Bob Earll      It has been a remarkable week for the campaign against single use plastics and the need for deposit return schemes [see plastic bottle tracker PBT]

On Dec 1st the Daily Mail carried in its front page article news that further supermarkets, M&S and Waitrose are thinking of breaking rank with the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) opposition to deposit return schemes. So now we know who is blocking action.

When the Daily Mail start a Campaign it is the beginning of the end of the argument ….

Hard on the heels of this was the Michael Gove interview: “The sea is in my blood. My father made his living as a fish merchant, as did his father before him. Generations of Goves have gone to sea, harvested its riches and fed families with the healthiest — and most renewable — resource on the planet, our fish. And while my attachment to the sea springs from my family background, I know that it is shared across our island nation by millions.”

The Marine Conservation Society’s Great British Beach Clean report for 2017 highlighted the urgency of the need for action. This reports a 10% rise in the amount of litter collected volunteers, much of which was plastic. https://www.mcsuk.org/media/GBBC_2017_Report.pdf

This coincided with the news that the supermarkets Iceland and the Coop are now backing the idea of a deposit return scheme which had a really good coverage from the Guardian, which as usual has lots of links.

That comes on top of Greenpeace’s present to Coca Cola reminding them of their part in this massive problem; it has received 1.3 million views.