Sky in bid to tackle pollution in oceans

Media giant helps tackle crisis in seas

ENVIRONMENT: Media giant Sky has pledged to eliminate all single-use plastics by 2020 to help tackle sea pollution – as Prince Charles warns the threat to the planet’s marine ecology has reached a critical point.

MEDIA GIANT Sky has pledged to eliminate all single-use plastics from its operations, products and supply chain by 2020 as part of efforts to tackle plastic pollution in the oceans.

It will see new products such as the Sky Soundbox, launching later this year, arrive without any single-use plastic packaging wrapping the unit, cables and plugs. By the end of 2017 all new products will be made without any single-use plastics, and Sky has committed to help business partners and its supply chain transform their operations.

The company, which made the commitment under the Sky Ocean Rescue campaign that aims to raise awareness of plastic pollution in the world’s seas, has also eliminated single-use bottles, cutlery and straws from offices and operations across Europe.

Staff have been issued with reusable bottles – reducing plastic bottle use by more than 300,000 – and plastic cutlery has been replaced by items made from corn starch, the company said.

It is also creating a £25m fund over five years to invest in innovation, businesses and start-ups which are developing technology to eradicate single-use plastics from supply chains and stop plastic ending up in the ocean.

Sky is partnering with environmental charity WWF to safeguard marine protected areas around the coastlines of European countries where it has operations – the UK and Ireland, Germany and Italy – with a campaign to encourage the public to adopt and protect and enhance coastal areas.

Sky’s group chief executive Jer- emy Darroch, who is setting out the commitments at the EU Our Ocean Conference in Malta, said: “We need to tackle one of the biggest man-made environmental disasters facing our planet – plastics in the ocean.”

Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales has released a turtle made ill by plastic back into the sea after condemning the proliferation of the waste material in the world’s oceans. Charles placed the female loggerhead turtle on to the golden sand at a beach in Malta after warning that the threat to the planet’s marine ecology has reached a critical point where plastics are “now on the menu”.

Charles also described how pirates terrorising vessels off the coast of Somalia have had one unforeseen positive effect – creating a fisherman-free zone where marine life has thrived. He said that fishermen were avoiding the area and “there has been a fantastic explosion of bigger and bigger fish, all along the coast, because there hasn’t been the fishing”.

We need to tackle one of the biggest man-made disasters. Sky’s group chief executive Jeremy Darroch.

PRINCE CHARLES has always been one of the world’s foremost environmentalists and his speech to the Our Ocean Conference in Malta reflects this commitment. Yet, for once, he’s not a lone voice. There’s a sea-change in political and public attitudes, whether it be deposit return schemes for plastic bottles in parts of the UK, though not England, or media giant Sky’s commitment to reduce the amount of plastic packaging used on its products.

With the Prince of Wales warning that plastic is now “on the menu” amid forecasts that the seas will contain more plastics than fish, by weight, by 2050, every country should be duty-bound to make a difference, a down payment on the planet’s future. Here it can only be hoped that other firms follow Sky’s example while consumers, at the same time, press decision-makers to extend recycling projects. Charges for plastic bags have reduced their proliferation. Now it’s time to tackle the plastic bottle menace.