Some people in Cambridgeshire are “afraid” of cooking, causing them to buy ‘convenience food’ in single-use-plastic packaging, a councillor has claimed.

Councillor Dr Shrobona Bhattacharya has said more needs to be done to “bring people back into their own kitchen” to help tackle the amount of single-use-plastic waste.

Speaking at a meeting of South Cambridgeshire District Council’s climate and environment advisory committee, Cllr Dr Bhattacharya highlighted the “cultural shift” to buying more convenience food.

She said: “I am always emphasising the use of food plastics, the single-use-plastics that come from food packaging, like many sandwich boxes, and drinks.

“I keep saying this, 30 years ago we did not have this problem, because the food used to come from our own kitchen, and we used to pack our own food from our home.

“This type of convenience food, it was not there before 20, 30 years ago; we never talked about this plastic choking our oceans, our rivers, or anything.

“I think we need to really discuss how we can reduce that single-use-plastics which actually comes from food packaging.

“There is a reason why this is happening, people are cooking at home much less than people used to cook 30 years ago.

“People are also even frightened, afraid of thinking of cooking stuff in their kitchen. That frightening stuff is actually taking them to the big super stores and grabbing lots of convenient food to go home and reheat and eat; that fear, it is a cultural shift.”

Cllr Dr Bhattacharya said the district council had to look at ways to “bring people back into their own kitchens”.

Council officers explained that the district council had taken a two-pronged approach to reducing the amount of single-use-plastic waste, including looking at the council’s own waste and encouraging members of the public to make changes.

They highlighted there had already been a review of the use of single-use-plastic within the council itself with changes being made.