The Cold Water Shock of a Hot Environmental Topic by Ildiko Scurr
This month I feel I have a duty to write about a topic which affects us all globally . Life Grid is a global magazine so this topic feels very appropriate . It is about plastic and especially plastic packaging .
In November last year , the BBC ran a wildlife documentary series called Blue Planet , narrated by Sir David Attenborough . Viewers were stunned by the images of what is happening in our oceans . Birds dying because their legs get tangled in plastic bags , whales dragging plastic rope for miles because they can ’ t get free and sea turtles and albatrosses eating plastic pellets and perishing from hunger . It made a very ugly picture .
As human beings we create incredible tons of waste that doesn ’ t degrade and is choking the natural world . Animals suffer due to our need to have plastic containers for everything in our modern world . There is actually a plastic island in the Pacific Ocean . The great Pacific Garbage Patch was de-scribed in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States . Estimates of its size range from 700,000 to more than 15,000,000 square kilometres . The water degrades the plastic into smaller and smaller particles and it is eaten by tiny aquatic or-ganisms .
The good news is that people are waking up to the need to do something drastic about it . Last year Iceland supermarket announced they are phasing out own brand plastic packaging . The expectation is that other supermarkets will start to follow suit .
Plastic has become a hot environmental topic . Dorset is taking action . Dorset County ’ s coastline is visited my thousands of tourists during the summer months . They are often not concerned about the litter they leave behind . Each year a Great Dorset Beach Clean is or-ganised . 22 beaches were cleaned as part of the 2017 Great Dorset Beach Clean , involving over 425 volunteers spending several hours to litter pick Dorset ’ s coasts , retrieving just over 330 bags of litter from Christchurch to Lyme Regis . That ’ s 145 kilometres . become the new sewage . There is a highly active branch in Bournemouth , organising beach cleans , educating people about the dangers of plastic pol-lution and what to do about reducing it and campaigning for laws to prevent it . Living close to the beach means that many people here are aware of the problem .
Down on the beach , when you go for your walk , you come across several little places where you can sit and sip a leisurely coffee . One of those places is the Beach Hut Cafe at Christchurch which an-nounced this year they are no longer using plastic packaging , after watching the Blue Planet series . They do a brisk trade , even in the winter on a sunny day . We locals like to get out the first chance the sun smiles from behind the clouds and so the Beach Hut uses a lot of cups , straws and bags . They now offer a discount on hot drinks if customers bring their own refillable cup and they have bins outside for cardboard , plastic and cans , which they recycle . " Anything we can do to help will be bet-ter than nothing and we hope to encourage other people to be more responsible too ."
Across the water , another highly popular cafe called the Beach House has announced that they are stopping using plastic straws and coffee cup lids . I expect more cafes to do the same soon . We now have a new zero-waste shop area opening , encouraged by places like Bristol , Totnes and London . My personal hope is that this article inspires many people to become pro-active . How switched on is your community in addressing the global plastic problem ?
Surfers Against Sewage - www . sas . org . uk
Great Dorset Beach Clean www . litterfreecoastandsea . co . uk
Surfers Against Sewage started back in the 1980s when a group of people who loved water sports including surfing , came together to protest at the sewage that was being pumped into the sea and making them sick . Nowadays plastic pollution has