Eight in ten people who changed their lifestyle to help the environment cut their waste first

ONS figures show that among the 77 per cent of adults who reported making lifestyle changes to tackle environmental issues, waste reduction was the most common action, cited by 80 per cent of that group.

Four in five people who said they had changed their lifestyle to help the environment reported cutting their waste — making it the most frequently cited action, ahead of changes to shopping, diet or travel, according to figures posted by the Office for National Statistics. The figures come from a survey in which 77 per cent of respondents said they had made some or a lot of lifestyle changes to tackle environmental issues.

Among that group, shopping habits were changed by 48 per cent, diet by 42 per cent and travel by 41 per cent. Respondents could report more than one action, so the categories overlap. The ONS is clear that these are self-reported changes — the survey measures what people say they did, not independently verified reductions in waste, emissions or consumption.

A later ONS publication, covering October 2025, recorded higher figures across the board: 84 per cent of respondents reported making some or a lot of lifestyle changes, with waste reduction cited by 83 per cent, shopping habits by 49 per cent, diet by 43 per cent and travel by 41 per cent — compared with 80, 48, 42 and 41 per cent in the earlier data.

Travel was the one category that didn’t shift at all between the two periods, staying at 41 per cent.

Kent County Council reported that 42.1 per cent of Kent’s waste was recycled, reused or composted in 2022–23, with just 0.6 per cent sent to landfill. The council operates 19 household waste recycling centres across the county.

The original tweet’s survey date, sample size and full methodology were not independently verifiable from available official results, so the precise population the earlier figures describe remains unclear. What the data does show is a consistent pattern: when people do act, cutting waste is where they start.