Progressive plastics: Citizen survey

We asked people across the UK about their attitudes towards plastics, recycling and sustainability. We found that whilst a majority are concerned about the environment and keen to make environmentally-responsible decisions, many were baffled by confusing labels, a lack of sustainable product choices, and limited local recycling options.

What did the survey tell us?

76%say they recycle every plastic that they can

57%agree that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown them we need to do more to protect the planet

48%say they don't always recycle single-use plastic packaging because labels on products don't make it clear whether it can or cannot be recycled

33%claim that their local authority does not have recycling services for everything that is labelled as recyclable

More survey results

Key survey results

Participants were asked if they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements. Possible options were "Strongly agree/completely agree", "Agree", "Neither agree nor disagree", "Strongly agree/completely disagree", "Don’t know".

Shown below are the totals of Strongly/completely agree answers and agree answers, and the totals of strongly/completely disagree answers and disagree answers.

All figures are from 3Gem, who surveyed a representative sample of 2,000 people from across the UK.

Question	Agree	Disagree
Every plastic that I can recycle I do.	75.7%	8.9%
I don’t always recycle when I know I should.	29.0%	51.3%
I avoid buying items wrapped in plastic packaging where possible.	47.4%	19.0%
I try to only buy items in recyclable packaging.	38.6%	21.4%
It is too difficult to avoid plastic packaging.	64.6%	10.6%
I wish I could avoid plastics more but it is too difficult or time-consuming.	50.3%	15.6%
I wish I could avoid plastics more but it is too confusing.	38.4%	15.8%
I don’t always recycle because my local authority isn’t clear about what it does and does not accept for recycling.	33.5%	42.0%
My local authority does not have recycling services for everything that is labelled as recyclable.	33.3%	26.0%
Recycling plastic items is more confusing than other materials like cardboard, glass and paper.	59.8%	19.5%
I don’t always recycle because labels on the product don’t make it clear whether it can or cannot be recycled.	47.9%	29.1%
The coronavirus pandemic has shown me that we need to do more to protect the planet.	57.1%	12.8%
The increase in littering created by people improperly discarding used facemasks and PPE is creating an environmental problem for the future.	72.0%	5.0%

Informed by the results of the survey, the Royal Society of Chemistry is calling for the following:

Urgent focus on scientific research in four key areas around plastics: recyclability; degradation; measuring the impacts of plastics; designing new sustainable plastics. Read more.
Designing plastics with sustainability as a key feature. Doing so from the start could – in the long term – lead to products that are simpler and more efficient to recycle, facilitating a circular economy for plastics.
Improved infrastructure for processing waste plastic, in particular switching to a national strategy for recycling. This could also include introducing new infrastructure to process new, more sustainable types of plastic.

How is chemistry helping to solve the plastics problem?

Chemical scientists are working to produce more sustainable alternatives to today’s plastics. Dr Jennifer Garden from the University of Edinburgh conducts research into poly(lactic acid) (PLA), a complement to traditional plastics that can be industrially composted.

A significant problem with recycling traditional plastics is that even when they are collected and recycled properly, there is a loss in quality every time they are recycled. Poly(lactic acid), on the other hand, can be industrially composted or chemically recycled back to its constituent parts, before being remade into a new product of the same quality as the original.

Dr Jennifer Garden Picture: © Jennifer Garden

Dr Garden continues: "PLA products are commercially available, but we’ll need to change infrastructure to accommodate these new types of plastics. Despite being a great option for plastics of the future, we don’t yet have the infrastructure for collecting and composting PLA products on a large scale. Chemists, product designers and local government need to start working together to ensure that these innovative solutions actually deliver on their promise."

Dr Garden explains that in future plastics need to be designed with sustainability as a main focus.

"At the moment plastics are designed purely with function in mind – whether that’s strength, flexibility, and so on. We need to start thinking of sustainability as a key necessary property of any product. If there are several materials with similar performance, we should aim to pick the most sustainable one."

What are some more possible solutions?

Use polymers built entirely from renewable, biologically-derived feedstock chemicals, or from wastes like CO₂.
Design more durable or longer-lasting polymers, which can be reused several times.
Design polymers to incorporate special chemical and physical features to make them safely biodegradable on demand.
Consider how different polymers are combined to produce various products, and how this affects recyclability. For example, many of the films used in packaging are multilayered plastics made from several different polymers. The layers must be separated in order for the plastic to be recycled, which is generally not feasible. If these structures could be simplified to a single layer, these plastics could be recycled much more easily at end of life.

Progressive plastics: recent research

We've collected together some open access articles from our journals, demonstrating how chemists are working to address each of the major research challenges that must be tackled urgently if we are to achieve a more sustainable future for plastics.

Progressive plastics: explained

In a new series of explainers, we look at some of the difficult questions around the important issue of creating a sustainable future for plastics. Whether you are already a scientific expert, or you are new to this topic, you can use our handy guides to start conversations and inform yourself and those around you.

A plan for creating a circular economy for plastics

In last year’s report, Science to enable sustainable plastics, the Royal Society of Chemistry called for urgent fundamental research in the four key areas of degradation, recycling, measuring impacts of plastics, and designing new plastics – to hasten the arrival of truly sustainable plastic materials for the mass market.

Cooperation from government, industry, manufacturers and retailers will be essential in ensuring the results of this research can be implemented effectively, and that we have the necessary infrastructure in place to incorporate new, more sustainable types of plastics into a circular economy.

Read the report

RSC Podcast coming soon: focus on plastics

We're launching a brand new podcast entitled 'Brought to you by Chemistry', bringing together experts from science, politics, industry and beyond, to explore some of the biggest challenges we all face today.

The first series is a deep-dive into plastics, tackling recycling, degradation, microplastics and more.

You'll be able to access the episodes on our website or wherever you get your podcasts from 1 September 2021.