The UK throws away an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of plastic a week. New government policies and changes by supermarkets spurred by a treaty could curb that significantly.
“The fruit and veg aisle would start to look very different. You’d be looking back towards loose fruit and veg, unpackaged,” said Alison Colclough of the social enterprise Everyday Plastic.
Packaging is unnecesaary for most produce, according to Laura Burley of Greenpeace UK. She said single-use plastic products such as sachets for sauces and shampoo are likely to be phased out, said Burley. There are already bans on items including single-use plastic straws and stirrers.
The trend in recent years of shifting to lighter, softer plastics — ironically, driven by plastic-reduction targets — might be rethought, as the material is often hard to recycle. There could be a return for rigid lids on products such as hummus, which not only keep food fresh but can be recycled, Colclough suggested.
Most experts think a treaty would lead to larger-scale adoption of refill and reuse schemes, once mostly confined to health food shops, where people can top up old bottles with washing-up liquid, shampoo and more.
Marks & Spencer and Waitrose have recently trialled refillable schemes but Tesco axed its partnership with the Loop refill initiative three years ago. Burley said such schemes could work if done at scale. Customers could take their own containers to store to fill up on items such as pasta, rice, cereal and detergent.
A recent report by GoUnpackaged suggested an online-based home delivery and collection approach could be the most cost-effective reuse scheme. Colclough said it was a “particularly accessible” approach: used containers could be collected by the online supermarket, cleaned, refilled and sent out to other customers.
Sian Sutherland of A Plastic Planet, a “pro-business” campaign, likes to call such items “returnables”. “I would love to see in our kitchens not just a general waste bin and the recycling bin,” she said. “I’d love to see a returnable bin which is smart asset-tracked [digitally tagged]. All of this technology exists.”
Campaigners expert an increase in the use of alternative materials to plastic. Alongside established options such as glass and metal, emerging materials include compostable packaging made from seaweed.
Sutherland said she was particularly excited about the potential for using agricultural waste such as cellulose to make moulded fibre because a “massive” amount of the material exists. New Bottle Co has produced a drinks bottle using the moulded fibre, which is similar to the card-like packaging inside the boxes of some Apple gadgets.
But for the company to compete on cost with plastic bottle makers, it would need to do so at scale. That is why Sutherland believes a strong treaty is vital “to create a level playing field”.
Regardless of the outcome in Geneva, change is coming. A postcode lottery of what local authorities collect for recycling will end in 2026 under government plans. A year later, soft flexible plastics will have to be collected from homes and a bottle return scheme will begin in October 2027.
But no amount of recycling will fix the plastic pollution problem on its own. “Recycling plastic is a complete chimera,” Sutherland said. “What we need is to turn off that plastic tap and be given the choice to buy in a different way.”
