Turning the tide on plastic - Lucy Siegle

Enough plastic is thrown away every year to circle the world 4 times
More than 8 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans each year
300 million tonnes of new plastic is produced every year
An estimated 15-51 trillion pieces of plastic now litter the world's oceans
38.5 million plastic bottles are used every day in the UK
A million plastic bottles are used per minute around the world
500 million plastic straws are used per year

Without
big action, at the current rate, pieces of plastic will outnumber fish
in the ocean by 2050. That is the legacy we are leaving our children and
grandchildren.

Plastic flows into our lives from every
direction and most of it is not recycled. Instead it is incinerated or
ends up in landfill, where it will sit for hundreds of years, or enters
the world's seas where it fragments into tiny pieces to become
microplastics - the environmental scourge of our times.

Many
of us had assumed that governments, brands and waste authorities were
dealing with plastic on our behalf. But the impact of shows such as Blue Planet
along with national beach cleans and high-profile campaigns have
resulted in a collective wake-up call. If there were plans and
strategies, they have not worked as we imagined. It would be easy to
feel despondent but instead we need to turn our anger and emotion into
action, starting by making a big dent in our own enormous consumption.

Turning the tide on Plastic
is here just in time. Journalist, broadcaster and eco lifestyle expert
Lucy Siegle provides a powerful call to arms to end the plastic pandemic
along with the tools we need to make decisive change. It is a
clear-eyed, authoritative and accessible guide to help us to take
decisive and effective personal action.

Because this matters.
When it comes to single-use plastics, we are habitual users, reaching
out for plastic water bottles, disposable coffee cups, plastic straws
and carrier bags multiple times a day. If only 12 of us adopt Lucy's
'reduce, rethink, refill, refuse' approach, we could potentially ditch
3K-15K single items of plastic in a year. When we consider our power as
influencers - whether at school, the hairdressers, at work or on the bus
- we suddenly become part of something significant.

So now is
the time to speak up, take action and demand the change you want to see
in the ocean, in the supermarket aisles and on the streets. It's time
to turn the tide on plastic, and this book will show you how.