Plastic - The Killing Fields of Pollution.

I knew about plastic bags years ago when I travelled to the Middle East & Asia. They didn't have our "sophisticated" means of refuse collection & disposal. So the plastic bags were everywhere - dumped in beautiful landscapes, forever stuck in trees & hedges, overflowing in the few bins in towns & cities.

I found out about micro beads in beauty products more recently. Just after I had bought a new facial scrub actually.

David Attenborough gave us all a wake up call to the damage plastics are doing in our rivers & oceans in The Blue Planet. The killing effect that it is having on wildlife & humans. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48251420

What I didn't know until last night was how pervasive plastic is in the very air we breath & the food we eat. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005xgz

Well now we do know. We can't escape our responsibility for the damage already done to everything in our world. We simply have to change. Immediately, there isn't a choice. Each & every one of us has to stop our own small pollution of everything that is beautiful about our environment. We cannot say that our individual action makes no difference.

Actually we are lucky. We live in an age where scientific evidence & technology can show us the knock on effect of what we purchase & throw away. It can also show us how the production of our everyday consumables is damaging our environment.

But we also have to show the politicians that we care enough to take real action. We need a mass movement in the style of the current Hong Kong protest about extradition to China. Politicians need to understand that the current situation is not acceptable & will ultimately destroy us if it continues.

Tomorrow I've been invited by Greenpeace to a reception at the House of Commons to launch Greenpeace's report into the plastic pollution in UK rivers. Literally a "drop in the ocean" of total water pollution.

In addition to plastics rivers are polluted with:-

• Sewage
• Agricultural Pollution
• Oil pollution
• Radioactive Substances
• Dumping - e.g. bikes, trolleys,electronic waste....
• Drugs

Rivers flow into the sea. The sea is also treated as a huge waste bin. Marine dumping is illegal. But there is only a point to legislation if it is enforced. How on earth do you enforce that?

The first thing Government has to do is to legislate to ban single use plastics. The second thing they have to do is tell us how to dispose of all the single use plastic we have in our homes. The disposal needs to be properly planned & organised. If everyone participates it will be a huge mountain.

I think I'm having a second coming as a political activist - Greenpeace Grannies unite!