Plastic non-fantastic

It was our Annual General Meeting tonight and we had two particularly good talks; one from my colleague Jenny who heads our Caribbean work and talked about goat eradication on remote islands; and this one from my friend Tanya who works on our marine plastics project. A big recent focus has been getting attention on the issue of microbeads in cosmetics, and through their work Tanya and her team have forced legislative change so that soon no products such as face scrubs can be sold in the UK containing any plastic ingredients. Microplastics end up in the guts of micro-organisms, fish and seabirds, contributing to the death and suffering of countless. Most people are aware of those pictures of dead albatross chicks whose parents have fed them pieces of plastic, effectively starving them and blocking organs. This success is something tangible and tractable, unlike most conservation issues that we face.

Conservationists sometimes spend time trawling the aisles of Boots checking the ingredients lists of facial scrubs, not always wearing dive gear whilst surveying coral reefs in 30 degree sunshine.

After the talks, there was a period of mingling with eccentric supporters. One who I have run into for years is becoming even more unpredictable and decided to start telling me about the problem of spontaneously spurting breasts in lactating women, apparently bad when she was younger and stepping out of the shower. It sounded pretty inconvenient.

I am hardly squeamish but it was a strange topic for the environment, as we calmly munched on canapés. Good to learn about an aspect of motherhood of which I was oblivious, though.