Based on Daniel’s original experiment, The Everyday Plastic Survey invited participants to collect their plastic waste for a week, record what they use and submit their data. This automatically generated their personal plastic footprint, helping people to reduce their waste.


Having undergone a trial phase with nearly 400 households over the 18 months, the project demonstrated a huge impact. Not only did participants praise the process as a game-changer, but it was also featured heavily in the press and prompted the government to respond saying "that more must be done to reduce our reliance on single-use plastics and how much we throw away."


Everyday Plastic has now partnered with Greenpeace to co-found The Big Plastic Count. A direct evolution of The Everyday Plastic Survey, this will be the UK's largest ever plastic investigation. Launching in May 2022, tens of thousands of UK households will use Everyday Plastic’s unique methodology for calculating people’s personal plastic footprint, generating evidence on plastic use and waste. This data will play a vital role in pressing the government to make essential changes, while also encouraging individual action. 

During the first lockdown in 2020, we launched The Everyday Plastic Survey: Lockdown Edition.

With parents on furlough and kids at homeschool, the lockdown Survey was designed to help families identify the quick and easy changes that could be made to reduce plastic waste during the pandemic and beyond.⁠

The results of The Everyday Plastic Survey were covered widely in the press including The One Show, The Times, HuffPost, Independent, the Guardian, Metro, The Telegraph and Sky News.

The government also responded to the “prominent coverage" in a DEFRA blog post, saying that “more must be done to reduce our reliance on single-use plastics and how much we throw away."

“This project has inspired the children in our school to write to local MPs, supermarkets and manufacturers about their plastic footprint.”

“The process of collecting your own plastic is a really engaging tool in order to create individual behaviour change and I have now made a number of steps to further cut my plastic.”

“Daniel gave us a lot of ideas about how we can keep up the momentum to raise people’s awareness of the importance of using less single-use plastic”

“It inspired my whole household to make changes, particularly in relation to kitchen items!”

Film by Jack Chute / Music by The Traps / Designs by Andy Aitken and Rich Heneghan