Over the last three years Planet Patrol volunteers around the world have collected nearly 300,000 pieces of litter in nature and recorded it all in the Planet Patrol app. In 2019 we took this data and worked closely with our partner scientists at University of Nottingham and University of Glasgow to analyse it and gather a true understanding of the extent of litter recorded in the UK, broken down by brands, types and distribution.

The impact report makes a number of recommendations, including a nationwide ban on plastic bags, and a call for much clearer waste producer responsibilities. We hope to see these details reflected in the Government’s Environment Bill as it makes it’s way through Parliament. This five-year series of reports by Planet Patrol will be essential for assessing the adequacy of policy interventions and industry’s sustainability commitments in an important decade for environmental protection. With ongoing data real-time crowdsourced data collection, which empowers citizens to ‘police’ the system, it provides an opportunity to monitor and regulate the framework of a circular economy.