There are an estimated 19,500,000,000 pieces of single-use plastic inside UK homes right now – a number that doesn’t need to rise. But as a consumer, many essential household items are tricky to buy in sustainable packaging (especially if you’re on a budget). So the last thing you want is non-essential plastic being gifted to you by big brands.
Marks & Spencer has become the latest retailer to come under fire for single-use plastic – for its newly launched ‘Little Shop’ campaign, which sees stores handing out miniature collectibles of the supermarket’s 25 best-selling grocery items to shoppers.
If customers spend more than £20 in store, they are given one of the mini-me products – which include a mini Colin the Caterpillar cake, bottle of milk or loaf of bread – made from a mixture of plastic, foil and cardboard.
The supermarket said it wants to “help your kids find out a bit more about where their food comes from, and why sustainability and balanced diets are important” – but some people aren’t happy.
One Twitter user called it “a waste of paper and plastic – so much rubbish” while another said that M&S should be “helping teach children to avoid unnecessary plastic” – rather than producing more of it.
An M&S spokesperson defended the campaign, telling HuffPost UK: “The issue of plastic is really important to us and we’re committed to reducing our use of plastic and reusing or recycling any we do use.
“Our Little Shop collectables have all been designed to last and we’ve worked hard to ensure a quarter of them are made from FSC certified card.”
The store says it wants to incentivise customers to return any leftover Little Shop items to store to be recycled through a ‘Play, Give, Recycle’ scheme. The plastic will be shredded, cleaned and melted down, the brand says.
But another Twitter user called the move “greenwash”, suggesting the public will throw away more than is ever recycled.
“As exciting as free plastic toys are to children, they tend to lose interest in them within days, if not hours."”
Chef and campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has previously warned consumers to be sceptical of big brands’ recycling schemes – telling HuffPost UK they can be a “smokescreen” for businesses to hide behind.
UK parents throw away millions of toys that children don’t play with anymore, research has shown. And lots of those toys end up in landfill, where they can’t break down. Earlier this year, a plastic ‘Thunderbirds’ figurine from a 1960s cereal pack washed up on a beach in Cornwall, perfectly intact.
Debate around the M&S campaign raises the question: in 2019, when we are increasingly aware of the damage plastic is doing, should big brands still be giving away plastic toys to kids?
Jo Ruxton, founder of campaigning group Plastic Oceans UK, says no: “As exciting as free plastic toys are to children, they tend to lose interest in them within days, if not hours,” she says. “It really is time to address the plethora of freebies that end up in landfills or worse, in the environment.”
She adds: “Children’s comics are no longer available without a plastic toy to take home and this means packaging in plastic bags; fast food outlets lure children in with their giveaways, and now it seems it’s the children, who care for the environment, who are rejecting this policy.”
Only this week Jacob Douglas, eight, from Basildon in Essex wrote a letter to McDonald’s asking the chain to stop giving out free gifts in Happy Meals, saying: “The toys are made of plastic and it is affecting the world around us.”
The toys, which were first added to meals in 1979, are often tied to promotional opportunities for kids’ film or TV. Happy Meal toys have been removed by local authorities in some places including Chile and San Francisco in a bid to tackle obesity.
In the UK, kids are leading the charge. Last month, sisters Ella McEwan, nine, and Caitlin, seven, launched a petition asking Burger King and McDonald’s to think of the environment and stop giving plastic toys out with every kid’s meal.
The pair decided to take action after learning about the environment and the impact of plastic on nature at school. “It made us very sad to see how plastic harms wildlife and pollutes the ocean, and we want to change this,” they wrote on their petition page, which has 398,039 signatures at the time of writing.
“The joy that many families get from our Happy Meal toys isn’t something that we can ignore.”
- A McDonald’s spokesperson.
Responding to the girls’ campaign, a McDonald’s spokesperson told HuffPost the company is committed to reducing plastic across the business, including in Happy Meals: “We know that our Happy Meal toys provide fun for children playing in our restaurants, but also provide many more fun filled hours at home too,” they said. “The joy that many families get from our Happy Meal toys isn’t something that we can ignore and any changes to that have to be carefully thought about.”
But Friends of the Earth’s plastic campaigner Julian Kirby agrees with customers calling out brands: “We’re not going to end the scourge of plastic pollution if stores continue to hand out free plastic tat to their customers,” he told HuffPostUK. “The public are calling for drastic action on pointless plastic – but too many firms aren’t listening.”
Ruxton added: “For an organisation with big ambitions to reduce their environmental impact as part of their Plan A, cutting out frivolous plastic in other areas would be a positive step in their journey towards sustainability.”