Let's get noticed, shall we?
Microphone, check. List of names, check. Wish me luck.
Hi.
I have been e-mailing your press office.
I've got a list of names here, I've come a long way to talk to them.
Yes, that's my van.
We use them day in, day out and they're great useful things,
but we need to start understanding what they're made of.
And all they need to do is stick it on the packaging!
So far in our war on plastic...
..Anita and I have challenged the street
to kick their single-use habit...
So, are you up for it?
..we've gone deep undercover...
It's good and cold.
Oh! It's tap water.
..and made shocking discoveries.
The whole thing's just nuts, isn't it?
Now we're looking at the hidden plastics in our everyday lives.
I've just discovered they're everywhere.
Lurking in our best loved bathroom products...
Really? There's plastic in them?
That's crazy.
..even in the air that we breathe.
That's sort of raining down invisible all around us.
And while Anita steps the street experiment up a gear...
Why are you doing this to us?!
..I'm pushing at the top for a rethink of the system.
The ball is really in your court.
Now, I tell you, I understand.
Six weeks ago, Hugh and I helped 22 houses on a typical British street
in East Bristol count all their single-use plastic.
Here's some baskets for you all, get going.
This is the plastic packaging that contains our everyday essentials,
like food or toiletries, for a few days or weeks
before we throw it away.
We scaled up the street counts for a snapshot of how much
we all have in our homes across the country.
19 and a half billion.
That's not cool.
The street have taken on the challenge of seeing how much
they can reduce their tally over four months.
Wax covered cheese.
It's a small victory.
So far, most of our attention has been on the kitchen.
Milk delivery.
Now, I'm shifting the focus of my visits to another room
in the house that's also full of plastic,
the bathroom.
Hello, Anna. Hello.
Anna and her boyfriend Nick started with the highest single-use
plastic count on the street.
I don't think it's something that we can change overnight.
Nick, you've got body wash, why don't you just use the soap?
I'll give it a go, I'll give it a go. Good.
I've got sensitive skin, though.
Look at that!
And across the road, 27-year-old Jess has already started
to make some changes.
I have bought an alternative. Have you?
I'm not sure I'm a fan of it.
Toothpaste.
I use that and then I use this afterwards, just to be sure.
What's the point of that?
And in every bathroom I visit, there's one plastic wrapped product
I keep noticing.
These.
Saskie has a five-year-old son, Ezra.
We have got through a lot of wipes since he was born.
Facial cleansing wipes. They're easy to take away with you, they're easy
to travel with, like, they're really convenient.
I don't have any face wipes.
But I like toilet wipes.
I can't imagine going to the loo without them.
I don't like buying them, because they're in a plastic packet.
But it's the whole little gang of us who love a wipe,
a toilet wipe. It's a thing.
It's a thing! Soft luxuries.
Exactly! And that's how it makes me feel, luxurious.
A bit of digging reveals it's not just the plastic packaging
of wet wipes that poses a problem.
Morning!
So, I've organized a little outing to show the street the true scale
of the issue.
Here we go, the bus is here. Quick!
Come on.
I love a school trip.
MUSIC PLAYS
My Saturday morning crew.
Can anyone guess where we might be going?
It's got to be Avonmouth.
If it's Avonmouth, why didn't we go up the port way?
Because the GPS is taking us around the wrong way, the long way.
If you think about it, if you go over...
You can drop over to Henbury and Shirehampton.
# We're going where the sun shines brightly
# We're going where the sea is blue...#
ON THE GPS: You have reached your destination.
Oh, no!
PASSENGERS COUGH & RETCH
Why are you doing this to us?!
Right.
Come on, guys, this way.
We've got such a treat in store for you all.
Lead the way, Matt.
Matt Wheeldon is director of compliance at Wessex Water
and part of his job is to make sure anything that comes into Bristol
sewers that could harm the environment is removed.
I can't do this! I'm going to be vomiting.
DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS
Oh, my God.
Have a look at this huge mountain behind me.
This is 16 tonnes of wet wipes.
That is revolting.
This is from the city of Bristol alone
and this has been collected in three and a half days.
Mountains of it.
ANITA GAGS
You may well have heard about the problem of wipes combining
with fat to create drain-blocking fatbergs.
But that's just part of the wipe issue.
That's come all the way through the sewer system, it's probably been
through several pumps and that has got plastic in it and that is
not going to break down.
90% of the wet wipes on the market contain plastic.
Who knew that wipes had plastic in them?
How is that even allowed?
Doesn't make any sense. It's a crazy situation.
Obviously, not everyone flushes them down the toilet,
but they're still going somewhere.
It's still plastic.
It's still in the system and it's still a massive problem.
We've got to get a grip, haven't we?
I don't understand how the government is...
..not already dealt with this. How they haven't seen
that this is a problem already.
The issue with wipes isn't just that they're being flushed
when they shouldn't be.
This pile represents just a fraction of what's being used in one city.
And almost every wipe is yet another piece of single-use plastic
which will be buried, burnt or worse still, end up in the sea.
A country of just over 60 million people buy 11 billion wipes a year.
Can you imagine how big the pile would be if it was the whole country?
To the moon. To the moon!
So just how plastic are wet wipes?
I've come to Middlesex University, where I've asked for a selection
of different wipes to be tested by analytical chemist
Dr Leonardo Pantoja.
In order to find out the actual composition
of the fibre material,
we're going to add some acid.
And this goes into a microwave digester, in which it is heated up
and also it's under pressure.
As the acid is heated, it will dissolve any natural material
that could be in the wipe, such as paper or cotton.
Out we come.
So, the next part is to release the pressure.
You can see the nitric acid flowing out of it. Oh, yes.
That's quite a thing.
So, if there's anything left in the tube, Leonardo,
it will be plastic.
Exactly.
So, this is what is coming out.
A little bit broken.
But this is it. What?!
Let me put some gloves on, so I can have a feel of that.
So, all of this is plastic?
That's crazy!
That is practically an entire wet wipe.
Scales confirm that the majority of this wipe has been left behind.
84%.
Exactly 84%.
Most of it's plastic.
Most of it and, obviously, none of this is in the information
that is given to the consumer on the labels.
I had no idea.
I think the vast majority of the public have no idea there's plastic
in a wet wipe.
Can you tell me what wipe we've been testing?
This is the wipe that we've been testing.
Johnson & Johnson baby wipe.
I mean that's, this is an essential for a lot of parents.
Leonardo uses another technique to confirm the chemical fingerprint
of a different plastic in other popular brands.
Including Procter & Gamble's Pampers and Kimberly-Clark's Huggies.
We found some cellulose, which is a natural fibre,
but most wipes again are made of plastic material.
So, it does contain natural fibres, but it also contains plastic.
Exactly, yes.
Oh, dear.
My goodness. That's an absolute disaster, isn't it?
Because we are, we're practically wipe fanatics in this country.
When we do buy something in single-use plastic,
we're encouraged to do the right thing and, if it's recyclable,
make sure we recycle it.
I've been exploring how well this system is working,
by tracing some of the 665,000 tonnes of plastic
we sent abroad for recycling in the last year.
What a mess!
When I visited Malaysia, I was shocked to discover vast
mountains of exposed plastics that are clearly never
going to be recycled.
It's like some dystopian nightmare.
A plastic planet.
Within minutes I found plastic from UK supermarkets, UK brands
and even UK recycling bags.
We've got Milton Keynes here.
Rhondda...that's Wales.
Braintree District Council.
The whole thing's just nuts, isn't it?
And I met families who believe the burning of foreign plastics
is affecting their health.
Oh, my God.
I want to find out who's responsible for this mess.
Is it our government?
Is it our supermarkets?
Is it the manufacturers of these goods?
I start by going back up the export chain and ask to speak
to the council whose bags I found in Malaysia,
about how their plastics are handled at home and abroad.
The first to reply is Rhondda Cynon Taff, in South Wales.
This is a national database and I found the bit of it
that applies to Rhondda Council.
And in this column over here
is a list of businesses who receive recycling material from Rhondda
Council, and then suddenly, in this column, look, Malaysia.
And again here, Malaysia.
There's no address, no company name.
And actually if you look at the, the numbers involved, it comes
to well over a thousand tonnes of mixed plastics that were sent
to Malaysia during this period of just over a year.
This data is publicly available, so I'm hoping Rhondda council
can shed some light on the issue.
They've put forward their Director of Street Care Services...
Hi, there.
..Nigel Wheeler.
You must be Nigel. Yeah.
How are you? Welcome.
We have between 550-580 tonnes a week coming in here.
This is all mixed recycling.
Yes.
So this is one of your...
..local recycling bags.
Here's the list of things that are allowed in. Yes.
And, you know, some of the final bales there.
Where will this go now?
This here goes to our contractor, who takes our plastic.
They'll then wash it, clean it, send it to a reprocessing plant.
Does this plastic always stay in the UK?
Yes. Nothing goes to China, it's all done in this country.
Because I've been trying to do some
background work on where all the plastics in the UK end up.
I've been looking at the waste data flow spreadsheets.
And I managed to find one for Rhondda for the past year
or so and at the final column here, it says the final users.
It says Malaysia.
And then Poland here,
and then Malaysia again.
I'd have to check what materials they are.
I actually went out to Malaysia to find out how much UK plastics
were actually reaching Malaysia and in amongst that,
I actually found a plastic bag from Rhondda.
Right, OK.
So, that is reaching Malaysia and I'm just trying to find out,
I mean, did you have any idea that any of your plastics
were going to Malaysia?
Material has gone out from here, but we don't send much now.
I'd have to check what material we've sent out to Malaysia.
I mean, I was there just a few... Yeah, I'd have to check.
..a few weeks ago.
I mean, I've got the...
Are you happy to go through with this? Not really. I'm going to stop this, then.
I mean, at the end of day, all we've done, can we stop the camera?
What we've done is give you permission to come on the site to film the actual process... Sure.
..from our point of view.
I mean, confronting our director here about... I just thought
you would want to know.
Where do I go next?
To find out how this material is getting to Malaysia.
Well, I will look into that, how that's got there.
Can we not film, please?
I don't know what to make of that.
Clearly asking about Malaysia was a very sensitive question.
The comms guy steps in and ends the interview and I'm left wondering...
..does the person who is meant to know where this plastic is going
actually know?
I think it's pretty obvious that this situation isn't
going to be unique to Rhondda.
I've got plastic bags that I picked up in Malaysia from Braintree
Council, from Milton Keynes Council.
And what I'm beginning to wonder is,
is this actually the picture all over the UK?
Is it somehow systemic?
And if that's the case, what's driving it?
And how can it be sorted out?
The person who's ultimately in charge of our recycling
is the Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Gove.
So, I'm going to write to him to ask for a meeting to discuss
how it can be fixed.
Wet wipes have become daily essentials.
Before I discovered they contained plastic, I got through quite a few
for removing make-up.
Look at it.
Perhaps it's no wonder the global market has increased by 30%
in the last five years.
And the world's second largest consumer of them is the UK.
Glass wipes, bathroom wipes, facial cleansing wipes, car wipes!
Toddler wipes, anti-disinfectant, multi-surface,
antibacterial, leather cleaning wipe.
Where there's a market, there's a wipe.
We're now spending almost half a billion pounds a year on wipes.
These have to be my favourite, deep-cleaning teeth wipe.
How do you even use one of these things?
Is that it? Or is it that way?
I don't know. And then what do you do?
It's quite refreshing.
No, teeth wipe, no!
We've gone mad. Completely mad!
I've brought my wet wipe haul to a good old-fashioned car-boot sale
in Cardiff.
Morning.
I want to ask people about the information we're given
detailing what wipes are really made of.
But first, why do we buy so many of them?
What's you name? Hilary.
Hilary, nice to meet you, Hilary.
Do you use wipes? Nappy wipes.
For my baby grandson.
I use wipes to clean my utensils in my house. I use wipes
to clean my cars.
I use wipes for everything. Do you? Floor wipes.
Kitchen? Oh, yes. Bathroom? Yeah.
Toilets? Yeah. If it makes my house look good, then, I'll use them.
Ear and eye wipes for your dog.
There you are, how's that?
There's a good girl.
My bin, by the end of the day,
I will be honest, it's usually full of wet wipes.
What if I were to tell you 90% of the wipes that you can buy
in Britain have plastic in them?
No way.
Really? Plastic in them?
That's insane.
Oh, my God.
I'm shocked. What do I have to do, you know?
To continue to use it for my children or I'll have to stop.
This is the dilemma.
It's not labelled, at all? On... Go on, have a look. See what you think.
I got the ingredients here, but there's not a mention of plastic!
Or anything that you can really understand, right? No, no.
As my car-boot sale visitors are discovering, the ingredients only
say what's being put ON the wipes.
Nowhere does it list all the components that make
up the wipes themselves.
I'm surprised that the big companies aren't doing more.
I think the public needs be more educated.
They should have it on there.
They're trying to cut the plastic out.
Quite rightly, people are saying that the companies have a duty
to tell us what's in them.
This is about letting us make an informed decision
and we can only make an informed choice about what we want to buy,
if you tell us the truth about what we're buying.
And at the moment, we have no idea.
I decide to look a bit deeper into who's making these wipes
and discover three of the leading manufacturers keen to point out
their environmental credentials and that they adhere
to industry best practice.
They are Johnson & Johnson...
"The people of Johnson & Johnson are about changing the trajectory
"of health for humanity." Wow.
..Procter & Gamble...
"We are committed to deliver eco-friendly brands that consumers
"can enjoy responsibly."
..and Kimberly-Clark.
"We use sustainable practice that supports a healthy planet."
These contain plastic.
There is nothing sustainable about these.
How is this baby wipe, this facial wipe and these wipes.
how were they benefiting our planet?
How do these products go towards a healthier planet?
There's no consistency in the message that they're portraying
and the products that they're delivering.
And there's no nowhere on this product that tells me
it contains plastic.
While there's currently no legal obligation on the company's part
to label the plastic content,
I'm very interested in talking to them about how
they're communicating what's in their wipes to their customers.
Don't you want to know?
Wouldn't you rather that they've just said, "Yeah, OK,
"You love a wet wipe, we make them for you,
"by the way, they've got plastic in them."
And then at least we have the choice.
It's taken us just 70 years
from the time we started mass-producing plastic
to clog up our oceans with the stuff.
But scientists are only beginning to understand the scale
of the problem.
And what they're telling us is that plastics
do not degrade harmlessly.
They break up into ever-smaller pieces.
These microplastics are poisoning the natural world.
Getting into the bodies of marine creatures
and entering the food chain.
And it's now emerging that one particular type of microplastic
is being pumped out of almost all our homes,
day after day.
So, this is where all of the washing happens.
It's our first washing lab.
I've brought this polyester fleece with me.
Fantastic. I've had it for a couple of years.
I don't wear it massively often, but it's probably had two
or three washes. OK.
Marine scientist Imogen Napper, at Plymouth University, has spent
months washing different synthetic clothes to measure how many
fibres are released.
Imogen, what's actually happening to these fabrics and their fibres
during the wash? When they're swishing and swirling
around the water, fibres can detach from our clothes and go
into the waste water.
But today our mesh is going to capture any fibres?
Exactly, so we can analyse them later.
Two-thirds of the clothes we buy contain plastic.
A 100% polyester fleece like mine is, quite simply, 100% plastic.
An acrylic sweater is also plastic.
And a T-shirt made from a polyester-cotton blend is partly,
you guessed it, plastic.
But what happens to all this plastic when we wash it?
Imogen and I start by looking at what's come off
my polyester fleece.
Definitely see some stuff.
Mm, you see the fluff in the tube itself.
If we just rest that there.
Some of that's actually come around the edges of...oh, my goodness.
So, quite a lot.
And 100% plastic.
At the moment, there's nothing in the washing machine that's stopping
these fibres going down the drain.
Now, I must admit, I am feeling kind of ashamed.
Just unleashing that sort of mess of plastic fibre.
For a typical wash load of acrylic clothing,
which is about 6kg, up to 700,000 fibres can come
off our clothes and go down the drain.
That's well on the way to a million fibres from a single wash.
Then you just start to extrapolate wash after wash, street after street,
cities, nations, the whole world.
Billions and billions of fibres going out down the drain.
Day in, day out.
This doesn't necessarily mean we should stop buying synthetic clothes.
Cotton and wool also have their environmental problems.
Long term, the solution probably lies in better fabrics,
designed specifically to shed fewer fibres.
But right now, doing our laundry on shorter washes and less often
can help reduce what we're sending down our drains.
To find out where the fibres we're shedding end up,
I talked to the head of the university lab, who first coined
the term "microplastics", Professor Richard Thompson.
We're finding plastic fibres at the sea surface.
We're even finding them in the deep sea, thousands of meters down.
We found them in cores of Arctic sea ice and we're finding them
in the guts of marine organisms.
We know that other types of microplastic,
typically the more spherical pieces,
have the potential to cause harm in some marine invertebrates.
There's every suggestion that fibres are more likely to cause
entanglement, obstruction in the guts, possibly.
So, to me, there's a warning signal here.
So, if they're in the guts of marine organisms,
we eat marine organisms,
in my case, quite enthusiastically,
should I be worried about the impact on human health?
To me, it's a cause for concern today.
But I would be more worried about your exposure from the air
around you, from particles falling on your dinner plate
while you're preparing your food,
the quantities are likely to be far greater than the quantities
that are coming back onto your dinner plate
from the fish in the sea.
Hang on a moment.
There's plastic in the air around us?
How is it getting there?
And where from?
Richard directs me to some cutting-edge research
being carried out on the rooftops of King's College,
London, by Dr Stephanie Wright.
Good morning, Stephanie.
Hi, Hugh. How are you? Fine, thanks. How are you?
Yeah, good. Great.
I like your laboratory.
It's nice, isn't it?
It's nice in nice weather.
Stephanie and her team have been putting a rain gauge
to a novel use.
We are interested in microplastics.
So, dust that settles naturally out of the atmosphere,
or with rainfall, gets caught on this surface.
And are you recording plastics in your data?
We find on average around 700
plastic fibres deposit per metre squared, per day.
Which doesn't... Sounds like quite a lot. It does.
And if we can calculate that up to the just the City
of London borough, that's the equivalent of over two billion
plastic fibres each day.
So, if we stuck a hoop over the City of London over there,
two billion tiny plastic particles
settling there every day? It's a surprise,
because you can't see them.
But the moment you filter a sample and get under the microscope,
and you see lots of particles.
We found over eight different types of plastics in our samples.
Polyacrylonitrile was the most common type.
What you call acrylic? Acrylic fibre. That's what this is?
Yes. We also commonly found polyester.
And where do you think these fibres are coming from?
We think they're coming from synthetic textiles.
Clothes. Clothing, definitely.
Polyacrylonitrile is commonly used in outdoor wear,
in outdoor textiles and canvases and yacht sails, coats.
We're actually shedding fibres, giving them up into the air.
That's, that's happening every day, all the time.
Could that be a real health worry?
Potentially, it all depends on how small these fibres can get
and if they can get to a size which could enter our airway.
What we know from an industrial workplace setting is that exposure
to high concentrations of plastic fibres can cause lung disease.
It can cause inflammation and can cause
breathing difficulties, wheezing.
But what we don't know is what exposure to low levels
over our entire lifecourse might look like.
Two billion microfibres falling every day on the square mile
of the City of London
feels like a pressing reason to explore the impact of long-term
exposure on our bodies.
I think I now have a new and rather alarming perspective
on these tiny plastic particles.
I've thought about them and worried about them in the sea.
And now I've just discovered they're everywhere,
they're in the air all around us.
And now just looking around at everybody who's wearing
synthetic fibres. Well, we're all potentially just shedding
these fibres into the air all the time, everywhere we go.
They're, sort of, raining down invisible all around us.
To get a clearer picture of what could be happening, I offered
to help with the latest research into these airborne plastics.
The King's College, London team have given me some state of the art
sampling kit to bring to the street in Bristol.
Hello, Caroline. Hi, come in.
That looks pretty heavy.
It is heavy.
Simon and Caroline are the latest recruits in a ground-breaking
experiment to test the air for the level of microplastics
within our homes.
This is the first time an experiment has been done to measure these tiny
plastic microfibres.
So, what we're breathing into our bodies? To find out how much
we're breathing in, to find out just how present they are in our lives
and what the consequences of that could be. Yeah.
The sampling filter can trap particulates so small
that they could be breathed deep into our lungs,
where it's more difficult for the body to get rid of them.
FILTER VIBRATES
All right, it's wheezing.
Let's see if we can make it a bit quieter for you.
Yeah, soundproof, they said.
Oh, wow.
Not as loud as I was expecting it to be, which is great.
Well, maybe it's not massively annoying in your kitchen,
but I have got another question for you. Oh, right.
I mean, I'd be quite interested to know what the microfibre situation
is while you're asleep.
OK. OK. Yeah. All right.
It's a nice replacement for your snoring.
Oh, really? Yeah.
So, you're used to these kind of noises!
I do suck a lot of microfibres up.
Well, it's very sporting of you.
Time to measure the fibres in your life.
Next-door neighbours Saskie and Ezra
have also agreed to take part in the experiment.
And then we'll have to see what we've caught.
Sounds like a cat.
At the end of three days, the collection cassettes will be sent
back to the lab at King's College for analysis.
Goodnight, Ez. Goodnight.
See you in the morning. See you in the morning.
While Saskie and Ezra wait to find out if plastic particles are present
in the air they're breathing,
there's one hidden plastic that they have managed to get rid of.
So, Ez, do you wash your own face now?
Uh-huh.
And what do you use?
Flannel.
And Ezra's not the only one to ditch the wipes.
I've got one more wipe left to go.
I cannot, in any sense, use a wipe now,
having seen that white mountain thing.
I have never considered about them having
plastic in. It's cliche, isn't it?
But knowledge is power.
Imagine if we all had this knowledge about wipes.
That could really make a difference to the amount of plastic
we're throwing away.
Despite going back and forth on e-mail with the three leading
companies over the last ten weeks, they haven't agreed to meet me
to talk about labelling their wipes to say they contain plastic.
But I have discovered that an upcoming piece of European
legislation means they'll have to state this on the pack
in around two years' time.
Even if the UK is no longer in the EU by then.
It's brilliant.
The only problem is, by the time this has come into play, let's say
it's two years, we will have used another 22 billion wet wipes.
It's a mind-boggling amount.
So, I wrote to the wet wipe companies again asking,
"Will you do the right thing and immediately add labels to your packs?"
Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark acknowledged
they will fall in line with EU legislation once it's finalised,
but this is unlikely to be before summer 2021.
Johnson & Johnson's response is slightly different.
"We will implement these as soon as the final label format
"is confirmed by legislators."
They think that's April 2020.
But none of them have committed to putting a label on the pack now.
I know customers want this information and as they won't
meet me, I'm going to have to think of a way of asking the question
they can't avoid.
Back on the street, Anna's been inspired by her change with wipes
to find even more ways to stop adding new plastic to the bathroom.
I, kind of, put this post out there.
Make all natural cleaning bits and bobs.
Some people are saying that they're definitely up
for a little gathering.
Cup of tea, few biscuits, have a natter, make some toilet bombs.
Joining Anna to see if they can bring some plastic-free dazzle
to their bathrooms are Dan, Jodie and Saskie.
Their first task is to create a household spray cleaner.
Has everybody got an empty bottle of some sort? Yeah.
Fill an old trigger bottle with half vinegar, half water.
Add the peel of lemons or oranges...
..followed by a sprinkling of bicarbonate of soda...
Our grandparents' generation would have used these same things.
Totally. It's just knowledge that we've lost.
..and a vigorous shake.
It's cheap, as well. It is, yeah.
But will the spray bring out the sparkle?
Let's see, all those little bits of grime are coming off.
It's shiny.
Have a general clean while I'm here.
I'm quite pleased with that.
The next challenge is to make an explosively effective cleaner
for the toilets.
Some fizzy toilet bombs.
First, choose some scented oil.
Making sure it's from a sustainable source.
Ahh.
Then mix one and a third cups of baking soda with half a cup
of citric acid and slowly add water, scented with the oil.
Mould into small balls and fit them into a silicon ice tray.
It's going to fizz! It's going to clean my toilet.
But will these little bath bombs blitz the bowl?
There we go.
It doesn't look like it's doing quite what we expected.
It took a little while to make these and...
..I probably wouldn't bother again.
For those unconvinced by the handmade route to plastic reduction,
there are a few simpler bathroom swaps
you could try at home.
A plastic toothbrush can be replaced by one made of bamboo.
Instead of disposable razors,
you could use a metal one.
And shampoo and conditioner is also available in bar form.
When it comes to the single-use plastics we can't do without,
how do we make sure that our recycling system can deal
with them properly?
I'm still waiting to talk about that with the Secretary
of State for the Environment, Michael Gove.
But when I'm asked to speak at a high-profile event about waste,
there's an unexpected bonus.
One of the other speakers? Michael Gove.
So, when I'm on stage today he'll be in the audience.
That's an opportunity not to be missed.
The Waste to Wealth summit is being hosted by one of the
Prince of Wales' charities, Business in the Community.
We are the first generation to know that we are destroying the world.
And the last that can do anything about it.
Michael Gove is currently preparing a new waste and resources strategy,
which I'm hoping he'll be using to fix our broken recycling system.
Please welcome Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
And he's in the front row, just where I want him.
Hugh, I mean, what's your perspective,
from a consumer's standpoint, on what's going on now?
Only a few weeks ago I was in Malaysia,
on illegal dump sites, sometimes the size of two or three
football pitches, with plastic waste piled in bales.
And it's certainly not the outcome that people are hoping for,
when they feel that they're doing the right thing
and putting their plastic recycling where they're told to put it.
Can I just say that I'm delighted to see the Secretary
of State here today.
We felt we almost lost him last week to Brexit.
I'm very much hoping that one of the reasons he's with us today
is perhaps with a sense of unfinished business
on this massive issue of waste.
I've got some of my message across, but at the post-event mingle,
I want to pin the Secretary of State down about our meeting
to discuss the issue properly.
Very nice to see you. Very good to see you.
I hope that what we can do in the waste and resources strategy
will go at least some of the way to making you think that the government
is taking this seriously.
And as I say, I wouldn't expect you to, to, sort of, plant
an endorsement on it,
but, but your challenge is so important and thank you.
Well, thanks very much.
I mean, what I would really love and I'm hearing noises that you're up
for a proper sit-down chat about it sometime... Definitely. Oh, absolutely. ..soon, because that's
where we get to hear how the actions will match the rhetoric.
So, I think we can say the meeting's in the bag.
But before that happens, I want to understand
how our recycling system is allowing thousands of tonnes of our plastic
to cause serious problems on the other side of the world.
So, I've been pressing the councils whose bags I found in Malaysia
for answers.
I have now heard back from Rhondda council,
that they've been consulting with their exporter, Lovell Recycling,
who has confirmed that all materials have followed the correct procedure
and that they're unaware how the material
could have been found without being processed.
The council also says that they no longer use this company
and that since the end of May 2018, they haven't exported any waste
materials outside of the EU.
Milton Keynes tell me they "have confidence in their supply chain"
and believe their sacks did not come from their
own materials disposal.
And Braintree say that before May 2018 they were exporting bags
to Malaysia, where they believed they were correctly processed.
But none of this really stacks up with what I saw in Malaysia.
In one way or another, they're all saying, "Well, we followed
"the procedure, we did what we're meant to do."
And I can see that if these councils are just allowed to fill
in the forms and send their stuff off, it isn't really their fault.
The system is wrong.
So, how do you fix the system so that we can all be confident
that when we put out our recycling, it all actually gets recycled?
And who should be paying for that to happen?
Our cash strapped councils or the companies churning out
the plastic in the first place.
I have come to talk to Head of Technology and Innovation at waste
management company Veolia, Richard Kirkman.
So, if you think about making products, everyone understands
there's a cost to make it, not so many people think about the cost
to de-make it.
So, we're talking... To recover it and to recycle. To recover it and to recycle it has,
you know, costs associated to it.
Manufacturers today are only paying 10% of that, local authorities
are paying the rest.
So, if you put the cost in the hands of the people that make it,
they will redesign things like this, so that they're easier
to recycle, because it's their cost if they're not recycled.
So, this is a big shift in incentive, so that producers...
..it really is in their interest to do everything they can to make
something easily recyclable.
Yeah, the big things that we need to do are change the packaging tax
to a extended producer responsibility, where they pay
the full costs. The full cost? So, 100%. 100%.
And that cost will also be passed on to consumers.
The producers aren't going to just take that hit.
But as a consumer, you will have some choice,
to buy more or less packaging.
To buy reusable coffee cup or reusable water bottle,
rather than buy new things.
If the government puts everything in place that you're hoping for,
does this mean there should be no reason to export low-grade plastics
outside of the UK, where they could end up in places like Malaysia
who just can't cope with them?
If we're exporting waste which are disposed of irresponsibly,
that's not acceptable and that will shut down,
I really believe it will.
I can see that if companies were made responsible for 100%
of the cost of recycling their plastic packaging,
that would really focus their minds.
The big question here is has the Secretary of State
got his head around it?
Is he prepared to do what's necessary?
Finally, the day of our meeting is here
and I have the chance to ask just that.
Hi, Hugh.
Good morning. How are you? Welcome to DEFRA.
Very nice to see you.
And I haven't come empty handed.
This is just a tiny sample...
..of plastic waste... Yes. ..that I found in Malaysia, from the UK.
And... Yes, that's terrible. ..for the context,
to see some of the images we brought back.
And you can take that and just scroll through. Yes, of course.
These sites are generally illegal. On many of them there's
very little indication that any of the material will be ever recycled.
What would UK taxpayers think if they knew that their best efforts
at recycling were ending up in that sort of scenario?
Well, as a UK taxpayer myself, I think it's horrendous
and I think that's why we need change.
Companies, retailers who produce a lot of plastic waste and packaging
are paying 10% of the cost of clearing up and recycling.
What do you think should be an appropriate amount for them to pay?
I think the producers should pay as much as possible. Consistent
with making sure that we can maintain the recycling capacity
and invest in the recycling capacity that we need.
Merely to keep step in Europe,
do you know what the obligations should be? How much of a percentage?
I would think that it would be easily more than 50.
But you don't know the figure? No.
I mean, you've hazarded a slightly random 50%... Above 50%.
..it's a bit of a, bit of a hedging of bets.
Yes. Were we to continue... Well, quite. ..in Europe,
there would be an obligation to pay 80%. Mm.
Yes. But, but also there are a lot of people saying
that that responsibility belongs entirely to producers and retailers
and that they should pay 100%.
I absolutely accept the case and I think that you'd...
You accept the case for 100%?
I accept the case that they should pay more, absolutely.
I want to make sure that industry, on the principle, the polluter should pay,
takes a heavier share of the responsibility for making sure...
Heavier... ..we deal with this material. ..heavier would be 12%, at the moment, wouldn't it?
Yes, but... Not massive improvement.
..heavier would be 10.5,
but we're not talking about, that we're talking about making sure
that we proceed in a way so that producers,
those who are responsible for generating this waste,
take greater responsibility.
You and other campaigners have done this country a service by shining
a light on a situation which is, frankly, indefensible.... That's very kind of you,
Minister, but we're now waiting for you to do this country a service.
..no, I agree. The ball is really in your court. I understand.
It remains to be seen whether the minister really has the guts
and the gumption to push through recycling reform
that will make a real difference.
The good news is that he's agreed to see me again,
so I can keep piling on the pressure.
The street in Bristol are three-quarters of the way
through their four- month experiment to reduce the single-use plastic
in their lives.
And in the last month, residents have found different ways
to reduce the plastic in their bathrooms.
I bought thi big jar of coconut oil and I've been using
this and it's a moisturizer.
Kind of, changed my mind-set.
The deli up the road has started doing shampoo, body wash.
We're saving money by coming to do the refills
and actually these are changes that I can work...
..into my week.
That whole side of the bath was covered in plastic bottles.
Stuff that we weren't really using, as well. Just stuff.
The most dramatic change on the street
has been after they learnt a simple fact about a hidden plastic.
Used the last of my wet wipes.
We are now a wipe-free house.
If only we were all as well-informed as the street.
As the wet wipe companies won't meet me to explain why
they can't put a label on their packs now,
my last hope is to turn up at their UK headquarters myself.
I want to engage with them.
I want them to tell me why they don't want to do anything immediately.
So, I've asked the designer to come up with something
that might be a little bit harder for them to ignore.
I don't really know what to expect.
What is that?!
# A change, it had to come... #
Wipes contain plastic.
Oh, my God! That's amazing.
Wiping the baby's backside with a plastic bag.
Wow that's really shocking, actually,
when you look at it like that.
# Take a bow for the new revolution
# Smile and grin at the change... #
Why can't you come clean and stick it on the pack now?
Someone's going to have to come and talk to me, aren't they?
They can't ignore that.
Let's take it to them!
# Get on my knees and pray... #
ANITA LAUGHS
# We don't get fooled again. #
I want to take my ad van to Procter & Gamble,
Johnson & Johnson and Kimberly-Clark.
Surely they can't turn me away if I rock up in this.
So, we're heading in now to Procter & Gamble.
In that building is somebody who can answer my questions.
Let's get noticed, shall we?
I've also brought along a couple of the P & G brands,
with a little added extra to show that changing their labelling
really isn't that hard.
I've managed to get some suggested ideas knocked up very quickly,
couple of days, in fact.
I've got a camera on, because I'm not going to take
you guys with me, you're going to stay put in the car.
Here's my microphone.
Right, wish me luck.
Hello, there. I was wondering if somebody was available
to talk to me today.
Have you got an appointment? I've got no appointment,
but I've come a long way to talk to them.
Yes, that's my van.
Yeah.
No-one would speak to me on camera to answer my question about why
they can't change their labelling now.
Perhaps I'll have better luck at Johnson & Johnson.
Just pull up in here, I think.
Morning, I've been e-mailing about the labelling
on your wet wipe packaging.
I've got a list of names here. Have you spoken to these already?
No, I haven't. I would like to speak to them.
Thank you. PHONE RINGS
Hi, there. Hi, What's your name?
Melissa, nice to meet you. Melissa, what department are you in? Legal.
Legal, excellent.
The simple question is, why not just put "wet wipes contain plastic"
on your packaging right now?
Unfortunately, there's no-one here to speak to you right now.
Yeah. But, pass on your details to our media team and ask them to get
in contact with you. Yeah, even better, the person who actually
deals with packaging would be fantastic.
I'm going to leave you with these.
Put some stickers on, to say that wet wipes contain plastic.
You know, it's not that difficult.
The companies won't give me an answer to my question on e-mail,
they won't talk to me when I turn up in my van.
I mean, what's a girl got to do?
When I stopped for a cuppa, I'm after a bit of moral support.
I think people need to know.
But they're not going to do anything for at least a year.
Doesn't make sense, does it? Be honest!
That's all.
Why do you need a year or two? Do it now.
How much, how much of a problem is it going to be to actually
put an extra bit on a label?
Totally agree! Yeah.
Thank you, Stephanie. You've boosted me. Good!
I will go and tell them exactly that, then.
Good! You should.
All the best. Bye, now.
It's time for the last HQ of the day.
Kimberly-Clark, I'm on my way.
Fliers, check.
Camera, check.
Microphone, check.
List of names, check. And Huggies, check.
Rush hour, check.
Let's see if we can get some answers out of Kimberly-Clark.
Hello, there. I have been e-mailing your press office
and I was wondering if there was anybody around to talk to me
about wet wipes.
I've got a list of names here, Marketing Director
and Marketing Manager, Head of Packaging. OK.
President of Consumer Business,
Environment and Sustainability Leader. I'm just checking.
UK Manufacturing Director, Head of Media?
Not available.
Head of Packaging would be great.
That's my instruction, is to get you to e-mail.
I've done that, I've been doing it for three months.
Hello, there.
Simon Ashwell. From what department?
Um, from our legal team.
O. Hello, I'm Stuart. Hello, Stuart. Hello.
It's a BBC series about plastic and we're looking at the labelling
of wet wipes and we know that you're aware of legislation,
and we've been told that you will just wait to see what happens
before you start labelling things.
I mean, all I want to know is why you can't just do it now?
So, I've got flyers made up of my van.
I'm going to leave those, as well, and the wet wipes.
And it's about having a conversation. Yes, I understand.
From our press office. Yes. Can they have a quick word?
Yes, absolutely.
Hello, there.
Anita Rani, we're making a programme about plastic.
Would you be able to put someone forward for an interview?
Could we get that organised?
The press office say they will look into arranging an interview.
Thank you so much. Press office and two of the legal team.
That's it. Come on, you can tell me.
You're waiting for legislation, come on.
She's going to give you a call, she's told you that.
But are you, just, can you tell me if you're having a discussion about it?
I've said what we're going to do. All right. We've told you already.
They know I mean business.
I've spoken to the press team, I've been face-to-face with two
of the lawyers, they're pretty important, aren't they?
There's definitely people still in that building, cos the lights are on
and I think they know I'm still sniffing around.
So, Kimberly-Clark, if you're in there,
put a label on your wipes, please!
So, despite saying they'd look into it, when I went to see them a few
days ago, Kimberly-Clark have refused to meet me face-to-face.
And along with Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, all three of them
have said that they always comply with labelling regulations.
But here's a question for you,
why not do something about it right now?
What's stopping you?
So, I think, we can assume, unless it tells us to the contrary
somewhere on the pack, that wet wipes contain plastic.
A few weeks ago, two houses on our street in Bristol had samples
of air collected from their kitchens and bedrooms.
These have now been analysed
by toxicology researcher Joseph Levermore.
He's looking for plastic particles small enough to breathe deep
into our lungs, where they could potentially be doing damage.
I'm joining Saskie and Caroline and Simon to hear the results.
Results day. Yes.
This is, sort of, finding out whether, actually,
we were better off not knowing.
DOORBELL RINGS
Hey, yeah, I'm Joseph.
Hiya, I'm Saskie.
Hi, nice to meet you. Hi, Saskie.
What have you found, Joseph?
So, I wasn't expecting at all to find any plastics
within the inhalable size range, and yet we've been able
to find things that have the potential to be deposited
within the alveoli region of the lungs,
which is penetrating deep into those areas of the lung.
And that's in both the houses?
Yes, in both the houses.
And that is the first identification of these particles
to be present of that composition.
And then, the first time that these have actually been found
within England, as a whole. Do you know which rooms
they were found, where they in all rooms or...?
It seems, based on this result, that because this way,
plastics are consistent from kitchen to bedroom, that there's a presence
of particles within the entire house.
Wow, blimey. Do you know the effects
the accumulation of those things are having on the human body yet?
For plastics, no.
This is the start, I would say, of quite a lot of work
that needs to be done.
It's urgent to understand the concentrations and the harm
that these things pose.
It's very early days for this research, but it feels like we need
to take these findings seriously.
We could be inhaling this stuff with every breath we take.
It's just been a surreal evening...
..that sets off yet another alarm about the problems that plastic
is causing in our lives.
And this isn't next to some toxic industrial plastics dump.
It's in somebody's home, in a quiet street in Bristol.
Which is no different from any other home
up and down the country.
We don't know what the effect of these tiny particles
is on our health.
And to me, right now, not knowing feels pretty scary.
And we should be scared.
Maybe we need to be scared, maybe only by being scared
for our own health, for our own lives,
are we going to be concerned enough
to actually do something about plastics.
Next time, I join two young girls to ask why one of the best-known
companies is giving away over a billion pieces
of plastic each year.
Can we just tell you what the girls are here... No.
..you've not even asked us what we're here to do yet.
I have never in my life experienced anything like that.
While I head to the beating heart of the UK's plastics industry.
We'd be using the same sort of power as say,
three major Scottish cities. Combined? Combined, yeah.
And the end of the big street experiment reveals
whether it's really possible to reduce the plastic in our lives.
The figure today...
..is...