Calculating the True Cost of Single-Use Pollution to our Trails

Words by Heather Friendship-Kay Photos by Pete Scullion.

I sat in the cafe, looking out at the sun glinting through the trees, the birds on the feeders, before turning back to Dom. “So we want to invoice each brand for the number of items of their packaging we have removed…” my mind boggled, “How many volunteer hours can be attributed to that brand - what the cost to nature is - and how much it has cost Trash Free Trails? Would the current pEPR legislation allow for that?”

There’s nothing I love more than using data to tell a story, especially a story like this, but my brain couldn’t help thinking - hang on, we don’t even know how many items of each brand we’ve removed. We don’t track that, just the top 3 brands from each clean. How am I going to make sure it’s scientifically accurate? Am I going to feel able to put my name to it, hold my head up high and stand by the calculations?

I started digging into the pEPR guidelines on the internet and ended up in a web of confusion, different websites said different things - even the government websites didn’t seem to be consistent. I knew the cost to nature calculation would be even more complex, so I reached out to our TFT Research Team. I remember sitting in a call with our 2 Bangor University placement students, each looking at me wide-eyed as Dom and I told them that ‘no one has ever done this for terrestrial single-use pollution before, you’re not going to be able to dig out some scientific papers and find an answer. You’re going to have to read around the edges and make some informed decisions. This is pioneering research, this is what we do at TFT - we ask the hard questions no one else is asking.’

What followed was a lot of head scratching, data processing, online discussions, going through our calculations repeatedly. Questioning ourselves - is this the best way we can do this? Are we happy that this is a true representation of what is in our data? Can we put our names to this and stand by our calculations? Again and again the answer was a resounding YES.

What came together is TFT’s first ever attempt to combine our own data analysis with international research on the impacts of single-use pollution. Thanks to our friends in the marine pollution sector, we have been able to give equity to our trails through our calculations, creating for the first time a method for understanding the environmental cost of the impact of single-use pollution. To our knowledge, this work has never been done before.

The design team got to work, the proof-reading and cross-checking, the anticipation building. And then it was there, in front of our eyes, in the form of invoices to DEFRA and the 5 most prevalent pEPR brands.

To some people data is just numbers, mathematics, computer coding and excel spreadsheets. Dull, boring, uninspiring - but what happens when data tells a story? When all those little tally bars on a survey sheet, all those chew-marks and smelly drinks containers, all those moments stood in the cold on a hillside trying to work out what category the item of single-use pollution belongs to, result in a story - in an invoice for our trails. What happens when we stand up for the nature we love so much - that provides us with sanctuary when all around us feels like it’s crumbling or too hard to deal with?

I remember a time before Trash Free Trails, when ‘litter-picking’ felt powerless. You’d go back the day after a trail clean and find a Coke can or a McDonalds cup where 24 hours earlier it was clean, cleaned by you. The frustration, the anger, the feeling of powerlessness.

‘Now, every item I tally, every Report I submit, every animal interaction I observe has power, it builds a picture. And Trash Free Trails are telling that story.’ 

And that’s pretty darn amazing.

Read the full report here.