Round up of 2023
It’s been another busy year here at Everyday Plastic as we’ve continued our joint fight against the harmful effects of the plastic problem.
Plastic continues to retain its place on the mainstream news agenda, and as an issue that matters to people. And there has been (some) progress.
Most notably, the Global Plastics Treaty coordinated by the UN presents the biggest opportunity to curb plastic pollution in a generation. Governments from around the world will commit to a legally binding agreement that will reduce the impacts at every stage of the plastic life cycle. After three meetings, and with two to go, progress has been frustratingly slow, with no thanks to the presence of fossil fuel representatives at the negotiations.
In essence, the work carried out by ourselves and our peers is as urgent as ever. Here’s what we’ve been up to this year…
#ChooseLoose
In February, we launched our campaign calling for all UK supermarkets to remove plastic packaging from five fruit & veg products so shoppers can #ChooseLoose. To back up this call, we wanted to evidence the public demand for loose fruit & veg. And we did just that. Over 86,000 people signed our petition, our asks were shared across social media, and the campaign was even featured in the Guardian.
Whilst there are many challenges to reducing packaging on fresh produce, there are also huge opportunities. We hoped that the demand demonstrated by our petition could provide encouragement to supermarkets that their customers were ready for change. And we wanted to help them in accelerating the transition to loose fruit & veg. We sent letters to the heads of every major supermarket in the country telling them what we were doing and that we were ready to support.
On paper, this was a win-win. But this didn’t turn out to be as straightforward as it should have been.
Legends vs Laggards
As core members of the Break Free From Plastic movement, we collaborated with the BFFP team to pilot a new tactic aimed at retailers to celebrate less plastic legends and out the laggards. We put a call out to our community for suggestions, who of course never fail to provide us with fascinating insights. Essentially, big, global retailers = bad; small, local independents = better. The plan is to roll out the campaign globally next year, so keep your eyes peeled.
Temperature checks
We’ve run a series of mini campaigns across our social and email channels which have been a great way for us to take a temperature check on the issues that matter to you. These have included how to live with less plastic, greenwashing, bioplastics and more. One of these campaigns prompted such a huge response, that it has informed a new project that we’re launching next year.
We’ll be building on these mini campaigns for 2024, so please continue to engage with the content, share your frustrations and feelings, and give us vital insights so we can have the biggest impact.
The Big Plastic Count returns in 2024
Back in 2022, we ran The Big Plastic Count with our partners at Greenpeace UK. Nearly 250,000 people took part by counting their plastic packaging waste for one week and submitting their results online. It was an incredible movement that again demonstrated that urgent action on plastic is not only what we need, but what we want.
I’m very excited to say that we’ll be running The Big Plastic Count again in March 2024. It’s a powerful campaign that can educate, engage and empower hundreds of thousands of people across the country to gather data to push the government to take action. Stay tuned for a big announcement in mid-January.
Talks & workshops
Along with all the campaign work we’ve been doing, we’ve also delivered talks and workshops to hundreds of employees through our corporate talks programme. It is vital to engage businesses at every level to ensure teams are informed and drive ambitious change from within. The programme supports our campaigning work and provides us with an understanding of both the successes and the challenges within business. Find out more about booking a talk or workshop for your workplace here.
The day-to-day
Behind the scenes at Everyday Plastic is a small team that works hard to run our small campaigning organisation on a day-to-day basis. Our tasks are many, and include developing impactful projects and managing existing ones, finding new opportunities and meeting new people, building fresh evidence and navigating today’s major issues.
Our online community has grown to over 65,000 people this year. We are so grateful that you are on this journey with us. Over the summer, more than 160 people made a donation to help us to continue what we do. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here.
I want to say a big thank you to our brilliant team of Ali, Julia and Charlie, our board of non-executive directors, our colleagues at Greenpeace UK, and of course, to you, our community.
Finally, 2024 is shaping up to be a big one – we have some really exciting projects in the pipeline – and we will need you. Thank you for sticking with us and for supporting our work this year.
Wishing you a relaxing break and a positive 2024.
All the best,
Dan