Coming clean on plastic
IDON’T know about you but I’m starting to find the task of unpacking the grocery shopping an appallingly guilt-laden experience. “Good grief, why are these avocados wrapped in so much plastic?” I’ll ask myself. (Sorry, I’m from Brighton. I’m afraid avocados are a dietary essential around these parts).
Or: “Why have I bought quite so many drinks in plastic bottles? What kind of monster have I become?”
Actually however it’s good I feel this way because it means at least I’m getting the message: namely, that we need to have a serious rethink about single-use plastics and the horrific consequences for our planet.
Illustrating that point in the most sobering fashion is tonight’s documentary DROWNING IN PLASTIC (BBC1, 8.30pm), a 90-minute special in which presenter Liz Bonnin (right) learns about the devastating impact of plastic pollution on our oceans and on the creatures living in and around them.
I stress the word “learns” because the scale of this nightmare appears to shock even Liz herself, an experienced wildlife biologist. On Lord Howe Island, for example, lying 400-odd miles off the Australian coast, she looks on in both admiration and horror as a rescue worker gently pumps the stomachs of tiny flesh-footed shearwater chicks, a process that helps them regurgitate dozens of plastic chunks lodged in their stomachs.
“I can’t believe how much is coming out,” she cries. “Oh, my gosh, this is ridiculous.”
Their parents, she’s told, routinely mistake these shards of plastic for food and bring them back to the nest.
The record number of pieces found in a single bird’s stomach is 260.
“So they’re gradually, with all the best intentions, feeding their chicks to death? I’m in shock. I mean, I knew there was a plastic problem, but when you see it…
“I feel angry and emotional, full of feelings I didn’t quite expect would be so strong.”
Further harrowing sights then greet her elsewhere. Indonesia’s Citarum River, for instance, which once provided the locals with abundant quantities of fish, now appears to be little more than a floating rubbish tip.
The damage being done by plastic to our fragile coral reefs, she later discovers, is equally alarming.
By the time Liz’s report reaches its 60-minute mark, you may well be tempted to conclude you’ve had all you can take.
Yet it’s worth sticking with it because she does at least seek grounds for optimism, talking to people with ideas that might help stem the tide. I only hope this programme, by delivering its message quite so powerfully, doesn’t prove to be counterproductive. Millions of us have already started cutting down on our plastic consumption. Blue Planet II saw to that and chucking the right stuff in the right bins has obviously become common practice for households right across the country. Should we be doing more? Of course we should. A lot more. We just want to be left with at least a glimmer of hope, to believe it can still make a difference.