Plastic will be humans’ great legacy on earth. Long after we are gone and our buildings have crumbled to dust, there will be a layer of plastic left behind.

Picture the Seven Sisters, made of billions of tiny animals compressed into chalk. Now imagine them made out of sweet wrappers, plastic water bottles and carrier bags.

Humans use an obscene amount of plastic. In England alone, 7.6 billion plastic bags were distributed by shops and 15 million plastic bottles are used in the UK every day.

Only half are recycled and the rest end up in landfills or littering our seas and landscapes. They pose a serious risk to wildlife which can choke on them or starve after mistaking plastic pieces for food. Nine out of ten birds in the North Sea have eaten some kind of plastic.

At present we simply don’t have the resources to retroactively clean up plastics and the problem needs to be tackled at source.

The carrier bag charge which was recently introduced in England is a good start. It has been exceptionally effective in Wales where the use of bags has declined by 78 per cent since it was introduced in 2010.

The UK would do well to maintain the momentum and deal with other sources of plastic: a refundable deposit on plastic bottles, already in place in many countries around the world, would be an excellent continuation.

We need to focus on the three Rs: Reducing the amount of plastic we use in the first place, Reusing what we do use and eventually Recycling it when it reaches the end of its life span.

  • Olle Akesson is a marine officer at Sussex Wildlife Trust