The Bad News...
There is no denying that the task ahead of us is phenomenal.
Governments around the world seem slow to react.
There are horrendous repercussions for wildlife right now.
The impact on human health in the long term can only be guessed at.
So, what to do?
Despondency is not an option. Take action early and in massive numbers. Give us all a fighting chance to rectify this problem for ourselves and for future generations.
It is up to us as individuals and as communities to take the reigns and act faster than those in power. In doing do, we can compel manufacturers, organisations and governments to act on an industrial scale to reduce plastic production and begin to remove the plastic from the oceans.
Taxation on the production and sale of newly manufactured plastic is crucial. One day there must come an outright ban on some, if not all, new plastic production. This would lead to an immediate rise in the value of all existing plastic which would be harvested as a finite resource. While it remains cheaper to make new plastic than it is to collect and recycle the old, they will keep doing so – adding to an already massive burden.
This film sums up the issue succinctly. It contains necessarily graphic images of seabirds – post-mortem – and the contents of their stomach which killed them. Ideal introduction to the issue for High Schools and Communiy Groups.
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