We’re beating plastic for UN World Environment Day – Tues 5 June

Tuesday 5 June is UN World Environment Day and we’re joining in the fight against one of the planet’s biggest environmental challenges – plastic pollution.

Across our site offices, ADCW has organised several initiatives today to support the UN theme ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’, including a ‘great plastic pick-up’ and a brown bag plastic-free lunch challenge – no Tupperware allowed!  Or plastic containers, plastic wrappers, clingfilm, plastic yoghurt pots, plastic bags, plastic cups, plastic bottles  – anything of that kind.  Staff also tuned in to a free lunchtime webinar on plastic pollution, hosted by the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment.

Plastic is vital for many aspects of our work – particularly in the construction industry. Plastic hard hats have saved countless lives on construction sites, while plastic safety glasses protect our eyes.  Without plastic we wouldn’t have computers, mobile phones or cars.

But the big environmental problem is around single use plastics and the quantities in which these are used.

Every year 8 million tonnes of plastic such as water bottles enter our oceans, threatening marine and human life and destroying natural ecosystems. Current projections forecast that there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish by 2050. Two-thirds of plastic in oceans comes from land-based sources, including litter left on beaches, and washed down rivers and drains. The remainder is from materials lost at sea; such as containers going overboard (remember the bath tub ducks!) or lost fishing gear.

We should all look for new opportunities to remove single use plastics from our ways of working.  ADCW has already made some progress to reduce single use plastics at our site offices, by removing disposable plastic cups from drinking water dispensers.  Last year we used almost 31,000 plastic cups, which take about 450 years to breakdown in landfill.  Our Bulford office innovatively donated all their remaining un-used plastic cups to a local school.

We can all play our part to reduce plastic pollution at work and in our daily lives.

Just remember – if you can’t reuse it, refuse it!

Global Plastic Pollution in numbers:

 100,000 marine animals killed by plastics each year

 90% of bottled water found to contain plastic particles

 83% of tap water found to contain plastic particles

 50% of consumer plastics are single use

 10% of all human generated waste is plastic

 17 million barrels of oil used on plastic production annually

 Tiny pieces of plastic were found in 48% of a sample of the deepest living sea creatures, 2,000m (6,561.8ft) below the sea surface.