Celebrities going plastic-free? What rubbish...
Like many people right now, Chloe Green is on holiday. Unlike many people right now, Chloe Green is always on holiday. She seems to live on holiday, just as the rest of us seem to live in a permanent state of distress about Brexit and Donald Trump.
It’s hard to find a picture of the heiress where she isn’t wearing a bikini and a trillion-dollar Chanel beach bag, lounging on the deck of a superyacht or around the pool of a five-star hotel in Los Angeles. Indeed, I’d challenge you to find one if it weren’t for the fact you’ve probably got more pressing things to do, like clean the bathroom or earn a living or lie down in a dark room for five minutes to scream into the void about the unfairness of existence.
But back to Chloe Green, daughter of controversial businessman Sir Philip Green. It is, of course, unfair to visit the sins of the father on a child, so I shall avoid that rotten old trope as if it were … well, Sir Philip. Chloe is most famous for recently having a baby with “hot felon” Jeremy Meeks, a convicted criminal who became famous after his appallingly beautiful mug shot went viral.
We know that Chloe Green and Jeremy Meeks are on holiday not just because this is an unassailable fact, like the Earth being round or the Moon landings, but also because they have been posting their latest jaunt, to Mykonos, on Instagram.
Taking to the platform this week, Chloe uploaded a photo of herself and Jeremy looking like love’s young dream – albeit love’s young dream sitting on 20 bags of rubbish piled onto a yacht. “Today Jeremy and I went past a little cove and found the craziest amount of plastic and polystyrene,” explained the 27-year-old in her caption. “We made it our mission to gather a team to clean it up. This is nothing compared to what is going on in the world but as quick and easy as it was to get it cleaned up, there is no reason why we can’t all do our part.”
Chloe’s team included Lewis Hamilton, who also took to social media. “We all need to act,” wrote the Formula One racer, who has million-pound contracts with the likes of L’oréal, “and we must stop supporting companies that are blindly fixated on their profits at the expense of our beautiful planet and its environment. Please don’t buy plastic. Please always recycle, we can all make a huge difference through the actions that we take every day!” What’s that noise you can hear? Yes, it’s the whole of the internet laughing sarcastically as one.
Is there anything worse than being lectured to on ethics by morally bankrupt rich kids who live in tax havens? Of course we all want to do our bit to stop the planet drowning under a tide of plastic – but my first suggestion would be to ban single-use plastic people such as Hamilton and Green, who use their “positions” to do good, though only as a way of offsetting their unwavering support for people and things that are largely bad. Frankly, cleaning up a cove in Greece is the least this lot could do, given the toxic gas pollution that has been pumped into the air by their superyachts, not to mention their rampant overconsumption of material goods.
Plastic is undoubtedly a problem – but would Green et al have picked it up if it hadn’t floated into view of their yacht, threatening to ruin the Instagrammable horizon? Like most causes célèbres, this one will probably be dumped quicker than you can say “landfill” the moment that something sexier comes along.
Then again, plastic is cheap – and there’s nothing this lot dislike more than being confronted with the detritus of real life. Herein lies an uncomfortable truth about the plastic problem – it is social as well as environmental, dividing the world into those who can afford a £40 Liberty-print water bottle made of copper and highgrade stainless steel, and those who couldn’t give a fig what their water comes in, as long as it doesn’t give them cholera.
Recently, Princess Eugenie announced she would be having a “plastic-free” wedding, but what does that even mean? That she won’t be inviting Pamela Anderson? For most of these people, plastic is the devil, unless it can be put in your breasts or used to buy designer goods on Sloane Street.
Yes, plastic is bad – but then so is a world where plastic tax exiles rule supreme from their yachts, and everyone else is expected to whoop and cheer the moment they take time out of their busy sunbathing schedules to pick up some litter.
Welcome to the real world, Chloe and Lewis – and just try to be grateful that you get to sail away from it all into a sterilised sunset.