The magical Laguna Bacalar, on the southern coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, is truly a spectacle of nature. 

Enchantingly known as the Lagoon of Seven Colours, visitors are treated to myriad shades of blue, crystal clear waters as sunlight reflects off an endless bed of limestone and sparkling white sand.

Yet, unsung to many of those who vacation on its shores each year, the wonder of Bacalar extends far beyond its ocular beauty.

Ecological disaster

The lagoon, stretching 50km through the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, is also home to the world’s highest concentration of stromatolites, coral-like organisms found in only a handful of places around the globe and considered among the earliest lifeforms on earth.

In recent years Bacalar’s popularity has soared, catapulting visitor numbers and drawing attention from far and wide. The lagoon has been heralded by some as the ‘next Cancun’ – a nod to the saturated playground for hotel holidaymakers a few hours up the coast.

But unregulated development, inefficient sewage treatment and hapless waste management are putting the lagoon – and its pre-historic natural treasures – under severe pressure, threatening to destroy the unique ecosystem and transforming Bacalar into, as campaigners say, just another lagoon in Mexico.

Like reefs, stromatolites are extremely delicate formations and major providers of oxygen. They are created by bacteria that gathers together over thousands of years. 

Sadly, their existence at Bacalar hangs by a thread as commercial ventures spell ecological disaster in this pristine corner of Central America.

While explosive, the magnified interest in Bacalar, which has doubled the population of the town (also Bacalar) in five years, does not come as a surprise. According to Euromonitor International research, Cancun was the strongest growing city throughout the Americas in 2017.

Tourism industries 

According to residents, Bacalar – which comes from the Maya ‘Bakhalal’, meaning ‘surrounded by reeds’ – was always a sleepy little place. Over the last few years, it has quickly woken up.

Across the region, the Yucatan’s rich Maya history and its ruins, its proximity to the second largest coral reef system in the world, and its endless labyrinth of caves and magical sinkholes called cenotés, have boosted its position towards the top of globetrotters’ wish-lists in recent years.

Hotels and resorts have multiplied to accommodate the demand, sweeping through towns such as Playa del Carmen and Tulum, and snapping up land in between and beyond. 

The surge in tourism has skyrocketed living costs for Mexicans and led to the privatisation of beaches – as well as the shores around Bacalar. Local people are not only struggling to keep up with the price hikes, they’re being left with limited access to the nature on their doorstep.

Nationally, the tourism industry in Mexico is outpacing global averages. The country has climbed from being the fifteenth most visited in 2012 to the eighth, with an average growth of 10% each year. In 2017 Mexico welcomed over 40 million visitors, with a good proportion of them bound for Quintana Roo.

Precarious future

With a tourism boom in full swing, the future of Bacalar rests on a knife-edge. There are positives of course – tourism can bring economic benefits for local people and celebrate the marvel of nature. But tourism can also be extremely destructive and cause irreversible damage. Land is being torn apart for development without suitable planning and, in some cases, the omission of conservation from the agenda.

There is a sense of irony that the things attracting people to Bacalar – the colours, serenity and, to an extent, the stromatolites, could be devastated by their arrival.

Local initiative Agua Clara Bacalar, a committee working for the protection of the lagoon, is concerned that time is running out if development projects don’t change their focus and put the environment first.

Nicole Oberg, Project Manager at Agua Clara Bacalar, said: “Reckless human pollution, through damaging agricultural practices and negligent sewage treatment, is threatening to destroy Bacalar, and the wonderful Laguna of Seven Colours.

“The stromatolites are extremely fragile, living things that exist here because of the unique composition of the water.  As the water becomes contaminated, the future for the stromatolites becomes ever more precarious. We have reached a tipping point, and, without change, these communities of ancient organisms will soon be gone forever.”

Arduous task

The biggest challenge faced by organisations such as Agua Clara Bacalar is the damage caused by inefficient sewage treatment, with harmful and even toxic bacteria making its way into and polluting the lagoon.

The natural alkalinity, and low levels of dissolved nitrogen and phosphorous in the water, helps the stromatolites to survive, as well as creating the spectacle of colour. If the water consistency changes, the stromatolites and colours go too. 

A sprawling landfill on the edge of the town and an absence of recycling are causing further havoc, while unsustainable agricultural practices, including the use of deadly chemicals, constitute another serious threat.

If that wasn’t enough, swathes of the mangrove rainforest surrounding the lagoon are being ripped down at an alarming rate, spelling disaster for the wildlife that calls it home.

In truth, the lagoon is being attacked from all sides, and conservationists face an arduous undertaking to preserve its future. 

Conscientious travellers

On the water itself, there are scores of activities to appeal to visitors of different persuasions. On one hand, there are boat tours with ecological themes, but some enterprises play a less responsible role.

One section of the lagoon, known as Pirate Canal, is visited daily by party boats. There are regular instances of swimmers carelessly damaging the stromatolites, while sun creams and boat cleaning chemicals spread more grease and grime.

Still, local committees and residents, as well as scientists and universities, are determined to preserve the lagoon in all its natural glory. There have been campaigns to clear up plastic, documentaries and photography exhibitions about the stromatolites, and clampdowns and fines on businesses that have failed to comply with environmental standards.

For the more conscientious traveller, an ever-growing number of eco-friendly tourism options are also available, with solar power, grey water filtration and composting toilets. Whether their ethical and environmental sensitivity rubs off on the peremptory hotels looking to descend on Bacalar, only time will tell.

A 2015 subterranean study of the lagoon revealed a stark increase of nitrates and phosphates in the water, affirming what scientists and conservationists had feared. Without immediate action and tighter regulation, Bacalar, as we know it, will pass into history.

Fragile environment

Dr. Luisa Falcon, of the Institute of Ecology at the Universidad Autónoma de Mexico in Mexico City, has been working on the Laguna Bacalar stromatolites since 2004. She said: “Bacalar is a fragile, tropical lagoon, that has been oligotrophic (an environment with low levels of nutrients) throughout its history. It will not adapt to a sharp increase in organic matter from human activities.

“Already, we’ve recorded an increase in dissolved nutrients (nitrates and phosphates) in the water, blooms of picocyanobacteria that change the colour of the water from clear blue to green, and areas of injured stromatolites caused by boats and swimmers.

“There’s also a slimy material composed of diatoms covering parts of the lagoon floor and growing on the stromatolites.”

Suitable waste and water treatment systems are essential to safeguarding the lagoon’s future, while tour operators and visitors have their own roles to play. Further regulations could include limiting tourist activities to certain areas while more extreme proposals include banning boats and swimmers altogether.

Dr Falcon added: “Growth and development are possible, but if the current approach doesn’t change, the ecosystem will be devastated by eutrophication (the over-enrichment of water by nutrients which kills fish and grows harmful algae), pollution and a loss of diversity.”

Bold ambitions

Mexico recently voted Andrés Manuel López Obrador as its new President, in what was dubbed the country’s biggest ever election.  López Obrador has promised to transform Mexico by uprooting the violence and corruption that has plagued its recent history.

For conservationists, AMLO, as he widely known, was also the candidate with the best and most dynamic environmental agenda. His programme, NaturAMLO lays out bold ambitions on issues such as water, biodiversity, climate change, sustainable living and environmental justice.

Underlying its objectives, NaturAMLO calls on Mexicans to ‘abre mas los ojos‘ (open your eyes more), which is something that could be well adopted by the less eco-friendly projects at Bacalar.

Of course, politics has a central role to play in the protection of the lagoon, though the onus will be as much on people following regulations, as it is on those drawing them up.

I, like all of those working to protect its future, was bewitched by Bacalar. The crystalline waters, surrounding mangroves and jungle, squawking parrots in the trees and immediate sense of wonder. And that was before I knew what lay beneath the surface.

In determining the future of the lagoon – and its ancient occupants – people have a golden opportunity to put the environment first. To make changes to a place and enable people to enjoy it, while giving unconditional priority to nature. I truly hope that comes to pass.

This Author

Harry Shepherd is a writer interested in conservation and sustainability. He has worked for a variety of charities and non-profit organisations and has travelled extensively across Latin America. He tweets at @HarrySheph. Agua Clara Bacalar is a non-profit organisation that promotes sustainable water management and balance between ecosystems and sustainable development. Follow them on Twitter: @AguaClaraQRoo.

Children aged one to two years old on the cusp of learning language use many of the gestures observed in great apes, according to new research from the University of St Andrews.

The study, published in Animal Cognition, showed that the children used 52 gestures to communicate, over 95 percent of which are shared with chimpanzees and gorillas.

Scientists from the University of St Andrews, University of Neuchatel, University of Göttingen and University of Hamburg studied young children and chimpanzees.

‘Great ape dictionary’

The team used the same method of recording gestures for both species: chimpanzees were observed in their habitat, the Budongo Forest in Uganda, and young children were observed in their nursery and home environments.

Wild great apes use over 80 different gestures, and the scientists have recently completed a ‘great ape dictionary’ to investigate what they mean

Senior author Dr Catherine Hobaiter, from the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at St Andrews, said: “Wild chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orang-utans all use gestures to communicate their day-to-day requests, but until now there was always one ape missing from the picture – us.

“We used exactly the same approach to study young chimpanzees and children, which makes sense – children are just tiny apes.”

The scientists were surprised by just how many gestures the children had in common with our ape cousins.

Dr Hobaiter said: “We thought that we might find a few of these gestures – reaching out your palm to ask for something or sticking your hand up in the air – but we were amazed to see so many of the ‘ape’ gestures used by the children.”

‘Gestural heritage’

The scientists found that like young apes, the young children used these gestures in a similar way: combining them together to ask for different things.

They also found some differences – young children use pointing gestures far more than young apes, and waving your hand (to say hello or goodbye) seems to be uniquely human.

First author Dr Verena Kersken, University of Göttingen, said: “Since chimpanzees and humans shared a common ancestor around 5-6 million years ago, we wanted to know whether our evolutionary history of communication is also reflected in human development.”

While humans developed language, it appears that we still have access to this shared ancient gestural heritage – and gestures continue to play an important role before language is fully developed.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from the University of St Andrews. 

The 1993 election of President Bill Clinton in the US heralded a new era in climate policy. And, in turn, the oil industry lobbyists would intensify their attacks on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Clinton appointed the accomplished and charismatic British climate scientist Dr Robert Watson as an adviser to the White House. Watson was also promoted to co-chairman of one of the three working groups within the IPCC.

The industry campaign was, at this time, still relatively transparent, with lobbyists Don Pearlman of the coal-funded Climate Council and John Shlaes, executive director of the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), receiving funding directly from the coal and oil industries respectively.

Pearlman had previously worked at the Department of Energy under Reagan and Bush Snr. As the first chairman of the IPCC, Bert Bolin recounts: “Lobby organisations were being formed, still primarily in the USA, with financial support from some industrial groups and with the aim of systematically countering the assessments by the IPCC.”

Exploit the Mistakes

The American Petroleum Institute, one of 54 members of the GCC, paid $1.8 million during a single year to Burson-Marsteller, a leading public relations firm celebrated by some for its defeat of a proposed tax on fossil fuels.

The lobbyists scrutinised every move of the IPCC and every mistake was exploited remorselessly.

Shlaes and Pearlman submitted a letter, co-signed by six major industrialists, to US delegates, claiming that a mistake in a press release proved that some scientists were “trying to use the IPCC to persuade policymakers and the public of their personal views concerning climate change science and policy issues.”

The Pearlman and Shlaes double-act also attacked the IPCC as it prepared emission scenarios for the Climate Convention to be held in March 1995.

The lobbyists claimed that “the terminology was ill-defined, that the IPCC procedures were violated, and a grave departure had been made from the work schedule agreed in 1993 resulting in a lack of a comprehensive, fair, and balanced discussion of whether the IPCC 1992 scenarios are valid, appropriate and useful.”

Oil Nations

National governments whose economies were entirely dependent on oil were also attacking the IPCC process.

Around this time, a “fierce argument had broken out between scientists crafting the report and government delegates representing Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and some other major oil exporting nations,” according to professor Michael Mann, an IPCC contributor.

But it was not just its enemies that were causing serious headaches for Bolin. “The sceptics, who did not accept the reality of an ongoing human-induced climate change…believed that the IPCC assessments exaggerated the risks of a human-induced climate change, which scared the public,” he wrote.

“They provided, however, few if any references to specific parts of the report that would support such views.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk. 

Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

Rotherham Borough Council has for the second time turned down an application from the shale oil hopeful INEOS, to drill at Woodsetts on planning grounds.

Yet when I joined anti-fracking protectors at the proposed Tinker Lane, near Retford, and Misson, near Doncaster, sites on Monday, there was little celebration.

For we’ve long since learned that while Lancashire said no to fracking, as did Rotherham and Derbyshire, neither the fracking companies, nor the government in far-off Westminster is likely to take no for an answer.

Six-year battle

“Oh, INEOS will appeal,” the locals said, and history shows they are likely right.

There was more cheer, however, in events at Tinker Lane. I’d been asked to return there because credible reports suggested that a drilling rig might be arriving on Monday.

It’s the subject of an injunction, one of the many attacks we’re seeing on democracy and right to protest around the country, both by frackers and others (hello Sheffield’s Labour City Council).

But that hasn’t deterred people coming out to protest and show their opposition to the rig, and on an autumnal weekday, about 35 people came out prepared to demonstrate their opposition.

No rig appeared – and that was a victory, one more small one in this now six-year battle to stop fracking in England. (It has already been blocked in Wales and Scotland, not to mention France, Germany and Bulgaria.)

Small village

And those small victories have added up to something big. Back when fracking was aiming to get started in Balcombe, the expectation was that there would be an entire industry operating by now, but instead public opposition has grown and grown, protests have slowed and prevented activity.

The very weak arguments made then about gas being needed as a “bridging fuel” until renewables came on line have entirely evaporated as renewables have come online far faster, and at far lower prices, than predicted.

Huge credit is due to the many thousands of people who’ve given up their time and energy to show their opposition, and keep a close check on what the industry is doing – what their importation of the cowboy culture of US fracking looks like at close hand.

After Tinker Lane, I visited the protection camp at Misson, where Ineos’s activity had visibly, although chaotically, stepped up.

The protectors told me that three times in the one day vehicles had breached the traffic management plan. Vehicles are supposed to enter and leave the site not through this small village, with its school, nursery, and tightly bending road but from the other direction. The security guards were at one stage not wearing their proper identification.

Overheated planet

Police on the gate – there were two standing there and at least four more sat in a van around the corner – were frustrated at their inability to get information about what the company was planning. “Well there was supposed to be a lorry at 2pm, but it hasn’t turned up so it probably won’t now,” was all the gate guard could say, with a shrug, about 3.30pm.

I heard from local people here just how traumatic the whole issue has been for them – lack of sleep and stress is clearly having a significant health toll.

But one of the things that struck me about this visit, as to my recent one to Preston New Road, is about how conversation on the frackers’ gates has moved on.

Of course we’re still talking about the certainly local environmental impacts – the lorries, the water use, and the noise and light pollution – “don’t worry about the gas flaring I heard a Lancashire planning officer say, “you can always get blackout blinds” – and the risks of spills and contamination.

And about climate change – how we need to be moving away, fast, from fossil fuels – the carbon stored in the grounds over aeons being left there, instead of lifted into the atmosphere of our already overheated planet.

Take control

But the top topic of conversation these days in democracy. “We thought this was a free country,” is a common sentiment.

Most of the people working day after day, week after week, on the anti-fracking effort are not longtime political activists. They’re small business people, grandmas, parents, workers taking days off when they can, who’ve been horrified by what is being done to their communities. And by their lack of ability to take control of what’s happening.

At Tinker Lane it was striking since my last visit how many more passing locals have clearly been alerted to the fracking attempt, and the issues around it. Toots and waves of support come thick and fast, from lorry drivers, from people in suits, from parents ferrying their children.

Tinker Lane, Misson, Woodsetts, and many other communities threatened by fracking have made up their mind against it. The British public has come out in clear and obvious opposition to it.

But we have a government that wants to press on regardless, and an industry using the courts to seek to draconianly end peaceful protest.

Power doctrine

When history is written, there’s a good chance the fight against fracking will be seen as an important part of the awakening to determination for parliament to reflect the will of the people. It certainly doesn’t now – with 68 percent of votes not really counting in 2017.  This is a fight to stop resources, money and control being seized by Westminster – while the rest of the country has politics done to it.

Reflecting that, today Theresa May will be confronted outside parliament by 100 women dressed in the costumes of 100 years ago, as the suffragettes and suffragists were dressed, many of them travelling down from Lancashire.

Their message is simple: “Let communities decide on fracking, without the top-down power doctrine of central government.”

One hundred years on from some women getting the vote, there are growing numbers of women and men determined to complete the work of the campaigners then – to end the astonishing centralisation of power in London, and take back control of their communities.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

The Leave and Remain camps are readying for a second campaign over the nature of the UK’s future relationship with the union – as the deadline looms for a final Brexit agreement between the EU and the UK.

Both camps will seek to push their arguments into the British press, hoping to convince late-comers to their cause.

While national newspapers have long taken a stance on Brexit, op-eds, columns and opinion pieces will be a key tool for lobbyist from both sides of the debate to push their agenda into the public sphere.

More exposure

Research by DeSmog UK shows how a network of hard-Brexit think tanks pushing for deregulation and with links to climate science deniers has secured a footing in the mainstream press.

Working out of two addresses in Tufton Street near Westminster, this network which includes climate science denial group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), has been accused by BeLeave whistleblower Shahmir Sanni of holding regular meetings to “agree on a single set of right-wing talking points” and “securing more exposure to the public”.

This Tufton Street network has strong ties with the right-wing press including the free business newspaper distributed in and around London City AM and The Telegraph — both of which have been repeatedly used to push the group’s agenda into the media.

Deep ties

At the heart of the Tufton Street network is the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an opaque London-based free-market think tank registered as an “educational charity” with the mission “to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society”.

Earlier this month, on the same day as the UK government released its ‘no deal’ scenarios, the IEA launched what it called a series of “‘no deal’ Brexit fear-checkers” which it said would “help separate theoretical risks from reality” or what it called “Project Fear from Project Fact”.

Former under secretary of state for exiting the EU, Steve Baker, promoted the IEA’s briefings on Twitter as bringing “more impartiality and objectivity” into the debate.

The IEA recently hit headlines after an undercover investigation by Greenpeace’s Unearthed and The Guardian suggested the think tank was involved in a “cash for access” system and offered potential US donors access to UK ministers.

The IEA denied the allegation. Undercover recordings yet showed IEA director Mark Littlewood claiming Shanker Singham, the director of the international trade and competition unit at the IEA, and his team speak with environment minister Michael Gove “every three or four days, along with David Davis, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox”.

Party affiliate

Singham is a close advisor to former Brexit Secretary David Davis and Baker, who have both pushed back against Theresa May’s Chequers plan.

While the IEA’s first briefings have already attracted plenty of media attention from across the political spectrum, it is worth noting that the think tank has deep connections with parts of the press.

Christian May, editor-in-chief of City AM, is also a member of the IEA’s advisory council.

At the time of his appointment in 2015, City AM was understood to want to adopt a more eurosceptic tone, according to the Guardian. May came from the PR industry and had no senior editorial experience before his appointment.

Between 2008 and 2009, May was the director of operations at the Young Britons’ Foundation, a controversial Tory party affiliate which made the news after one of its alumni Mark Clarke was accused of bullying young activist Elliott Johnson, who took his life. Clarke denied the allegations.

Think tank

The group’s radical views previously earned it its reputation as a “Tory madrasa” used to teach young Conservatives the “dark arts” of politics.

A 2013 annual meeting of the Young Britons’ Foundation, attended by May, also included a number of people with connections to the Tufton Street network. This included Steve Baker, Taxpayers Alliance founder and former chief executive of Vote Leave Matthew Elliott, Brexit Central editor Jonathan Isaby, and ConservativeHome founder Tim Montgomerie.

May is not the only connection City AM has with the IEA. Kate Andrews, newly appointed associate director at the IEA, also writes a fortnightly column for the paper.

Last week, City AM broke the story that David Davis is to write a foreword to a 140 page “Alternative Brexit Plan”, which is due to be published this week and will make the case for a Canada-style trade deal.  

According to City AM, the proposal is being coordinated by Singham, of the IEA, and in collaboration with at least one another think tank and a City law firm.

Director of research at the IEA Jamie Whyte has also written four controversial columns for The Telegraph since July 2017 — including opposing the plastic straw ban and how “turning Britain into a tax haven would make us all richer”.

Vote Leave

Matthew Elliott, former chief executive of Vote Leave and editor-at-large of Brexit Central, is a regular columnist at City AM. Elliott is also the co-founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance that advocates for a low-tax society and has been pushing for deregulation post-Brexit.

Despite Elliott’s prominent role in pushing for a hard-Brexit agenda, City AM fails to identify his political affiliations in his short biography on the paper’s website. Instead, it reads: “Matthew Elliott is the senior political advisor to Shore Capital.”

Shore Capital is a London-based private equity firm. Besides regular and significant donations to the Conservative Party, the Shore Capital Group donated £50,000 to Vote Leave, then headed by Elliott.

Founder of Shore Capital and former chief executive Howard Shore is an outspoken Brexiteer and columnist for the Telegraph. He donated nearly £50,000 to the Conservative Party since 2012.

Last month, in his City AM column titled “Economic optimism is battling the Project Fear no-deal panic”, Elliott listed “project fear stories” about what would happen in the case of a no-deal Brexit — making the case that the economy was showing positive signs despite the Remainers’ threats.

Kamikaze Brexit

“With the good economic news to counter the more extreme scare scenarios, the threat of a no-deal Brexit is — so far — having as much impact as the first iteration of Project Fear in 2016,” he wrote.

City AM did not respond to DeSmog UK’s request for comment on how the paper discloses affiliations to lobbying and political groups in time for publication.

Allister Heath, editor of the Sunday Telegraph and former City AM editor, helped Elliott co-found the TaxPayers’ Alliance back in 2004 along with his sister Florence Heath, who subsequently married Elliott.

In his latest column for the Telegraph, Heath defended his views for a low-tax society, attacking Theresa May’s “ridiculous Chequers” plan” and accusing the government of handling a “kamikaze Brexit strategy” by endorsing a soft Brexit.

Free trade

The Economists for Free Trade (EFT) is a campaign group pushing for a “no-deal” Brexit while arguing that the adoption of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules would be “the very best” option for the UK.

The group claims to be a coalition of independent economists despite having strong ties to Brexiteer Conservative MPs, right-leaning mainstream media and some well-known climate science deniers.

The group publishes reports on a range of topics related to Brexit with the aim to demonstrate the path from “project fear to project prosperity”.

An EFT advisor and climate science denier Matt Ridley quoted figures from another EFT member, Michael Burrage, in his Times column titled “We’ve nothing to fear from a world-trade Brexit”  to support his argument that a no-deal Brexit may benefit the UK. Yet, Ridley did not declare his own affiliation to the group.

Ridley is also an advisor to the UK’s climate science denying group the GWPF but does not disclose his affiliation to the organisation in his columns.

Scare tactics

Graeme Leach, CEO and chief economist at Macronomics and a member of EFT, writes a weekly column for City AM.

In his City AM column dated 16 August, Leach compared Theresa May’s Chequers’ plan to the Monty Python’s  “Dead Parrot” sketch. “Whichever way you look at it the Chequers agreement is dead,” he wrote.

“We are staring at a no-deal Brexit in the face” he said, quoting the EFT research which claimed that for the UK to thrive after Brexit, the country had to be outside both the single market and the customs union. Unlike the others, Leach disclosed his membership to the group in the column.  

Sunday Telegraphs columnist Liam Halligan is also a member of the EFT.

In a column in July this year titled “No deal is looking increasingly likely and that’s just fine”, Halligan argues that “many MPs fear ‘no deal’” because of “unchallenged scare tactics of ‘professional Remainers’”. Nowhere in the piece did Halligan disclose his membership to the EFT.  

Leading economists

His column echoes some of the arguments used by his colleague and the convener of the EFT, Edgar Miller, who wrote a column for the Telegraph arguing “Don’t worry about the Brexit negotiations, no deal is better than what we have now with the EU”.

The column sets out some of the work the EFT have done to show the UK would be better off trading under WTO rules than remaining in the EU.

Roger Bootle, founder of the Capital Economics and also a member of the EFT, is another Telegraph columnist described by the paper as “one of the City’s leading economists”. Bootle’s short biography on the Telegraph’s website does not disclose his affiliation with the pro-Brexit group.

The Telegraph did not respond to DeSmog UK’s request for comment in time for publication.

According to Electoral Commission data, Bootle donated £200,000 to Vote Leave during the referendum campaign.

Slamming what he described as Theresa May’s “Brexit disaster” and advocating a full break-up from the EU, Bootle wrote in a column called “What business leaders know about Brexit … and what they don’t” in which he claimed the business community had warned against a hard-Brexit because “business people are short-minded”.

Partisan media

The Tufton Street network boasts a growing presence in the new media sphere.

Tim Montgomerie, former columnist at The Times, co-founder of Conservative Home and editor of UnHerd is a key example.

In an 2010 interview with the New Statesman, Montgomerie described himself as a climate change “sceptic”, adding: “I’m sceptical about policy. We should do green things, but only when they have other benefits. […] I’m much more worried about Iran than about global warming.”

Montgomerie, a hardline Brexiteer, is an advisor to the EFT and has been close to Elliott and the Taxpayers’ Alliance since the group’s launch in 2009.

That year, in a Conservative Home post, Montgomerie described the Taxpayers’ Alliance as being part of a growing “conservative movement” and wrote that he had given a joint presentation with its co-founder Elliott at a conference at the Manning Centre in Ottawa.

Regular fixture

The political blog Guido Fawkes has also recently strengthened its ties to the Tufton Street network.

Hugh Bennett, former deputy editor at Brexit Central and correspondence officer at Vote Leave, and Tom Harwood who led the student Leave campaign joined the Guido Fawkes as news editor and reporter.

Both seem to get on well with Darren Grimes, former deputy editor at Brexit Central and recently appointed digital manager at the IEA. On separate occasions, Grimes tweeted pictures of friendly encounters with Bennett and Harwood.

Grimes — founder of BeLeave, the grassroot campaign used to channel money to Vote Leave — was fined £20,000 and reported to the police after the Electoral Commission found evidence of the Vote Leave campaign breaching electoral spending rules.  

Another regular contributor to both City AM and the Telegraph is Ryan Bourne.

Bourne is the chair for the public understanding of economics at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington DC and co-founded by the fossil fuel magnate Charles Koch who has played a significant role in funding climate science denial in the US.

The Cato Institute has long spread disinformation about climate change.

Through these links, the voices of a select network of pro-Brexit lobbyists and campaigners have become a regular fixture of the UK’s mainstream press — often without columnists declaring their interests.

This Article

This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

‘Plastic attack’ battle lines are being drawn. This Saturday (15 September 2018) thousands of frustrated shoppers in more than 100 towns and cities across 20 countries plan to stage mass protests at supermarkets against harmful packaging. 

They have declared it to be World Plastic Attack Day. These peaceful protestors are gearing up to give back all throwaway, avoidable, single-use plastic to supermarkets.

Plastic attacks have become a worldwide movement after they went viral on social media this year. Thousands of protestors have taken part so far around the world.

Collective power 

Their actions have been shared on social media and the news, sparking many copycat protests, and now through a Global Plastic Attack Facebook group, which is acting as a hub to publicise events worldwide.

Shoppers will exert their growing collective power to drive change, while raising awareness about the severe impacts of plastic pollution. 

The campaigners will stand at shop entrances and ask everyone who shops to buy their goods and then, en masse, rip off all the plastic that they believe is not necessary, collect it all up in trolleys, record the content and politely hand it back to the shops.

Alex Morss, one of the campaigners, said: “Teams stand outside each store and invite all shoppers who agree, to join in, so we will easily involve at least 200 or more shoppers per hour at each store, obviously multiplied by a large number of stores and repeated events”.

She added: “The public is being fully supportive, and so are the shop floor staff. Volunteers collect up everyone’s plastic waste in trolleys, photograph and analyse it to see which brands and stores are the worst offenders, before presenting it back to the shops.

“We have calculated that a nation the size of the UK could easily fill more than ten thousand trolleys per hour with avoidable single use plastic wrapping – and typically half of what gets ripped off is not even currently recyclable.”

Plastic footprint

Ms Morss, from the Bristol-based community group OnebyOne Conservation, one of the network of groups behind the plastic campaign, added: “One of the world’s biggest mountains is a plastic one – a giant almost everlasting symbol of disgrace.

“The moment plastic leaves the shop door, it is out of sight and out of mind for supermarkets but a very long-term burden for the world. Research has shown the vast majority of it never gets recycled.

“Taxpayers, wildlife and the environment pay the costs, not the stores. Despite all the publicity in recent times and higher awareness than ever, there is still very little regulation to make massive producers and sellers of plastic-wrapped goods behave in a more environmentally responsible and sustainable manner. And there is no transparency about the full extent of their plastic footprint.”

The Global Plastic Attack Facebook group has 8,000 supporters. They share news, videos and photos demonstrating that very often the single-use plastic mentality is not the only option, and often not justifiable using the excuse of food waste, which has been argued by some commentators who have defended some uses of plastic packaging.

The food waste argument for using plastic was widely challenged by a report published by the EU Institute for Environmental Policy this year, which showed food waste has increased as plastic usage has gone up, and that food waste and sustainability are often not the crucial reasons for the chosen packaging.

Demanding change

The plastic attackers have criticised the abundant use of non-essential plastic used for marketing or bulk-buy-driven reasons, the widespread use of non-recyclable containers and wrappers, the avoidable single-use mentality, the commonplace wrapping of ‘organic’ vegetables in plastic when non-organic are not, as well as “over-packaging” on many items.

They say other sustainable alternatives are viable – and that often no wrapping would work fine, as is seen in many green grocers, organic and smaller independent stores.

The campaigners encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable containers and bags, and paper or biodegradable food composting bin bags for loose groceries. They point out these are being used anyway for kitchen food bins, so they are not an extra burden on the environment.

Belgium campaigner Christophe Steyeart who co-hosts the Global Plastic Attack Facebook group, said: “Shops cannot ignore so many thousands of their own customers telling them they are sick of unnecessary plastic. Wake up businesses, the world is demanding change.

“When people, the customers, change their way of buying and consuming, the industry must comply. Politicians will soon start thinking about their voters, and need to create laws so waste can be banned as much as possible. All parties must listen!”

Taking responsibility 

Fiona Edwards, from Keynsham Plastic Re-action, whose early video of a plastic attack has had more than 18 million views on social media, said: “We have demonstrated without doubt that our actions have overwhelming public support.

“It seems that people have been unwillingly purchasing all this plastic along with their food, and now they realise they have a choice, and can make their voices heard. They don’t have to be complicit any more.”

The World Plastic Attack Day network of campaign groups have teamed up with World Clean Up Day for 15 September. Many campaigners will also be doing litter picks and highlighting the vast volumes of plastic waste that end up in the environment.

World Cleanup Day spokeswoman Tina Urm said: “Scientists are predicting that by 2050 we’ll have more plastic than fish in our oceans. The problem is not just mismanaged waste ending up in our nature, waterways and oceans. It’s about the fact that only 9 percent of the plastic ever produced has been recycled.

“The production of single use plastics is only increasing, while half of the world’s population doesn’t have any access to a proper waste management system. This is the wake-up call we desperately need – both for producers and businesses to take responsibility and for people who can influence the big picture with their everyday choices.”

Keep it clean

The current Plastic Attack campaign was started this spring by small numbers of frustrated shoppers in the Bristol UK area, who teamed up with like-minded groups around the UK, Belgium and across Europe, sharing videos and photos on social media and quickly spreading the idea around the world.

They say their protests are always polite, law-abiding events, with no littering and no obstruction of checkouts, and everyone shopping is invited to take part. Stores are told in advance and asked to accept back their waste. 

A group of researchers and experts has also been working under the wing of the Let’s do it! Foundation to create The Keep It Clean Plan. The Plan garnered support and input from many other NGOs working on sustainable management of waste.

It embeds the principles of the zero waste strategy and practice, and consists of recommended actions for businesses, governments, citizens and NGOs to implement specific steps that will help to tackle the global challenge of mismanaged waste.

Research suggests only about one tenth to one third of plastic packaging that could be recycled actually gets recycled. In the UK, an estimated one million tonnes of throwaway plastic goes to landfill, incineration or ends up in the sea or as litter in the environment each year.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story was based on a press release from World Cleanup Day. For more information, visit the website for the action here.