Plastic No Longer Fantastic

We’re all looking to use less plastic, but often the choice is taken out of our hands when we travel. Here’s how to get back control and do some good…

- Emma Thompson

‘By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans.’ I was sitting in a boat off the coast of Greenland when I first heard this claim, from a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and World Economic Forum, and it hit me like a sledgehammer. But life is busy and making mindful choices takes effort. Before long, I had fallen back into my old habits. Then a long-haul flight to Mauritius changed everything.

I forgot something on the plane, and when I went back to retrieve it, the flight attendants were unloading all the waste from the flight. You expect it to be a lot, but I was appalled: 60 giant plastic bags bulging with plastic bottles, knives and forks, headphones, pudding pots – even those little stirrers to mix the milk into your coffee. And it finally hit home that this has to stop. If one aircraft can generate that much plastic, and there’s around 102,465 flights daily, we’re talking millions of bags of waste generated every day from flights alone.

The debate about diminishing our reliance on plastics has been steadily growing, and last year marked a decisive turning point for several brands. Many are ditching the old linear ‘take-make-waste’ plastics economy in favour of a reusable model, which means, as travellers, we can now vote with our feet.

Changing faces