Plastic is cheap to produce and convenient to use – and those two ‘advantages’ are what makes it hard to get rid of.

320 million tonnes of plastic were generated globally in 2016, set to double by 2034, with Mold currently contributing about 43 tons a year;

Before the coronavirus, the UK used 7 million plastic coffee cups every day, with Mold accounting for more more than  1,100 of them;

8 million pieces of plastic pollution find their way into the ocean each year, of which nearly 1,300 pieces originate from Mold;

A cotton bud takes a couple of minutes to use but is reckoned to take 150 years to degrade in the sea.

The report Breaking the Plastic Wave warns that some 11 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year, with that amount set to rise to 29 million metric tons per year by 2040. Current efforts will cut annual plastic flows to the ocean by only 7% it says, although a range of measures outlined in the report could cut that flow by about 80%.