3 Replies to “Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill”

  1. I know it isn’t much, but it is a step forward; small though that step may be.

    Lets keep up the pressure though.

  2. It is indeed small, it’s a start but long over due and much much more effort and action is needed by the politicians as well as us voting with the pound in our pockets. Market forces will encourage change, don’t buy stuff in plastic then companies will be ‘persuaded’ to find alternatives to wrapping bananas and lemons in plastic, cans or glass bottles instead of plastic bottles. If we all managed to reduce our plastic purchase by 1% it might begin to make a difference, by 10% it would make an impact as well as sending a message to corporations and politicians, 30% would really begin to help ….

    Politicians are fickle and want to be popular, they need to justify retention of their high numbers – remember the promise to reduce 650 to 600 – no surprise there were no redundancies did anyone seriously believe that they’d cut their own numbers? We still keep adding to the 800+ in the Lords so let’s persuade them that the natural environment is a necessity not a luxury?

  3. There is undoubtedly too much plastic entering the sea around our own coast and originating from sources within the uk and it is important that we should take measures to greatly reduce this. However, we should also recognize that whatever we do in and around the UK will be barely scratching at the surface of the problem. A huge proportion of the plastic waste in the oceans globally enters via major rivers running through countries in Asia and Africa in particular, where the infrastructure for waste management and sewage treatment is poorly developed (see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368). This is an area where I would suggest the aid budget of the UK and other donor countries could be effectively targeted to make a significant difference to a global problem. The top ten rivers are In East Asia:
    Yangtze
    Yellow
    Hai He
    Pearl
    Amur
    Mekong

    In South Asia:
    Indus
    Ganges Delta

    In Africa:
    Niger
    Nile

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