The enormous scale of plastic pollution is such that actions still don’t match the scale of the crisis.
Photo: World Bank / Grant Ellis (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Sir David Attenborough, Broadcaster and naturalist. From Source to Sea: Innovative Ways to Tackle Marine Pollution. Ap– WASHINGTON DC – 2019 World Bank/ IMF Spring Meetings. Then came the film, and over a year later, the public’s concern around the issues raised by David Attenborough’s documentary has been sustained, leading not just to important changes in consumer behaviour, but legislative reforms and corporate commitments to reduce plastic waste as well. It was a well known problem but with little being done at a global scale to reverse it. Fifteen years earlier, in 2002, as use of plastic bags was still rising in many wealthy countries, Bangladesh became the first to ban some types of plastic bag that were worsening flooding by blocking urban drainage systems. Twenty years earlier Charles Moore, a research and sailor, had discovered what became known as the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, an area of ocean overwhelmed with plastic pollution. The rapid arrival of concern took many by surprise, because the problem was not new. After the programme had aired, there was a 100% increase in online searches for ‘dangers of plastic in the ocean’, and a 50% increase in searches for ‘plastic recycling’. The outpouring of feeling was immediate, as thousands of people took to social media to declare their own personal wars on plastic. Millions worldwide watched these events unfold in the BBC’s documentary Blue Planet II, which was broadcast internationally towards the end of 2017. A baby albatross bringing up a plastic bag.
A pilot whale carrying her dead calf across the ocean for days.
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