the UK, almost 60% of our plastic waste is being incinerated. And I think it’s really important to mention that incinerators are more likely, in fact, 10 times more likely to be located in deprived areas. So it really is, you know, a social justice issue as well. But there is opportunities here. The Global Plastics Treaty, the final meeting is taking place in August. So this is a real, potentially once in a generation opportunity to kind of drive change and to reduce the impacts of plastic pollution or from production to disposal. There are other things happening in this country, particularly around extended producer responsibility, which is coming into effect very soon, which essentially means that producers of plastic have to pay for the, you know, management, the waste management of it. So, you know, the things are happening, you know, we want things to happen quicker. 

Ultimately, you know, coming back to that statistic around plastic production sets triple. If production is reduced significantly, it opens the doors for better recycling, less being incinerated or exported or entering the environment, reuse and refill, innovation in design, a whole host of really amazing opportunities. Ultimately, that is the big, the big call. 

Izzy: Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, the episodes called “Use Less Plastic” but obviously “Make Less Plastic” in order for people to use less plastic would also be a very, not quite so catchy title. Can you just explain exactly what the Big Plastic Count is for anyone that isn’t aware of it? 

Dan: Yeah, so the Big Plastic Count is the UK’s largest investigation into household plastic waste. So what we do is invite people from across the country to count their plastic waste for a week. So everything that they throw away into their bin, we ask them to tally using our categorisation sheet. 

What they do at the end of the week is enter their results into our website and then they click submit and that generates their personalised plastic footprint. So it tells them how much they threw away, what happens to it, you know, where most of their waste is coming from, for example, food and drink. Spoiler alert, most of our plastic waste comes from food and drink packaging. And so the more people that we have taking part in this, the bigger the picture we can present from a national perspective. In 2024, we determined that the UK is throwing away 1.7 billion pieces of plastic packaging waste every single week. Hardly any of it is getting recycled. Most of it is being incinerated. So it’s really about raising awareness, education, making it fun and accessible, but also we really need to use the campaign to drive change at political and industry level. 

Izzy: Yeah, I think it’s a really important point to make that it’s not just about putting the onus for change onto the consumer. It’s that a little bit, but it sounds like it’s mostly about demonstrating what a big problem there is. When people have completed their week of counting, what sort of tools and resources do you provide for people to then take the information that they’ve just gained and put that into some kind of action plan? 

Dan: The first thing is participants receive their plastic footprint. So they’ve got something tangible to take away, to know exactly what they’re throwing away and what is happening to it. And that really is aimed to become, you know, to be motivating. In many cases, people are shocked and angry, sad in many cases, but a lot of people really do take the results and try and apply changes to their weekly shops or how they consume plastic. We also provide a guide to reduce what they’re using. We split it by rooms in the house. We talk about the wider issue, how we need to be pushing for reuse and reduction in production. And if you’re, you know, in a school, then again, we provide additional resources as well. It’s always trying to encourage people to take the initiative as well and to feel that degree of motivation to move forward. 

Izzy: So our first guest today is CEO and Founder of Bristol-based charity City to Sea, Natalie Fée. Natalie, who is also a musician, told me about how the organisation came about and why she felt the need to address the issue of single use plastic. 

Natalie: Well, it wasn’t planned. I hadn’t worked in activism really or campaigning before. I was working in TV and media and I was just getting a bit frustrated about the lack of awareness and coverage in the media around environmental issues and particularly plastic. So going back to like 2014, it was way before the Blue Planet effect of 2017. 

And I remember becoming aware of the problem of plastic pollution, as many people did through the incredible footage of the albatross in the Midway Islands through the artist, Chris Jordan. I was just completely devastated at that. I just could not comprehend how such an incredible creature living thousands of miles away from any major land mass could be so directly impacted, like a third of those albatross chicks were dying in their nests with their bellies full of plastic. 

So yeah, I wasn’t even that into the oceans. I was completely terrified of the sea. I had no relationship with the ocean whatsoever, but it was the birds really that spoke to me and I knew that I just had to do something about it. I just didn’t feel like there was any question that I had to do something about it. I was in Bristol, which is my hometown. And one morning I was on my way to a Pilates class, I think it was, along the River Avon. And I saw all this stuff floating in the river and we get particularly high tides in Bristol. It’s the second highest tidal range in the world. 

And I had got off my bike and just stopped to look at what was happening. And there were islands of plastic waste floating down the Avon. This was in 2015, and Bristol was European Green Capital at the time. And there I was, witnessing literally, from city to sea, plastic. It wasn’t in the Atlantic or in the Pacific, it wasn’t thousands of miles away, it was on my doorstep. And that was when I had the idea for City to Sea. And I thought, well, look, if we can’t sort this out in a European Green Capital, then what chances have we got sorting it out in the middle of the Pacific or in the middle of the Atlantic? So that was really the inspiration. And that’s when I really sort of started City to Sea. 

Izzy: It’s really amazing to hear how Natalie had, really not a very related background before starting up the organisation and yet saw a problem and was so moved that she had to do something about it. And starting an organisation is no small thing. And you’ve got experience with this, Dan. So what were you doing before everyday plastic and what pushed you towards doing something bigger about it? 

Dan: There was that sort of light bulb moment for me. I moved to Margate back in 2016. Margate’s a coastal town. I’m not from the coast originally. So just being able to see plastic waste washed up on the beach was actually really eye opening. And I think relating that then to trip to my local Aldi where you can’t buy anything that’s not wrapped in packaging, maybe a tomato or a can of baked beans or something. But it just made it, I could start to make the connection between the two. I decided to just do a little experiment and I saved all my plastic waste for a year because I wanted to understand what my own personal impact was on the plastics crisis. I wanted to understand what I could do to improve it and really get an in-depth insight into what I was consuming, I guess, and throwing away. I think it was all about trying to reframe what we already know, trying to make it accessible, trying to provide more of a hook for people to get involved. 

Izzy: There’s been quite a lot of news recently about microplastics in particular ending up in people’s organs and in unborn children and things like that as well, which is all quite worrying stuff. But I think there’s an element of, we know a lot of that information, but sometimes it’s difficult to know what to do with it. So I think it’s really important to try and share these stories of organisations like yours, like Natalies, and also like our next guests as well who’ve kind of taken that motivation to do something and turned it into sort of practical action. So Victoria Coe is the founder of plastic-free beauty brand, KinKind. I spoke to her about the challenge of changing mindsets around plastic in the bathroom. 

Victoria: I worked for a long time in marketing at Reckitt Benckiser. So one of the big FMCG marketing companies. I was a bit of a laundry queen. I worked on laundry, stain removers like Vanish, Calgon, washing machine, what’s the word, water softener. I worked on brands like Clearasil, skincare. And during my tenure there, I actually worked across all of the home and personal care brands on sustainability and how we could help people use the current products in a more sustainable way. That kind of gave me the bit of the bug and it made me realise that businesses can do a lot more and should do a lot more to not put the onus on consumers to reduce their carbon footprint. And in a household cleaning, it’s a cleaning spray is like 95% water and it’s in a plastic bottle. Shampoo is 80% water in a plastic bottle. 

Businesses can easily do a lot more. We just need to make it available and communicate it to consumers that these options are there and that they really do deliver. It’s not as though you’re compromising.(…) People think, oh, it’s an eco product. Oh, it’s not gonna work. That’s the first assumption. It’s the first barrier that you have. I was in a trade show a couple of days ago and had a gentleman come up to me and he said, oh, what do you do? I said, well, we do shampoo in a bar. Oh, it can’t be plastic free. It was just like this absolute barrier. It had to be in a bottle for it to work. So we have these barriers that we have to get over to. It’s an education piece, but education not in a teaching way. It’s education and kind of bring people along with us way. 

Dan: Really, there’s a massive opportunity here for businesses to lead. Policy can be slow to come about. Businesses can be more reactive and responsive. Where are we gonna be in 10 to 15 years? Think of the progress we’ve made over the last five to 10 years. Businesses should be wanting to get ahead because policy will start to catch up. I think supermarkets really should be leading the way on this. We found them to be very risk averse. Decisions often require multi-department sort of sign off and approval. It’s really about trying to keep doing the work, you know, the organisations again, like ourselves, to keep having those conversations. There is a will within supermarkets, I think. Again, massive opportunity and supermarkets should be ambitious around that as well. 

Izzy: That piece about them being risk averse is really interesting because you almost feel like, are they worried that they cannot convince consumers to change their behaviour? Because I kind of feel like if anyone’s gonna convince consumers to change their behaviour, it’s, you know, the big six or whatever it is with their huge marketing budgets. I mean, it really wouldn’t be that hard for them to do advertising campaign about what they’re doing. And, you know, I kind of feel like consumers do what other consumers do. So you only just need to start the process and then they will be the ones calling out for it. I would be really interested to see whether you or anyone else has done any kind of research about the kind of consumer attitudes towards plastic-free products at the moment because I feel like it would be really interesting to know if there really is that much of a risk for supermarkets in taking plastic out. 

Dan: There are barriers, for sure, but I think there is a will, so if you ask customers, “Do you want less plastic packaging on your fruit and veg?” they’re gonna say, “Yes.” But actually, the reality is when they get into the store, the choice is not necessarily available. How they’re sold isn’t necessarily very clear. So I know that a bag of eight potatoes costs £2. But how much does eight different-sized potatoes cost when I go to weigh them? How do I weigh them? What’s the easiest way? I think this is where supermarkets have the responsibility to encourage and to guide their customers through that stage, really, to really help them make those choices. You know, that’s the problem at the moment. 

Izzy: City to Sea has led some of the most well-known plastic-related campaigns in the UK over the last few years. Most people will have heard of Refill, and will have seen Refill water fountains in places like train stations and shopping centres across the country. Natalie told me about this and some of the other key campaigns the charity was involved with. 

Natalie: Really, initially, we did some public consultations to just see what was the biggest issue and what were people most keen for us to solve locally. And the things that came out of that consultation were litter from plastic bottles, so water bottles, drinks bottles and bottle-top caps, and sewage-related litter, so things like cotton bud sticks and wet wipes and menstrual products. 

So the other thing was storm drains, which is where we’ve got these storm drains, so when there’s large quantities of water and rain, that plastic can get washed down the storm drains and literally straight out into our rivers and seas. But that felt like an issue that we didn’t quite feel we could tackle, like the infrastructure of Britain’s roads. So we focused on litter from plastic bottles and sewage-related plastics. So we focused from that. We built the Refill campaign, which probably still is our biggest campaign to date from a grassroots community level. And that turned into things like World Refill Day and more recently from a business-to-business perspective, the Global Reuse Summit. So refill became a big part of our campaigning work. And then we also started looking at sewage-related plastics, and we started with our first retailer-based petition back in 2016 called Switch the Stick, where we managed to get cotton buds banned from all major retailers, which stopped around 4 billion items of single-use plastic that weren’t going to be recycled from being produced each year. So Switch the Stick gave us a taste really for how we can actually influence change and we can get retailers to change product lines. So from that, we carried on looking at other items that were being flushed down our toilets. So we built the Plastic Free Periods Campaign from that and Rethink Periods. And that’s been a personal favourite really, because we’ve had seen some real changes in schools and in the education system around periods and the hidden plastic in periods. 

And then another big sort of win for us was the cutlery campaign which was a bit more recent where we did a petition and we were calling on the government to ban single-use takeaway items like forks, knives, plates, polystyrene takeaway items. And for me, seeing that ban come into effect was really satisfying because I hated seeing polystyrene takeaway items floating around in hedges and bushes and in the rivers and seas. So yeah, I could go on, but those are kind of some of the, I’d say, historic campaigns that have really sort of helped us, I think, make a dent in plastic production and plastic usage here in the UK. 

[Music] 

Izzy: Are you fed up with wading through waste? Maybe you want to help your community to unwrap the secret to going plastic-free! We’ve got loads of useful resources about how to reduce reliance on single-use plastics on our Use Less Plastic action page. The link is in the show notes – so, once you’ve finished listening – go check it out! 

[Cut music] 

Izzy: Carbon Copy is a charity and our focus is on local action that people can take together, collaboratively. Whilst many of the choices we make on a daily basis are around individual consumer products, I wanted to know how people can get involved in something bigger, with others in their community or at work. Here’s Natalie, with her thoughts. 

Natalie: Well, I think the first advice, first tip really is to download the Refill app. So just see what’s in your local area, check that your refill shops, refill points, water stations are registered on the refill app and maybe do some social media posts, tell people about it so that more people are aware. We’ve had over 330,000 places listed on the app and over half a million downloads. So it is a tool for people to use to be able to eat, drink and shop with less plastic. And then certainly with schools and within your local communities, there are ways in which we’ve seen some really lovely examples of people setting up their own sort of co-ops where they bulk buy and then they have refill points within a local church, for example, or within a local school where people can refill their laundry liquid if they don’t have a zero waste shop nearby. 

And then really supporting that big systemic change, supporting refill and reuse at government level. So, you know, speaking to your MP, but if you want to do that within your community, that’s something that you can galvanise your neighbours or people that you’re maybe in a climate group with or a Transition Town action group or a Plastic Free Community or a refill community and find out the dates of your surgery. Put that in your email list and get more people to go along so that your local MP thinks, oh yeah, this is still a really key issue for my constituents and is something that I need to advocate on behalf of in parliament. 

Dan: Yeah, I think what Nat is really encouraging there, you know, is that anyone, no matter what your age or your background or knowledge, you know, can get involved in pushing for change. There’s massive opportunities for people to get involved at a local level. We’re doing some work around this at the moment with the Big Plastic Count. 

We’re really keen to collaborate more closely with communities, you know, meeting them where they are and kind of understanding what actions are happening, you know, and solutions that are in place. Kind of outside those traditional groups just feels like the natural next step for when we’re trying to tackle the plastics crisis and the interconnected climate and social injustice crisis as well. 

Izzy: What you’re speaking about in terms of reaching groups within the community that maybe are not the ones who would be traditionally taking action on this. I mean, obviously there are a lot of climate action groups, there are a lot of transition town groups, but there are probably lots of other kinds of groups of people who are doing stuff which is really valuable within this space, but don’t even necessarily think of it as a environmentally focused action. They probably don’t start off thinking, “Oh, we’re going to change this community’s plastic use,” but they probably are having a significant impact by doing what they’re doing. And the reasons they’re doing it are just to make it a nicer place to live and make the community feel more connected and people who are isolated feel more valued. So I think there’s lots that people are already doing that feels this brief, but has never been set up as such. 

Dan: I think it’s now about trying to bring forward new stories and new storytellers, and particularly as I think a lot of the work that’s happened over the last seven years since I’ve been doing this, a lot has changed, but it feels like there’s now a moment to take it forward. How do we reframe the conversation? How do we take it out of the existing echo chamber? Celebrating these amazing groups and the amazing work that’s happening is really important. 

Izzy: With so much single-use plastic woven into our everyday lives, it can be hard to see how we might function without it – not least when considering it within a business context. I was interested to know more about how KinKind has promoted the environmental benefits of their products, and what Victoria’s advice for other businesses looking to reduce their impact would be. 

Victoria: In terms of our journey over the last five years, we started sort of quite eco-communicating, sort of quite very, very much so on the plastic-free, and our mission is clearly plastic-free and it’s reducing water content. But actually what we’ve realised is that we need to primarily talk about the hair benefits and the skin benefits. And if we shift that conversation, then we don’t, it seems as though we then don’t have to have this whole conversation with consumers about justifying whether it will really work. Because we’re talking hair benefits, they accept it for hair benefits, and then, oh, it’s actually in a bar format, that comes secondary. That’s OK, I’ll give it a go. Because it’s going to help my hair be more glossy or it’s going to help my hair have more volume, those types of conversations. So in terms of breaking the barriers, we’ve shifted to talk much more about beauty first and eco-second, rather than just pure eco, and that has actually really helped us. 

So, you know, it’s at the end of the day, it’s the what’s in it for me. So from any Carbon Copy type projects in any industry, whether it’s an energy industry or whatever, at the end of the day, the consumer mindset is what’s in it for me, whether that’s money saving or beauty benefit or whatever it might be. You know, I think we, as a sustainability industry, we have to recognise that consumer always looks for their own personal benefit first before the planet. 

Izzy: Something that we’ve learned as a charity over the last five years is it’s fine to talk about climate. Of course, that’s what we do. And we talk about nature protection and we talk about carbon emissions. And for a chunk of the population, that stuff is really important and it’s what motivates them and it gets them going. But for probably a bigger chunk of the population, they’re worried about it. Don’t get me wrong, people are generally worried about it, more than 70 percent of people, but it’s probably not their primary motivator. And so I think what Victoria is saying and I think is what’s really important is we need to think about how to encourage people to use less plastic in a way that isn’t about, oh, we need to save the planet. It’s about something else. It’s about something that is going to benefit them as well. And I suppose that conversation about the health implications of microplastics is probably a key motivator for people because it’s no longer about saving the turtles – as much as it is about saving the turtles – it’s also about protecting your children’s health, protecting your family’s health, protecting your own health. 

Dan: Yeah. And making it really accessible from a cost perspective as well. A lot of sustainable products are seen as premium. And I think, you know, the more that businesses, you know, probably major FMCG companies really start to build better, more environmentally responsible products into their portfolio, then some of the costs will come down on there and will make it more accessible. 

Izzy: Dan have you got any campaigns or projects that you’d like to tell us about that can help people – either on a household, or a community or even a workplace level – to reduce their plastic use? 

Dan: Well, I’m probably going to talk about the Big Plastic Count again here, only because, you know, it really does support people’s less plastic journey from the start. No experience is necessary. In fact, no experience is almost encouraged. It’s a really accessible way to start the journey, you know, whether you are an individual or a family. A lot of our work around the Big Plastic Count is is aimed at schools and communities and workplaces as well. And businesses, you know, we’ve designed it to be really accessible. You know, it is fun to come out with some some tangible data, some, you know, that you can apply to fit your lifestyle, to fit your budget. And at the same time, you know, you’re contributing to the work that we can do to take it to inform decision makers at a policy level and within big businesses as well. You know, the more people that can get involved in the project and the campaign over the next few years will really help to drive change. You know, we really believe that the project, you know, is it was all about building momentum and building a strong set of data. And, you know, we want to be able to to tell stories of participants as well. So I think it’s, you know, trying to mix, you know, hard data with with stories, particularly those at community level. 

Izzy: Plastic is so ubiquitous, there are so many items that involve single use plastic that it’s almost impossible to believe that a world could exist without it – and yet, we’ve had it before, so surely we could get back there again? I asked both Natalie and Victoria what their dreams were for the future. 

Natalie: Well, our research shows that the public is still crying out for change when it comes to plastics and really want to see reuse systems at scale. So my hope would be that we do transition away from our take, make, waste culture and move towards a circular economy, but one that’s accessible and affordable and fair for everybody. So I think that would be my vision not to see bins overflowing with coffee cups. And I’d also like to see more investment into the health impacts of plastics and micro plastics, especially with our food at our recent Global Reuse Summit. There were some fantastic panels and those sessions are all free for people to watch online if people want to watch that. But there was a particularly interesting one around the health impacts of plastic leaching into our food through our packaging and negative health impact. So I think that’s a real sort of area to watch. And I’m really hopeful that we’ll see more of that in the future, more investment into the research and more amplification of the findings of those studies. 

Victoria: My ambition is that the industry gets transformed. It has to. You know, when you walk down a Tesco or a Sainsbury’s aisle today and all you have is a great big sea of shampoo bottles, plastic shampoo, but it’s a sea of plastic. I call it a sea of plastic. We have to transform that these aisles and we just have to normalise the bottle shampoo, bottle conditioner, bottle body wash. It’s all a thing of the past. You know, the future is plastic free options that aren’t shipping 80 percent water internationally across countries and regions and stuff. You know, it’s just it’s an absolute no brainer and it’s a win-win for everybody. But it needs a lot of support from retailers to get there and a lot of support from manufacturers like the big brands to get there as well. 

Izzy: So as always, we’re going to finish up the episode with some thoughts about what we’ve learned. I am going to start off with the fact that I have learned that one point seven billion pieces of single use plastic are thrown away in the UK every week, which is absolutely astounding and horrifying. So that’s one of the big facts that I’ve learned in this episode. Dan, have you learned anything? 

Dan: Yeah, I mean loads, I mean, it feels like we’re in a transitional phase. You know, we’ve we’ve laid the foundations to how we talk about the plastics crisis. And now we’re looking to move forward. You know, there’s a lot of ambition. There’s a lot of urgency, particularly in how businesses get involved. But also what feels exciting is how we work with communities to push this forward now. So that’s what I’ve learned. 

Izzy: Dan, thank you so much for joining me today to discuss ways to use less plastic. Any final thoughts for us? 

Dan: Well, just a big thanks for having me. And yeah, important to just keep the conversation going and to ensure that we talk about plastics as an interconnected issue and how it impacts the climate, our health and obviously as a social justice. 

Izzy: You’ve been listening to Do Something Bigger, from the Carbon Copy Podcast. It was written and presented by me, Isabelle Sparrow and co-hosted by Daniel Webb, founder of Everyday Plastic. We’re grateful to our guests Natalie Fée of City to Sea, and Victoria Coe of KinKind for their time – and of course to you, for listening. This episode was produced and edited by Bradley Ingham. For more information about any of the projects or campaigns featured, head to the show notes. Our next episode, in two weeks’ time, is called Rewild Land. Until then, goodbye!