Not so fantastic plastic, as Norwich families demonstrate how much waste shopping generates

David Attenborough's Blue Planet II television series, which concluded with an unflinching look at how waste impacts on marine life, has helped put plastic packaging at the forefront of many people's minds.

And, in Norwich, a number of families have been seeing just how much plastic packaging they have amassed from their supermarket shopping.

The families first took part in the Green Party's community-based project in December and were amazed by the amount of plastic their Christmas festivities generated.

They decided to carry on with the project and spent the month of February collecting up the non-recyclable plastic from their shopping.

On Saturday, the piles of plastic were taken along to a community event at Jessopp Road in Norwich, where efforts were made to find new uses for the waste which could not go in the recycling bin.

Sandra Bogelein, Green Party city councillor, said: 'There is a growing awareness of the environmental damage our increasing use of plastic and its careless disposal is causing.

'Plastic can be found everywhere, even in remote areas of the world such as Antarctica. As well as cleaning up what we've already disposed of we must also cut down the amount of plastic we use and recycle more.

'We must find alternatives to single-use and non-recyclable plastics and stop polluting our planet with our man-made rubbish.' Fellow Green Party city councillor Lesley Grahame, said: 'Nobody should beat themselves up because we can't eliminate it entirely, but we should work towards that.

'There are lots of alternatives to using plastic and it's really exciting to see so many people determined to stop throwing stuff away. When you collect up your plastic and see how much you've used it is quite shocking to see how much you have used.'

The Green Party has been running a 'Plastic in our Environment' campaign to reduce the amount of waste plastic that is produced, encourage plastic recycling and find alternatives to plastic packaging and single-use plastic items.

Green councillors put motions seeking to end the use of single-use plastics in their workplaces to both city and county councils in autumn last year, which were passed.