DAD DIARY: SIMON CARTER

Regards trying to save the planet, I always remember a family holiday to Florida back in 2010 (yeah, I know, long journey - Greta wouldn’t have been impressed). Once, visiting a supermarket, the cashier personally put our food items in plastic bags for us – the sort of bags which were handed out for free in England prior to 2015. She popped about three or four items in each bag. We ended up with about 20 - the cashier having ignored our protests that we didn’t need this many bags. It got me thinking. We were just one family visiting one supermarket on one day in the good old US of A. Just imagine how many bags are given away in that country every minute? Whenever I read about kindhearted people doing beach cleans on Hayling Island or Southsea, or school pupils going on demos, I think back to the bag-happy lady merrily handing out thousands a week. And, as a result, a grim thought has always struck me - do we EVER stand a chance of winning this war on plastic? Not when the greatest consumer society on earth, the USA, has little appetite (very unlike Americans, I know!) for banning the bag - something Bangladesh did in 2002. New Yorkers are believed to throw 20 plastic bags out each week. That’s 10 BILLION a year. That’s what my family, and your family, are up against. And what kind of world will that obscene plastic gluttony create for our children’s children? We can do our best, all of us, but we can’t do it all.