Cambridgeshire refill shop makes plastic waste plea ahead of COP28
It hopes more legislation can be put in place to tackle the problem
A refill shop in St Ives hopes tackling plastic waste will be high on the agenda at this week's COP 28.
The United Nations climate change conference starts today and runs until 12th December.
Martin Cooper runs the Refill Shop of Ikigai, which encourages people to bring in their own containers to fill up their shopping and buying what they need to in order to cut down on plastic and food waste.
He believes these issues are a concern for local people:
"Plastic waste is one people are very concerned about; the recycling process people used to think was a good thing, we learn only 12% of what we recycle gets recycled and the rest gets shipped abroad or burnt," he said.
"We're doing what we can at a local level to help individuals reduce their plastic footprint, which is brilliant, but leaders can make legislation to prevent it being created in the first place.
"It will take a while for our changes to reach the people who make more (plastic) to stop making more."
In October, the government introduced a ban on single-use plastic items such as plates, bowls and cutlery in England to help cut down on plastic waste.
The government also found people across England use 2.7 billion items of mainly plastic single-use cutlery and 721 million single-use plates every year, but 10% of these are recycled, according to research.
"Unless it affects you, it's hard to understand"
Sarah Cooper works at the Refill Shop of Ikigai, and believes more people need to understand what's happening internationally can affect people locally, too.
"Some of the bigger problems we see that happen abroad have an impact on our lives and I'm not sure people realise all of those are caused by problems with the environment," she said.
"I think unless it affects you, it's hard to understand just how much it has an impact.
"I think programmes that are made easy for people to watch and easy to see how they can make a difference (to improve their environment) are what's needed."