Changing consumer habits is not enough to reduce plastic – industries need to come on board too

In the final part of her diary about trying to give up single-use plastic for Lent, Anne-Marie Trevelyan discusses what needs to happen next – beyond changing her own ways for good

The great #GiveUpPlasticForLent challenge has come to an end. I made it to Easter Sunday with almost no failures in terms of buying single-use plastic. I have lost weight, drunk more water, eaten more fruit and had some hilarious and heartwarming conversations with strangers about trying to be a slightly more considerate human towards our planet.

At a micro level, I have personally avoided adding a small amount of non-recyclable plastic into our world. But I can’t stop other people from doing the opposite, whether it’s buying that bottle of water, the pre-prepared foods in Tesco, the Mars Bar or Twix with their coffee on their way to work or the individually wrapped sushi at Kings Cross station for their journey home.

I have now got water bottles which I can refill in my car and on my desk (thank you to Refill, the Royal Marines and Brita for those). I have got several reusable coffee mugs (thank you to Sky Ocean Rescue, Costa and my cousin) which many coffee shops will now happily use rather than their own. I shall be continuing to use those cups and will no longer buy those disposable containers.

We all have to challenge our school canteens and work coffee bars, as well as the local cafe at the end of the road, to serve us our tea or coffee in our own reusable mugs – and perhaps encourage a willingness to rinse it out with boiling water and provide our favourite brew without obsessing over the “one shot or two” question for pricing (one place demanded to measure out the volume of my beaker before deciding whether I was getting a large or small cup of tea).

But my own changed habits are not enough.

I want to find paper bags, not plastic ones, to put my fruit, veg and bread into – and I want to be able to choose from unpackaged produce generally. I want to know the deli will accept my plastic takeaway containers, which I diligently cleaned and brought on my shopping trip. If it’s OK to bring your own bags and containers to the local Saturday market, surely the supermarkets can carry out the same habits. Using obsessive health and safety as an excuse for unnecessary packaging needs to stop.

I have met with supermarket chiefs in the last few weeks. They are all starting to look at supply chains and packaging, and are happy to continue talking to me and colleagues about the madness of our supermarket aisles which have become festivals of plastic. They are considering plastic-free shops. I have asked them to trial “packaging bins” at the checkout so that we can leave the excess wrappings with them to dispose of. Their cost and their effort – always a good motivator for reducing unnecessary waste!

The most important thing to do, though, will be to continue to keep this issue at the top of the agenda – every small change made by millions of people will have a big impact.

Bottled water may not be some Russian subversion plot, as some conspiracy theorists have suggested this week, but it has been creating jobs and profits for many for a number of years. The reality is that if consumers wish to continue to buy a new bottle with some sugary drink or water in it several times a week, then we must find ways to ensure that those bottles are all recycled back into the processing system and not discarded as waste with little thought to their final destination in our oceans, never to biodegrade in our children or grandchildren’s lifetimes.

I wholeheartedly support Michael Gove’s plans to create “reverse vending machines”, as it might motivate children to seek out discarded bottles to make a bit of pocket money for themselves and help to clean up the planet. I will continue to lobby for a levy on disposable coffee cups, to encourage a change in behaviour. It worked for plastic bags, so why not for these too? And the single-use disposable plastic straw really needs to become a thing of the past.

That’s the kind of nudge policy thinking which brought me into frontline politics. If we work with the grain of human nature we can really start to reverse the recent obsession with plastic packaging. The right of the consumer should be balanced with the responsibility of the user not to harm themselves or the wider environment – and producers and the government must help us get there.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan is MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed and permanent parliamentary secretary to the ministerial team, Ministry of Defence