Startling photo reveals the 15,774 pieces of single-use plastic found in just 22 houses on a single STREET as TV experiment challenges residents to go to war on waste
- Residents of a Bristol street were tasked with removing plastic from their homes
- The result was a staggering 15,774 pieces from just 22 different properties
- Scaled up for 27m households in the UK, it gives a national total of 19.5bn pieces
This shocking photo reveals the amount of single-use plastic found in just 22 houses on a single British street.
Residents in east Bristol were tasked with removing every piece of single-use plastic they had in their homes – from water bottles to washing up liquid, packaged fruit to toiletries – so it could be counted and recorded.
The result was a staggering 15,774 individual pieces of plastic designed to be thrown away after being used just once.
Residents of an east Bristol street were tasked with removing every piece of single-use plastic they had in their homes – from water bottles to washing up liquid, packaged fruit to toiletries – so it could be counted and recorded. Pictured, the plastic on the street for counting
The experiment was carried out by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Anita Rani for their new TV show, War On Plastic, which starts tonight on BBC1.
The presenters used the information they gathered from the street, described as a ‘friendly’ community of ‘families and couples, owners and renters, newcomers and old-timers’, to estimate the amount of single-use plastic across the UK.
Scaled up for the 27million households in Britain, the team suggested there could be ‘19.5billion pieces of single-use plastic in houses up and down the country today’.
Much of this plastic ends up in our oceans. Indeed every minute of every day the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic is emptied into the world’s oceans, Fearnley-Whittingstall explained.
The experiment was carried out by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Anita Rani, pictured, for their new TV show, War On Plastic, which starts tonight on BBC1
Anita, who admitted to having ‘more plastics than anyone’, said: ‘There is too much plastic in our lives. We’ve become so reliant on it.’
To see what can be done to change our habits, Anita and Hugh challenged the residents to spend the next four months reducing their plastic usage.
The presenters will then carried out a second count at the end of the TV experiment.
Some residents of the street were visibly distressed on hearing the total, with one father saying: ‘That’s not cool. That’s really not cool.’
Anita, who admitted to having ‘more plastics than anyone’, holds packets of wet wipes in front of a wet wipe mountain at the Bristol Sewarage system
However others, like retired Kaye Hodge, 71, needed more convincing.
She pointed out that for her habits to change, she would needed to be convinced that the damage her waste causes to the environment outweighs the convenience of buying single-use plastic.
War on Plastic with Hugh and Anita airs on BBC1 tonight at 9pm
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