Number of household plastic packaging waste items thrown away in the UK 2024

Published by Bruna Alves, Mar 10, 2025

Households in the United Kingdom are estimated to throw away 1.7 billion items of plastic packaging per week. This means that 90 billion plastic packaging items are thrown away each year across all UK households. In 2023, approximately 2.3 million metric tons of plastic packaging waste was generated in the UK.

Estimated number of plastic packaging items thrown away by households in the United Kingdom in 2024

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Release date

April 2024

Region

United Kingdom

Survey time period

March 11 to 17, 2024

Number of respondents

77,783 households

Special properties

figures assume the data from the studied sample are typical across the UK

Supplementary notes

Over the course of one week in March 2024, 224,381 people from 77,783 UK households counted the number of plastic packaging items they threw out.

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Plastic waste in the UKPlastic packaging industry worldwidePlastics industry worldwidePlastic waste in EuropePlastic waste in the United States
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