In today's society, plastic packaging is widespread on the streets, causing many problems. A study conducted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Annual Report (2008) showed that the amount of packaging waste reached approximately 10.7 million tonnes in the UK, which was reported . It is obvious that the waste problem is serious. In this essay I will analyze some problems caused by this phenomenon, then propose some solutions and criticize them. Some problems arise because people produce large amounts of waste. I will illustrate three of them. First of all, most packaging is made of plastic which is a non-renewable resource. Specifically, a report by James(2005,p.10) and Grant(2005,p.10) concluded that when people burned waste, this plastic waste could hardly be separated from other waste and this leads to the emissions released the poisonous gas in the air. Secondly, the worsening of this type of pollution worsens the living conditions not only of humans but also of animals. By looking up the word “plastic” in the dictionary, we can find that plastic is made up of chemical materials, all of which have harmful effects. For example, one of the materials called polyvinyl chloride, which could cause cancer (Hardll, Ohlson, & Fredrikson, 1997), and another material called plasticizer, which could cause damage to the endocrine system of both humans and animals. (Xu., Li., & Gu, 2004) A report shows that, each year, up to one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals worldwide die from plastic bags (Cadman, Evans, Holland, & Boyd, 2005 ). The third problem is that there is too much space for landfill and most of the plastic bags or packaging are found among the paper, it could bury us in an ocean of garbage and the earth would be a dustbin. To prevent this nightmare from becoming a reality, governments must work closely with each other and back up their lip service with facts. in particular, there is a good example from the Republic of Ireland. In 2001, a highly successful plastic bag consumption tax, or PlasTax, introduced in 2002, reduced consumption by 90%. (Smith, 2004, p.5). Due to this reduction in production, approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil were saved. Building on this successful action, many other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia and New York City. they are now considering introducing a similar tax. (reusablebags.com) However, it is not enough to just ask what governments can do to reduce packaging waste, we must ask what we as individuals can do to preserve the environment from waste pollution. packaging waste .