A shopper has been taking her own stand against single-use plastics by leaving food packaging at supermarket checkouts.

Alexandra Abraham, who lives in Newark, has been spurred on in her campaign by a BBC documentary series about the problem of plastic waste.

She has changed her shopping habits over the past couple of months, and hopes others will do the same.

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“I have been shopping in one of Newark’s major supermarkets and, while doing so, I have diligently transferred all their pre-packaged produce into my own sealable containers, leaving the supermarket’s own packaging at the checkout, for them to deal with,” she said.

Alexandra said she had been trying for a long time to live more sustainably.

“I try not to make too much of a footprint wherever I go,” she said.”

“But I caught sight of this programme, and I cried,” she said.

The programme, The War On Plastic, fronted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Anita Rani, has spent three weeks looking at the problem of plastic and its disposal.

Alexandra said: “It turns out that the majority of plastic collected by councils, destined for recycling, is actually not dealt with that way at all. What happens to it is utterly shameful.”

“The programme, though, has given me added incentive to dispose of all single-use plastics in my home, and I am steadily replacing such containers with more durable and equally-effective items and holders.”

Alexandra said the staff at Morrisons supermarket were now used to her removing items from their wrappings.

“While I was questioned at one point by a security guard, I have never been challenged or prevented from doing what I do,” she said.

“I also visited Sainsbury’s in Balderton, did the same there, and was in fact congratulated by the lady at the checkout.”

Alexandra even takes a reuseable container for her milk to avoid buying plastic bottles..

She said she had heard of a man who had been collecting litter from a beach for five years and had now stopped because he said he was fighting a losing battle.

“I breaks my heart,” she said. “We are such a throwaway society and we are leaving our planet in a mess.

“If something breaks, it ends up in landfill, and people just buy a new one.

Alexandra works at a shop just a couple of minutes’ walk from her home and said she had recently filled a carrier bag with litter she collected on the route.

“It was cans, bottles, plastic wrappers...I felt like gathering them all up and sending them back to the manufacturers.”

Alexandra said she was not concerned about leaving supermarket wrapping at the checkout.

“I don’t care because then it becomes their problem, and only when it is their problem will they do something about it,” she said.

She said that if more people did the same, shops would be forced to re-think their packaging policies.

She said that children learned about waste and recycling at school but the message was often not reinforced at home.

“Parents should be asked what they are going to do with all that plastic they take home,” she said.

“We all have to take responsibility for what we are doing. It is not someone else’s problem. It is our problem,” she said.