Plastics

I am travelling North on a train, watching the waterlogged fields pass by the window.  I have made this journey countless times, and I have never seen the landscape look like this.  It’s as if the whole country is trying to be a new lake district.  

Sometimes it feels difficult to make the link between what I do every day, and the freaky weather that brings floods and heartbreak to so many people.   Plastics are the evil poster child in relation to climate change.    We know that plastics get into the oceans, kill fish, other sea creatures and birds and   are ugly when the wash up on beaches.     I’m not certain of their contribution to carbon, but as a by-product of the petro chemical industry, they must have something to do with it.    Surely its pretty easy to stop using plastic bags.  After all, the government and large stores are incentivising us by charging 5p every time we forget to take our own bag with us.   Why is it that since the introduction of the 5p charge, we are apparently all using more plastic bags not less?    I think it will be pretty easy for me to go a week without using a plastic bag for my shopping, and so I want to try and take it a bit further, and avoid all plastic packaging.  I’m interested to notice what choices I am forced to make by the packaging industry.