10 ways to help our beautiful blue planet
TV star Chris on how we can all play our part
CHRIS PACKHAM ON DANGERS OF EVERYDAY PLASTICS TO SEA Monk seal pup on Blue Planet Live Sweetlips fish in plastic-ridden ocean. Left, stingray
With the world’s oceans choked by an ever-swelling tide of plastic and rubbish, precious marine life is struggling to cope and it could signal another nail in the coffin for our planet.
But TV presenter Chris Packham insists there are ways we can help to save mother earth.
The Blue Planet Live star, currently in Mexico hunting blue whales for the last episode, says everything from our diets to badgering MPs to act can have an impact on the future of our globe.
Here are 10 things Chris says we can all do to protect the future of our beautiful planet:
1. THINK ABOUT YOUR DIET
Everyone needs to realise we’re constantly taking from the natural world through the resources we use to eat, whether it’s fish from our seas, plants grown in the soils, or meat that’s feeding on that.
2. SUPPORT UK PRODUCE
We put enormous demands on farmers to produce cheap food and as a consequence we’ve seen a rapid proliferation of industrial-scale farming, partly because we are importing cheap food. We waste at least a third of the food we buy. If we didn’t waste that much, we could take a big pressure off the environment and our farmers.
3. REPAIR, REUSE INSTEAD OF REPLACE
All the things we use put an enormous burden on climate change and even simple things, like a mobile phone, count. A phone has a far greater environmental cost than its price tag, as all the rare metals and components in it take a toll on the natural environment. In the UK we upgrade phones on average every 18 months, so maybe stick with it for three years until it dies. It’s also TVs, cars, clothes. Make things last longer. Wherever possible, repair before you replace.
4. THINK ABOUT POPULATION GROWTH
Can you imagine the world in 25 years time? When you bring a child into the world, that’s what they’ll inherit. We have to think about our family’s size and how many people the planet can sustain.
5. REDUCE YOUR MEAT INTAKE
Meat is ecologically expensive to produce, you’ve got to put huge amounts of water into crops to feed cows and chickens. Even if you don’t become a vegetarian or a vegan, just cutting down on meat and making sure you get it from good, sustainable, UK sources will make a difference.
6. THINK ABOUT YOUR LITTER
We’ve been talking this week about micro-plastics in the ocean. There’s a misconception it comes from people throwing it from ships, but the drains in cities are connected to rivers. There’s no filter system like in sewers. If you throw something down a toilet it goes through filtration. But if you drop a plastic bottle top and the rain washes it down a drain it will find its way into a river and the sea. So your litter is capable of ending in the body of a marine organism. Re-use, Reduce, Recycle.
7. SWITCH TO MORE RENEWABLE ENERGIES You could do that with your home energy supplier. There are companies who get it from renewable sources, such as Ecotricity. Electric cars will soon be more widely available.
8. SUPPORT YOUTH CLIMATE REBELLION Encourage kids who are challenging our politicians to think about climate. Help them make the banner, don’t put the pressure on them to go to school if they want to protest. This is very important. These children are saying: “It’s our world and our tomorrow. We want a stake in it.”
9. EMPOWER YOURSELF TO MAKE CHANGE The Panel on Climate Change has given the world 12 years to sort this out. Write to MPs, lobby about things such as fracking.
10. UNDERSTAND WE ARE PART OF NATURE We’re part of the world’s natural systems but our part is out of kilter and damaging the rest. When people like me are on TV banging on about how important wildlife is, everyone’s got to realise the stability and sustainability of those ecosystems is critical to our own survival. For example, if we lose our pollinating insects, we lose our crops that need insects to pollinate them.
■ To learn more visit whale.org. Blue Planet Live is on BBC1 tomorrow at 8pm.
If you drop a plastic bottle top and the rain washes it down a drain, it will end up in the sea