We can’t wait. Change has to come from us

Once you start thinking about litter, you notice it everywhere – cluttering verges and tangled in hedgerows – and the problem seems to be getting steadily worse.

Litter is ruining our beautiful countryside and open spaces, choking our parks and playgrounds, scarring our rivers and beaches, and turning our cities into apocalyptic wastelands.

It is a disgusting situation that simply cannot continue, which is why I am so delighted to hear about the huge numbers of people coming together to do their bit to help clear it up.

It’s an amazing feat that more than 100,000 people have already signed up to the Great British Spring clean – and there’s still time to do your bit! Just visit gbspringclean.org to take part.

When there’s rubbish everywhere you look it can be very tempting to rail at the authorities for not providing more bins, not emptying them more frequently, or not spending our hard-earned taxes on rubbish clear-up crews. But change won’t happen if we leave it to Them.

change has to come from US. I’ve been an ambassador for Keep Britain Tidy for many years and I’m wholeheartedly supporting the Great British Spring clean, which is being organised in conjunction with the Daily Mail.

This is a brilliant opportunity for us all to up our game and for communities across the country to get together to clear litter – specifically toxic plastic litter – from our environment.

I’ll certainly be doing my bit – I’m never too busy to join a cleanup crew, jump out of my car to pick up rubbish by the road, or hand litter back to someone who has thoughtlessly dropped it.

I’m lucky enough to travel to all corners of the country and beyond to research and film nature programmes (in fact I’m filming in Gambia right now) and the littering I have seen is shocking. It’s not just urban areas, bus stops, city centres and children’s playgrounds misused by loutish adults – rubbish even finds its way into the most remote rural areas, too.

I’ve always hated litter and I can’t stand the sight of our glorious countryside strewn with trash. We are at an ecological crisis point and it has never been more important to try to stop unmanaged plastic waste from harming our wildlife and being washed into rivers and waterways and ultimately reaching the ocean.

Paper and card might eventually decompose, but unless we go out and pick them up, plastic bottles, balloons and straws will just stay there for hundreds of years blighting the beautiful natural landscape and killing wildlife.

More than 3million voles, shrews and mice die each year when they crawl into discarded bottles and cans and find they can’t escape. There they slowly starve.

It is an awful, protracted and painful death. A discarded crisp packet or a single torn and deflated balloon can kill innocent creatures too. It only takes seconds for a swan or a duck, a deer, fox or stoat to swallow one.

A hedgehog looking for food can get its head trapped in a can or its throat lacerated on the sharp edges and a single elastic band presents a real choking hazard to animals and birds alike.

Whether you worry about the aesthetics of your litter- strewn neighbourhood, the putrid stench of your town’s fly-tipping ‘grot spot’, plastic pollutants reaching your plate or the tragic and very real damage to wildlife, no one can say plastic litter doesn’t matter.

Something has to be done, and the Great British Spring clean is a great place to start.