Anglian Water has announced an extensive set of plans to reduce plastic use both among its customers and in its business.

The announcement comes on World Oceans Day - a day dedicated to celebrating the world’s oceans and looking at the ways in which we can protect them.

The plans unveiled today will look at tackling all plastic waste which cannot be reused, recycled or composted.

Anglian Water say they will go about reducing these types of plastics in four ways.

Firstly they want to understand the amount of plastics which they describe as being ‘at large’ in the region.

They are also seeking to form a coalition with other businesses, manufacturers and retailers to reduce the amount of plastic getting into the environment.

Anglia Water also want to work with their customers to help them fight against plastics in their own homes.

Internally the company say they will try and eliminate single use plastic waste from across their business.

Chief executive of Anglian Water Peter Simpson said: ”We’ve all seen the huge impact single-use plastics are having on our environment.

“Launching this ambitious pledge against plastics, on World Oceans Day is the perfect opportunity to put our stake in the ground about how we as a business will play a part in tackling the plastics problem across the whole region.

“The scope of this taskforce goes beyond what people might traditionally think of as being the responsibility of a water company, but it’s important to our customers and the right thing to do.

“So we want to trial things like working with clothes manufacturers on how we might be able to design better materials that don’t shed plastic fibres, or with white goods companies about developing better filters on washing machines that capture plastic particles from our clothes.

“The group will even look at finding new ways of reusing discarded plastics or those filtered from the water treatment processes to make them into a valuable commodity once again.

“Saying it’s difficult is not good enough and we can’t do this alone, which is why we want to bring the right people together to better understand and tackle the problem from beginning to end.”