Plastic pollution has been steadily increasing as our love of convenience sees us purchase millions of bottles of water, shrink wrapped fruit and vegetables and beer cans bound together with plastic.

With plastic becoming more popular, it also piles up in landfills as members of the public fail to recycle or reuse items.

According to Friends of the Earth, over 2m tonnes  of plastic packaging are used in the UK each year, yet just 9% of all plastic waste has ever been recycled.

The amount of plastic the UK throws away is set to increase by over 1m tonnes by 2030 .

But it's not just landfills which are piling up with plastic.

According to a report by Eunomia in 2016, the total amount of plastic entering the marine environment is over 12m tonnes a year.

Marine life is affected, with sea creatures mistaking plastic for food or becoming tangled in items, which can prove to be fatal.

Yet steps are being taken to reduce plastic use in the UK, with MSP Kate Forbes successfully launching a campaign to ban plastic straws after seeing the effect they had on wildlife in her constituency.

Within weeks, Holyrood announced Scotland would be the first European country to ban the items, also taking steps to remove them from all of their buildings.

Plastic carrier bag charges were introduced in Scotland in a bid to encourage shoppers to reuse the items and plastic cotton buds will be banned shortly.

Businesses are also changing, with Boots recently pledging to swap to paper bags in 2020 while Carlsberg have pledged to hold multipacks of beer together using glue which will help the company cut its plastic usage by more than 75%.

One Scot who has decided to tackle the issue head on is Graham Sharp, who along with his partner Lizzy, has opened a zero waste store in Denniston, Glasgow.

The store, full of fresh produce, some of which is grown on a nearby allotment, sits alongside dried pulses and grains which can be purchased in glass bottles or filled into tubs which customers can bring in themselves.

Toiletries such as bamboo toothbrushes, reusable make up wipes and shampoo bars are popular with customers who are trying to cut down on their plastic waste.

The idea for Zero Waste Market began around six years ago for the couple when they began making changes in their day to day lives to reduce plastic use in their lives.

"We kind of realised there wasn't many places that you could get those things within Glasgow," Graham explained.

"Because we had done the research ourselves to find a lot of this stuff, we started doing some markets to test if people would like it and if it was something people wanted and just to get ourselves out there.

"We started doing that a year and a half ago it snowballed from there into a shop and now I'm a greengrocer and zero waste grain seller."

Graham says their customers come from all walks of life and span a wide age range, from conscious school children eager to change their habits to pensioners wanting to reduce food waste.

"We've got an old lady who comes in regularly and she just wants one egg and one carrot because she lives alone now and she doesn't want to buy a kilo of carrots or 12 eggs every time she goes to the supermarket," Graham says.

"So sometimes people's reasons for going zero waste and reducing plastic are different, it's not just to reduce the environmental impact, it's also to buy less or buy just exactly what they need for the week, which in turn also reduces their food waste."