Extinction Rebellion King’s Lynn and West Norfolk group’s “plastic attack” action at Tesco Express in Hardwick on 31st July.
Twelve members of the group gathered at the store, and though only five of us did a big shop, we filled two whole trolleys with unnecessary plastic packaging. It was absolutely disgusting to see how much waste we created, just by doing our shopping, so it’s difficult to imagine how much plastic the shop creates every day, every week, every year. We handed over these trolleys of rubbish to staff at the store, and explained that we weren’t doing this for ourselves, but for our children and everybody’s children, including all Tesco staff. The staff were very supportive and understanding of our action.
We did this to highlight the plastics crisis that the world is living through. About 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced since the 1950s – the weight of a billion elephants. Only 9% has been recycled, with the rest either burned (creating toxic atmospheric pollution), sent to landfill (where is never disappears) or thrown into the oceans (where it kills whales and dolphins, seabirds and fish). Most of the fish we eat now contains plastic, and the average person now consumes 70,000 pieces of microplastic a year.
Most people have been aware of the plastic crisis since Sir David Attenborough’s documentary Blue Planet II, and consumers throughout the country are rebelling against unnecessary plastic waste. Yet Tesco, which is the UK’s largest grocer, still refuses to take any serious action about the problem, and to take responsibility for the pollution it is creating. We hope that by highlighting their role in polluting their planet, and showing them that this is something their customers really care about, that they will start to show some leadership and stop shamefully helping to destroy our only home.
We call on Tesco to commit to eliminating single-use plastic packaging from all its own brand products (as Iceland already has) and all the products it stocks, and on the UK government to ban all single-use plastics.
