Environment columnist Martin Cooper writes about plastic waste

It’s that time of year where the eco-conscious get to shout about the plastic problem and what we can do about it.

The campaign, which started on July 1, is part of a global initiative from the Plastic Free Foundation which has a vision of seeing a world free of plastic waste.

But do these days, weeks and months of action actually help?

Martin Cooper writes about plastic-free July. (Image: Martin Cooper)

We all know (or should by now) that our throwaway culture is polluting our planet and we all need to do something in order to stop the ongoing production of single-use plastic.

Globally, we use millions of tonnes of the stuff every year - from bottled water on the go, to containers and packaging we buy our food and cleaning products in.

And we can’t just recycle our way out of this - nationally only 12 per cent of what goes into our recycling bins is actually recycled.

Plastic is not only polluting our planet, impacting communities around the world, and contributing to the climate crisis, but it’s making its way into our bodies through the air we breathe and the food we eat.

The only way we can stop this is by shifting from our disposable, single-use culture to a more sustainable, circular future, with reusing and refilling at the heart of it.

So many of our everyday things can be swapped from plastic to other more sustainable materials – and are easily available if you look.

Swapping toothpaste tubes to jars, plastic bags of food to reusable, refillable containers and plastic sticky tape to paper tape, there are a lot of easy ways to reduce plastic consumption.

And the more people make these choices, the more readily available they will become as manufacturers understand we don’t want their single use plastic.  

Awareness months, like Plastic Free July, are great at highlighting the issues and if they encourage us to make one small change to what we buy or how we buy it - from single use plastic to a reusable, then they do their job.