Therese Coffey hails Mail readers for leading war against plastic waste with four-year anti-pollution campaign
Author: Colin Fernandez
The Environment Secretary has praised Daily Mail readers as she hailed progress towards the first global treaty to cut plastic pollution. Therese Coffey said the Mail’s Turn the Tide on Plastic campaign is leading the way in efforts to tackle the scourge. Representatives from more than 160 countries met in Uruguay last week to lay the groundwork for a legally binding global treaty on pollution. They will meet again in Paris in the spring, hoping to conclude a legal text by the end of 2024. The UK is one of 50 members of the High Ambition Coalition, which is pushing to end all plastic pollution by 2040. The Daily Mail launched Turn the Tide on Plastic in 2008 to reduce levels of plastic pollution. It has included campaigning for levies on single-use plastic bags in supermarkets, which led to reductions of more than 90 per cent in their use, as well as bans on microbeads in cosmetics and single use plastic straws. Graham Forbes, Global Plastic Project Lead at Greenpeace USA, said: ‘We cannot let oil producing countries, at the behest of big oil and petrochemical companies, dominate and slow down the treaty discussions and weaken its ambition. If the plastics industry has its way, plastic production could double within the next 10-15 years, and triple by 2050 - with catastrophic impacts on our planet and its people.