(CNN) The UK's postal service is urging environmental campaigners to stop sending empty potato chip bags without an envelope after the launch of a campaign urging the country's most popular chip producer to ditch its plastic packaging.

The online campaign, which has been signed by more than 310,000 people, calls on the PepsiCo-owned British chip manufacturer Walkers to make its plastic packaging more environmentally friendly.

Campaigners have been posting pictures of themselves mailing their empty bags of chips, or crisps as they are known in the UK, through the Royal Mail with the hashtag #PacketInWalkers.

The UK consumes approximately 6 billion packets of potato chips every year, according to campaign organizer Geraint Ashcroft. Most of those bags are not recyclable.

"That's an awful lot of landfill and poison for the environment," Ashcroft wrote on the campaign's petition page

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