Towards the end of my own plastic experiment, implementing the 8Rs and strategy outlined in these pages, I moved house. Aside from the issue of trying to avoid using rolls and rolls of bubble wrap – a 1957 invention originally intended for use as wallpaper, but by now a ubiquitous fixture in life, especially in the removals business – the move allowed me to up the ante on my plastic reduction drive.
Moving from a flat into a house, I was suddenly presented with extra shelves and cupboards that could hold loose, unpackaged produce. It also gave me an outside shed where empty reusable laundry and cleaner bottles could be stored. The zero-waste store that fortuitously opened as I began to write this book means that bulk-buying unpackaged goods and refilling containers has become a reality. Perhaps I’m on the road to joining the zero-waste elite on Instagram after all – although with fewer white minimal surfaces.
I also got closer to the water, fulfilling a long-held ambition. My new house is slap, bang next to the River Thames. I’ve always dreamed of living next to this great river, and I’ve seen it from every angle. This includes the usual river trips, but over the years I’ve taken part in insect surveys along the banks and in river clean-ups. I’ve viewed it from the sky in a Lynx helicopter: in 2012 on a reporting assignment, we hovered above the Royal Navy’s largest ship, HMS Ocean as she squeezed – and it really was a tight fit – through the Thames Barrier. It was the last time a ship of this size would sail up the Thames, and one of the last official outings for HMS Ocean, which afterwards was decommissioned and sold to Brazil.
I’ve always been acutely conscious that I am living in one of the great coastal cities. London is qualified by the huge estuaries that serve it, and by the volume of water that passes through and around it. Now that I’m actually living on the river’s banks, it has reignited my activism. Today we are aware that the threat to the coastal ecosystem is not only from climate change, and its attendant rising seas, but also from plastic. So as well as joining my neighbourhood clean river groups, I’ve got my own net, so I can at least fish out the macro plastics that float near me, and I’ve treated myself to a kayak, so I can join the dozens of canoeists and kayakers who litter-pick on the waters of a weekend.
I’ve also noticed another change coming over me. Back at my old flat I had a long-running debate with my local council, who refused to give me access to kerbside recycling. Unlike the houses in our street, multi-tenancy buildings such as mine weren’t permitted recycling bins. In the end I managed to procure a couple regardless, and a friendly neighbour used to let me plonk them outside his house on recycling day.
Now, in a house in a different borough, I am no longer bin-impoverished. In fact, I have an abundance of big bins – three wheelie bins and a composter, for starters – and a council that offers kerbside recycling (superior to commingled, as we know). But am I happy? Of course not! I have found myself joining the bin-whingers, because the pretty front garden is cluttered with them. After sulking about this for a while, I’ve realised it’s in my power to regain control. By stepping up my plastic-free efforts, by applying the 8Rs with laser focus, I can free myself from all but the smallest amount of rubbish. My goal is to hand all the wheelie bins back to the council because I no longer need them, and therefore free up my garden.
If handing back wheelie bins constitutes personal success as far as I’m concerned, what of our collective ambition? What should that look like, and how will we know when we have done enough? To borrow from cringeworthy management-speak: What will success look like?
I received an answer to that back on the beach at Sennen Cove in Cornwall during the 2018 Big Spring Beach Clean. It’s a tough clean at Sennen Cove: the plastic washed up by the dynamic surf tends to get jammed under the large stones and boulders that cover the back of the beach. The kids, tweens and teens that populate the beach all year around, and pitch in on the big beach cleans, are undaunted. Many are grommets – surf slang for young surfers, sometimes abbreviated to ‘gromms’ or ‘gremmies’ – and are here on a daily basis, at least in the spring and summer. They skip across the rocks like mountain goats in sparkly wellies and trainers. Even the little ones, who instinctively form little teams, lifting the rock clear while another goes in to extract the plastic like a beach surgeon. It’s impressive.
Dave Muir, the owner of the beach’s surf school and a Surfers Against Sewage rep is passionate about plastic. He holds a ‘mini beach-clean philosophy’. Before any of his grommets enter the water, they must pick up a handful of plastic. Every little bit helps. As we watch tousle-haired kids dragging full bags of plastic waste off the beach, I tell him he has taught them well. By the end of the day, they’ll have done such a good job at cleaning up that the next day’s crop of beach cleaners will be forced around the headland to Gwenor in search of plastic.
Dave, who lives around the headland with his young family, agrees. But then he adds, ‘Isn’t it a shame, though, that they have to do it? When I was a kid, I just came down here, ran into the waves and surfed. I didn’t have a care in the world.’ It’s an important point. My childhood was also free of edicts and directives telling me I must pick up three bits of plastic before I charged into the sea.
But it gives us something to aim for. The day when kids everywhere can return to a carefree state and enjoy the great outdoors without worrying about the plastic pandemic will be a signal that we’ve won. Throughout this book I’ve championed the power and importance of group endeavour epitomised by the beach clean. By joining together in constructive, concerted action, we all have to hope that there’s a beach clean in our future where we struggle to gather even a single bag of waste. That’s when we will know that we have truly turned the tide.
PLASTIC DIARY GRID
