Picture i hope you won’t be able to stop staring at

Because, appallingly, says TV’s JULIA BRADBURY, the 750 plastic bottles she’s lying naked on is the same number dumped in Britain EVERY SINGLE MINUTE

Look at this picture. Yes, that’s my 47year-old body stark naked in a sea of plastic bottles. Have I got your attention? Good. That’s the point. Cynics might sneer: ‘There’s the old Countryfile presenter Julia stripping off for publicity’ — and they’d be right.

We are all, literally, drowning in a sea of plastic, and I know I have to do something dramatic to get people’s attention and make my point that this has to stop.

There are 750 plastic bottles in this picture. Looks a lot, doesn’t it? Well, the great pile I’m lying on is equivalent to the number of plastic bottles that are littered in this country every minute. We discard 38.5million plastic bottles a day in Britain. Less than half make it to a recycling plant, many get incinerated... and a staggering 700,000 end up being dumped. Let me repeat: that’s every single day.

That’s a thousand times the number of bottles in this photo that could be making their way out to sea or to landfill this very moment.

Shocking moments in the Blue Planet TV series showed us that our plastic trash eventually breaks down into tiny particles, but it never fully goes away — and the particles (microbeads) can poison fish, kill turtles and decimate marine wildlife. Incidentally, the particles are also polluting our soil and we know they are making their way into the food chain. We are eating plastic!

So, as a lover of the great outdoors and an ambassador for keep Britain Tidy, I wholeheartedly support the Mail’s brilliant Great Plastic Pick Up campaign, which is taking place on the weekend of May 11-13.

Participants will be sorting plastic bottles to be recycled, as well as cleaning up beach plastic. I think it is a vital way to galvanise communities and heighten awareness about our rubbish-strewn public spaces. B Y JOINING in the Pick Up, not only can we help clear the country of plastic litter, but we can do something really positive to inspire people.

I’ve always hated littering, but I am determined to make as much noise as I can about plastic pollution. If it means I have to take off my clothes to get people to listen, that’s a small price to pay.

In the Uk, £800million of public funds is diverted every year to clearing up litter. Wouldn’t we all rather that money was spent on something like the NHS?

I have to confess, I’m obsessed — and my particular hate is the dangling plastic bags of dog poo that line the hedgerows along footpaths across the country.

I do a lot of walking for fun and for TV shows, and I’m well known among the film crews for staggering back to the car laden with rubbish and an assortment of dog poo bags I’ve picked up along the way. Some of the crew probably think I’m crazy, but if it’s plastic litter, it has to go.

Plastic has become so ubiquitous that I confess I can’t claim to live a plastic-free life. But I’m obsessive about cutting back on single-use plastic because that’s something we can all change.

My children, son Zephyr, six, and twin girls Xanthe and Zena, three, have reusable cups and bottles and are conditioned to say ‘no straws, please’ when we’re out.

We brush our teeth with bamboo brushes, food is wrapped in reusable beeswax cloth, not clingfilm, and I’m moving back to solid soap at my sinks. Sometimes, my plastic obsession boils over. In the supermarket, I don’t have a problem taking food out of its plastic and handing it to the shop assistant (with a smile, always!). I’ve started using my local greengrocer so I can insist on paper bags, too.

If I ever see someone saying ‘yes’ to a plastic bag at the till, I happily interject and say: ‘Do you really need that?’ It’s well-meaning, but it’s not always well-received!

I think we’ve all become used to accepting plastic bags or packaging for our already-wrapped produce — sometimes, we dispose of this within minutes or even seconds.

I’m also evangelical about getting people to think about re-using plastic or disposing of it properly. That’s why the bottle separation idea of the Great Plastic Pick Up is such a good one. We need to get into the habit of looking at every single item of plastic and thinking: ‘What is going to happen to this item when I’ve finished using it?’

So, to start with doing my bit, I’m pleased to tell you the bottles I’m lying on here won’t be heading for the sea. They are currently being recycled. Better still, they’ve gone to a waste management facility, Veolia, which helps to fund green, community-based projects.

now, I’m urging everyone to get out for an hour or two next weekend to join the Mail’s Great Plastic Pick Up. I’ll be out with my family, picking up litter, hunting plastic and bagging it up for recycling.

Just imagine the impact you will make with each sack you collect.

Best of all? You won’t even have to take off your clothes!