New book: Turning the tide on plastic

How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again


Lucy Siegle

An accessible, practical and ultimately inspiring book that not only serves as a much-needed call to arms to end the plastic pandemic, but gives useful tools on how to make meaningful change in our everyday lives and advice on how to demand long-lasting action.

• 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.

Once Upon a time in Suburbia

Long ago and far away, in a land that time forgot,
Before the days of Dylan, or the dawn of Camelot.
There lived a race of innocents, and they were you and me, For Menzies was in the Parliament in that land where we were born,
Where navels were for oranges, and Peyton Place was porn.

We longed for love and romance and waited for our Prince,
Eddie Fisher married Liz, and no one's seen him since.

We danced to 'Little Darlin,' and sang to 'Stagger Lee'
And cried for Buddy Holly in the Land That Made Me, Me. Only girls wore earrings then, and 3 was one too many,
And only boys wore flat-top cuts, except for Jean McKinney.And only in our wildest dreams did we expect to see
A boy named George with Lipstick, in the Land That Made Me,Me.

We fell for Frankie Avalon, Annette was oh, so nice,
And when they made a movie, they never made it twice. We didn't have a Star Trek Five, or Psycho Two and Three,
Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Miss Kitty had a heart of gold, and Chester had a limp,
And Tarzan was a loner whose co-star was a chimp.

We had a Mr. Wizard, but not a Mr. T,
And Oprah couldn't talk yet, in the Land That Made Me, Me.
We had our share of heroes, we never thought they'd go,
At least not Bobby Darin, or Marilyn Monroe.

For youth was still eternal, and life was yet to be,
And Elvis was forever in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We'd never seen the rock band that was Grateful to be Dead,
And Aeroplanes weren't named Jefferson, and Zeppelins were not Led.


And Beatles lived in gardens then, and Monkees lived in trees,
Madonna was Mary in the Land That Made Me, Me.

We'd never heard of microwaves, or telephones in cars,
And babies might be bottle-fed, but they were not grown in jars.
And pumping iron got wrinkles out, and 'gay' meant fancy-free,
And dorms were never co-Ed in the Land That Made Me, Me.
We hadn't seen enough of jets to talk about the lag,
And microchips were what was left at the bottom of the bag.
And hardware was a box of nails, and bytes came from a flea,
And rocket ships were fiction in the Land That Made Me, Me.
T-Birds came with portholes, and side shows came with freaks,
And bathing suits came big enough to cover both your cheeks.
And Coke came just in bottles, and skirts below the knee,
And Castro came to power near the Land That Made Me, Me.
We had no Crest with Fluoride, we had no Hill Street Blues,
We had no patterned pantyhose or Lipton herbal tea
Or prime-time ads for those dysfunctions in the Land That Made Me, Me.
There were no golden arches, no Perrier to chill,
And fish were not called Wanda, and cats were not called Bill.
And middle-aged was 35 and old was forty-three,
And ancients were our parents in the Land That Made Me, Me.
But all things have a season, or so we've heard them say,
And now instead of Maybelline we swear by Retin-A.
They send us invitations to join AARP,
We've come a long way, baby, from the Land That Made Me, Me.

So now we face a brave new world in slightly larger jeans,
And wonder why they're using smaller print in magazines.
And we tell our children's children of the way it used to be,
Long ago and far away in the Land That Made Me, Me.

Those who didn't grow up in the fifties have missed the greatest time in history,

The flying whale: Airbus A380 Beluga

OUTSIZE PLANE FOR OUTSIZE CARGO

David Ellis

FRENCH aerospace company Airbus SE that makes the world's largest passenger aircraft – the A380 that's flown by numerous international airlines to Australia – is building five huge new airfreighters that will move outsize aircraft parts as large as fuselage sections, and entire wings and tails from makers world-wide, to Toulouse in France and Hamburg in Germany, where Airbus has assembly centres that put its new planes together.

And so big will these monster new Airbus BelugaXL freighters be that they will be able to carry up to fifty-three tons of aircraft parts at a time from supplier plants in several European countries, the UK and even China and the USA, to those assembly centres.

Each of the new Belugas, the first of which will go into service in 2019, will be capable of flying some 30 per cent more cargo than Airbus's existing airfreighters, and do so in single hops of up to 4,000 kilometres.

Named Beluga because of the resemblance of their nose sections to the head of the Arctic's white Beluga whales, Airbus has had a bit of fun in going even further in giving its new airfreighters painted-on "eyes" and a grinning "mouth," as it admits the voluminous raw aeroplanes will not be the most beautiful in the sky.


[] EVEN their makers say the voluminous new Airbus Beluga XL airfreighters in their raw form will not be the most beautiful aeroplanes in the sky when they start flying next year. Note how tiny the cockpit appears in the nose.(Airbus SE)

[] BUT given a bit of a paint job with "eyes" and a grinning "mouth," they will take on a whole new personality, as this artist's impression shows. (Airbus SE)