[Music]
hello so I was gonna call this talk how
to make going to the toilet and act of
devotion but I thought I might lose you
we’re gonna take a way more intimate
look at plastic pollution and discover
how we can all make a small but
significant difference one flush at a
time
now plastic pollution has been headline
news for a couple of years now sky is on
it with their ocean rescue campaign
the Daily Mail got behind the microbead
ban that’s the little plastic beads in
cosmetics and more recently they’ve
backed the call for a deposit return
scheme on plastic bottles and every bit
of this coverage is needed we’re seeing
colonies of majestic sea birds declining
remote islands with beaches covered in
tons of plastic and images of children
swimming in rivers that are choking with
carrier bags and bottles and recent
studies have shown that micro plastic
particles are even in the air we breathe
and the food we eat it’s bad for
wildlife it’s bad for the Seas and it’s
bad for us
now you might still see the problem as
far away as not happening to me we hear
that 60% of ocean plastics reaches our
oceans from five countries in Asia and
think that because we’re doing our
recycling that we’re doing our bit but
that’s not really the case and what
really fascinates me about what’s
happening here in the UK is that
according to the Marine Conservation
Society who’ve been gathering beach
clean data for over ten years is that 7%
of all the plastic found on our beaches
is coming directly from our homes more
specifically our toilets
we are literally flushing the health of
the oceans down the pan now surveys have
shown that around a third of us are
flushing things down the toilet that we
shouldn’t be now that’s a lot of people
that either don’t know or don’t care
about the impact of our flushing
behavior and yes I used to be one of
them
I didn’t know that flushing my tampon
down the toilet would cause a problem or
the little plastic wrapper I thought
that the sewage companies would deal
with it and that would be the end of
that so how did I go from seeing my
toilet as a bin to seeing it as part of
the water cycle as a direct connection
between me and the rivers and the Seas
it wasn’t pretty
I lived in a city I didn’t swim or sail
or row or surf and I’m not a scientist
or a marine biologist and actually I was
a bit scared of the sea but around four
years ago I came across the trailer for
the film albatross by the artist Chris
Jordan and if you haven’t checked how
his head talks I recommend you do they
are amazing and Chris has kindly given
me permission to show that trailer to
you today or at least a clip from it
because that trailer changed my life I I
didn’t want to skip over the real reason
that I’m here today and the reason that
I have dedicated the last three years of
three and a half years of my life to
stopping plastic pollution at source
thanks
[Music]
so we’ve just witnessed the chicks of
the Laysan albatross on the Midway
islands in the middle of the Pacific
thousands of miles away from any major
landmass and a third of those chicks are
dying in their nests with their bellies
full of plastic that their parents have
fed them because their parents are
swooping down into the sea and seeing
these colorful bits of plastic and
scooping them up and bringing them back
and feeding them to those chicks and
when I see that clip well when I saw it
for the first time and every time since
I feel a grief I feel a sadness unlike
anything else I felt when seeing human
caused environmental damage and I don’t
know what it is about the albatross that
moved me so deeply I don’t know if it’s
the fact that it’s so beautiful and cute
and fluffy or if it’s the fact that I
was seeing everyday items of plastic
that I was using inside the bellies of
those chicks bottlecaps my brand of
toothbrush ink cartridges inside the
belly of something so magnificent I just
it shook me to the core and it woke me
up to what I was doing to what we were
doing and it may sound cliche but that
was the first time I heard a voice rise
up inside me and say not on my watch so
from that day I decided to do something
about it
but I actually had no idea where to
start I had no idea so I decided that I
maybe would just start by doing what I
love most which was to make a song and
dance about it actually I’d already
written the song and I thought maybe the
music video could work if it was about
plastic pollution so I got about it and
I started a crowdfunding
to make a music video about plastic
pollution
which I hoped would go viral and change
the world but it didn’t
it’s called burden and it’s on YouTube
and please do go and check it out
another time wasn’t quite long enough to
show it to you now but actually it
didn’t matter that the music video had
failed to make a measurable impact
because actually the music video was
just the beginning
I took the momentum that I’d created
from the crowdfunder the individual
supporters and the business supporters
and with that momentum I founded my own
organization called City to see to stop
plastic pollution at source and around
that time I started going on beach
cleans now it wasn’t until I joined in a
beach clean here on the banks of our
local River in Bristol a tidal river
which at the time was the European Green
Capital of Europe that I actually began
to grasp the scale of the problem and
that it was something happening on my
own doorstep and apart from the swathe
of plastic bottles we were collecting
and you can see them here I mean it’s
waves of them it was these hundreds of
tiny plastic sticks that were everywhere
that caught my eye
they were cotton buds and so when I went
home I did my research and I discovered
that as a nation we’re flushing these
things down the toilet in their Millions
and being so small they passed through
the sewage filters and straight out into
our rivers and seas especially at times
of heavy rainfall and as I’m sure you’re
all very aware rain is something we get
quite a lot of here in England so I’m
going to come back to cotton buds later
but for now I want to talk more about
the third of us that are flushing things
down the toilet because it seems we’ve
come to believe in magic in our
bathrooms there’s this clever
contraption that makes things disappear
condoms that we don’t want hanging
around in the bin tampon applicators
that we have in our hand and just can’t
reach the bin wait who needs a bin I’ve
got this guzzling thing that makes
everything vanish
I don’t even have to empty it myself yay
boo I’m sorry to burst our magic little
bubble but the toilet is not a bin most
of our sewers were designed and built in
the Victorian era and we didn’t even
have toilet paper back then let alone
cotton buds and teeth flosses and all
kinds of wipes bum White’s vagina wipes
baby wipes facial wipes household
cleaning wipes and all are the kinds of
products which contain plastic and don’t
break down or biodegrade and that’s not
even mentioning the crazy amount of
menstrual products our spirits are
flushing in that is me by the way in the
UK around 700,000 panty liners 1.4
million pads and two and a half million
tampons are flushed down our toilets
every day
every day now the average non-organic
pad contains the same amount of plastic
as for carrier bags so you get the
picture and it’s not just women and
menstruate is that are flushing things
down the toilet studies have shown that
men are more likely to flush condoms
cigarette butts cotton buds and plasters
down the toilet so this is something
which affects all of us and yet we’re
all grown-ups for the most part we know
that when the magician puts the rabbit
in the Hat it doesn’t really disappear
it just goes into a secret compartment
on the magician’s table so why do we
think that when we put plastic down the
toilet it does actually disappear it
doesn’t it can end up in our rivers and
seas breaking up into micro plastics
accumulating chemicals being eaten by
plankton and then fish and then bigger
fish and then us we’re eating this stuff
so back to cotton buds it seemed that
there had to be a way to stop them from
getting into our rivers and seas and I
thought there were
two paths that were available to me at
the time I thought I could either try
and get people to stop flushing them
down the toilet or I could get the
supermarket’s to stop making them out of
plastic and make them out of paper
instead our paper still shouldn’t be
flushed but at least it would biodegrade
if it was I went for option two as nine
Supermarket sustainability managers
seemed like a much easier option than
the entire population of the UK so in
September 2016 city to see launched its
campaign switched the stick calling on
retailers to switch from plastic to
paper stem buds I managed to secure
funding from three Ford thinking water
companies and September last year we
launched our campaign with a film and a
petition our online community was
amazing within a month we had 6,000
signatures which was pretty good going
for the fledgling organization we were
at the time and a month around that time
then 38° got in touch and said do we
want to run our campaign on their
petition platform and we said yes which
was a fantastic idea and decision as a
month later we had an extra hundred and
fifty thousand signatures on our
petition and that number of people
really converted into some serious
consumer power and pressure and a whole
lot of capacity for mischief-making and
we made plenty of mischief we completely
bombarded their social media channels
with calls for them to switch the stick
we hijacked their beautifully curated
Christmas marketing campaigns with
thousands of messages and it worked
within a month from that time all nine
UK retailers had pledged to switch the
stick by the end of 2017
[Music]
they’re hitting the shelves now which is
really exciting to see that so that move
is going to stop over 320 tons of non
recyclable single-use plastic from being
produced at source every year brilliant
so you see plastic pollution is a battle
we can win and not just in our bathrooms
we can question with every piece of
single-use plastic we buy do I really
need this in the first place and if each
of us commits to making just a few small
simple changes in our lives we can be
part of the groundswell that is needed
to turn the tide on plastic pollution
you can join the refill movement and
carry a reusable bottle or coffee cup in
public pulling out a metal straw from
your bag these things spread a really
powerful message I choose to reuse so
indeed maybe we can make going to the
toilet an act of devotion and care more
for our rivers and seas and the precious
life they support and that includes all
of us by the way
so let’s rethink bog-standard when you
go to the loo just flush pee paper and
poo the three P’s right it’s easy but
you know changing behaviors can be hard
and it can take some deep rewiring of
the neural pathways to really embed a
behavior change so let’s just take a
moment together to really help bring
that message home now I have no idea if
there are people up there oh can I just
and there people up there okay good I’m
gonna need you guys to be particularly
loud okay so everybody on this side of
the room you’re all pee okay if you got
that everybody over here you’re all
paper okay you know what’s going
everybody up there you’re all poo right
the way
okay so when I point at you I would like
you to shout out your P and your paper
and your poo this is a really
scientifically proven way it’s not
actually it’s just a bit of fun so when
you go to the loo just flush that’s good
you guys are good poos okay we’re gonna
do it a few more times just to really
you know bring it home don’t litter the
loo just flush pleasing bog-standard
okay the three P’s when you go to the
loo just flush fantastic well done that
was rethinking
yeah you did really good there so
rethink redesign now I’m assuming you
all have access to a bathroom so here’s
a radical idea how about you get a bin
in your bathroom
in fact why didn’t you get two bins one
for your recycling and one for your
disposables and mucky stuff that you
might not want rubbing up against your
shampoo bottle in fact actually you
don’t need to buy shampoo boxes you can
get shampoo bars instead anyway two bins
in your bathroom so rethink redesign and
reuse if you have periods or you parent
and menstruate err then try switching to
reusable products a menstrual cup cost
between ten and fifteen pounds and can
last up to 10 years washable pads and
period panties are completely disrupting
the period product marketplace and
massively reducing the amount of plastic
being sent to landfill or being flushed
I switched to reusable products a couple
of years ago throughout my life look how
happy you’ve made me
you could be that happy too I am
actually really proud to be championing
the rise of the reusable at home at work
on the go and through my work we’re
inspiring thousands of others to do the
same and I really hope that each of you
will join that number and begin cleaning
out the single-use plastic from your
lives and your bodies and if you just do
one thing then share this film when you
see it online and let’s be part of the
movement to change the world one flush
at a time and if you still don’t feel
inspired to do it for yourself or for
the children that will inherit this
beautiful planet that we live on and how
about doing it for this little lady
how could you resist that thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
hello so I was gonna call this talk how
to make going to the toilet and act of
devotion but I thought I might lose you
we’re gonna take a way more intimate
look at plastic pollution and discover
how we can all make a small but
significant difference one flush at a
time
now plastic pollution has been headline
news for a couple of years now sky is on
it with their ocean rescue campaign
the Daily Mail got behind the microbead
ban that’s the little plastic beads in
cosmetics and more recently they’ve
backed the call for a deposit return
scheme on plastic bottles and every bit
of this coverage is needed we’re seeing
colonies of majestic sea birds declining
remote islands with beaches covered in
tons of plastic and images of children
swimming in rivers that are choking with
carrier bags and bottles and recent
studies have shown that micro plastic
particles are even in the air we breathe
and the food we eat it’s bad for
wildlife it’s bad for the Seas and it’s
bad for us
now you might still see the problem as
far away as not happening to me we hear
that 60% of ocean plastics reaches our
oceans from five countries in Asia and
think that because we’re doing our
recycling that we’re doing our bit but
that’s not really the case and what
really fascinates me about what’s
happening here in the UK is that
according to the Marine Conservation
Society who’ve been gathering beach
clean data for over ten years is that 7%
of all the plastic found on our beaches
is coming directly from our homes more
specifically our toilets
we are literally flushing the health of
the oceans down the pan now surveys have
shown that around a third of us are
flushing things down the toilet that we
shouldn’t be now that’s a lot of people
that either don’t know or don’t care
about the impact of our flushing
behavior and yes I used to be one of
them
I didn’t know that flushing my tampon
down the toilet would cause a problem or
the little plastic wrapper I thought
that the sewage companies would deal
with it and that would be the end of
that so how did I go from seeing my
toilet as a bin to seeing it as part of
the water cycle as a direct connection
between me and the rivers and the Seas
it wasn’t pretty
I lived in a city I didn’t swim or sail
or row or surf and I’m not a scientist
or a marine biologist and actually I was
a bit scared of the sea but around four
years ago I came across the trailer for
the film albatross by the artist Chris
Jordan and if you haven’t checked how
his head talks I recommend you do they
are amazing and Chris has kindly given
me permission to show that trailer to
you today or at least a clip from it
because that trailer changed my life I I
didn’t want to skip over the real reason
that I’m here today and the reason that
I have dedicated the last three years of
three and a half years of my life to
stopping plastic pollution at source
thanks
[Music]
so we’ve just witnessed the chicks of
the Laysan albatross on the Midway
islands in the middle of the Pacific
thousands of miles away from any major
landmass and a third of those chicks are
dying in their nests with their bellies
full of plastic that their parents have
fed them because their parents are
swooping down into the sea and seeing
these colorful bits of plastic and
scooping them up and bringing them back
and feeding them to those chicks and
when I see that clip well when I saw it
for the first time and every time since
I feel a grief I feel a sadness unlike
anything else I felt when seeing human
caused environmental damage and I don’t
know what it is about the albatross that
moved me so deeply I don’t know if it’s
the fact that it’s so beautiful and cute
and fluffy or if it’s the fact that I
was seeing everyday items of plastic
that I was using inside the bellies of
those chicks bottlecaps my brand of
toothbrush ink cartridges inside the
belly of something so magnificent I just
it shook me to the core and it woke me
up to what I was doing to what we were
doing and it may sound cliche but that
was the first time I heard a voice rise
up inside me and say not on my watch so
from that day I decided to do something
about it
but I actually had no idea where to
start I had no idea so I decided that I
maybe would just start by doing what I
love most which was to make a song and
dance about it actually I’d already
written the song and I thought maybe the
music video could work if it was about
plastic pollution so I got about it and
I started a crowdfunding
to make a music video about plastic
pollution
which I hoped would go viral and change
the world but it didn’t
it’s called burden and it’s on YouTube
and please do go and check it out
another time wasn’t quite long enough to
show it to you now but actually it
didn’t matter that the music video had
failed to make a measurable impact
because actually the music video was
just the beginning
I took the momentum that I’d created
from the crowdfunder the individual
supporters and the business supporters
and with that momentum I founded my own
organization called City to see to stop
plastic pollution at source and around
that time I started going on beach
cleans now it wasn’t until I joined in a
beach clean here on the banks of our
local River in Bristol a tidal river
which at the time was the European Green
Capital of Europe that I actually began
to grasp the scale of the problem and
that it was something happening on my
own doorstep and apart from the swathe
of plastic bottles we were collecting
and you can see them here I mean it’s
waves of them it was these hundreds of
tiny plastic sticks that were everywhere
that caught my eye
they were cotton buds and so when I went
home I did my research and I discovered
that as a nation we’re flushing these
things down the toilet in their Millions
and being so small they passed through
the sewage filters and straight out into
our rivers and seas especially at times
of heavy rainfall and as I’m sure you’re
all very aware rain is something we get
quite a lot of here in England so I’m
going to come back to cotton buds later
but for now I want to talk more about
the third of us that are flushing things
down the toilet because it seems we’ve
come to believe in magic in our
bathrooms there’s this clever
contraption that makes things disappear
condoms that we don’t want hanging
around in the bin tampon applicators
that we have in our hand and just can’t
reach the bin wait who needs a bin I’ve
got this guzzling thing that makes
everything vanish
I don’t even have to empty it myself yay
boo I’m sorry to burst our magic little
bubble but the toilet is not a bin most
of our sewers were designed and built in
the Victorian era and we didn’t even
have toilet paper back then let alone
cotton buds and teeth flosses and all
kinds of wipes bum White’s vagina wipes
baby wipes facial wipes household
cleaning wipes and all are the kinds of
products which contain plastic and don’t
break down or biodegrade and that’s not
even mentioning the crazy amount of
menstrual products our spirits are
flushing in that is me by the way in the
UK around 700,000 panty liners 1.4
million pads and two and a half million
tampons are flushed down our toilets
every day
every day now the average non-organic
pad contains the same amount of plastic
as for carrier bags so you get the
picture and it’s not just women and
menstruate is that are flushing things
down the toilet studies have shown that
men are more likely to flush condoms
cigarette butts cotton buds and plasters
down the toilet so this is something
which affects all of us and yet we’re
all grown-ups for the most part we know
that when the magician puts the rabbit
in the Hat it doesn’t really disappear
it just goes into a secret compartment
on the magician’s table so why do we
think that when we put plastic down the
toilet it does actually disappear it
doesn’t it can end up in our rivers and
seas breaking up into micro plastics
accumulating chemicals being eaten by
plankton and then fish and then bigger
fish and then us we’re eating this stuff
so back to cotton buds it seemed that
there had to be a way to stop them from
getting into our rivers and seas and I
thought there were
two paths that were available to me at
the time I thought I could either try
and get people to stop flushing them
down the toilet or I could get the
supermarket’s to stop making them out of
plastic and make them out of paper
instead our paper still shouldn’t be
flushed but at least it would biodegrade
if it was I went for option two as nine
Supermarket sustainability managers
seemed like a much easier option than
the entire population of the UK so in
September 2016 city to see launched its
campaign switched the stick calling on
retailers to switch from plastic to
paper stem buds I managed to secure
funding from three Ford thinking water
companies and September last year we
launched our campaign with a film and a
petition our online community was
amazing within a month we had 6,000
signatures which was pretty good going
for the fledgling organization we were
at the time and a month around that time
then 38° got in touch and said do we
want to run our campaign on their
petition platform and we said yes which
was a fantastic idea and decision as a
month later we had an extra hundred and
fifty thousand signatures on our
petition and that number of people
really converted into some serious
consumer power and pressure and a whole
lot of capacity for mischief-making and
we made plenty of mischief we completely
bombarded their social media channels
with calls for them to switch the stick
we hijacked their beautifully curated
Christmas marketing campaigns with
thousands of messages and it worked
within a month from that time all nine
UK retailers had pledged to switch the
stick by the end of 2017
[Music]
they’re hitting the shelves now which is
really exciting to see that so that move
is going to stop over 320 tons of non
recyclable single-use plastic from being
produced at source every year brilliant
so you see plastic pollution is a battle
we can win and not just in our bathrooms
we can question with every piece of
single-use plastic we buy do I really
need this in the first place and if each
of us commits to making just a few small
simple changes in our lives we can be
part of the groundswell that is needed
to turn the tide on plastic pollution
you can join the refill movement and
carry a reusable bottle or coffee cup in
public pulling out a metal straw from
your bag these things spread a really
powerful message I choose to reuse so
indeed maybe we can make going to the
toilet an act of devotion and care more
for our rivers and seas and the precious
life they support and that includes all
of us by the way
so let’s rethink bog-standard when you
go to the loo just flush pee paper and
poo the three P’s right it’s easy but
you know changing behaviors can be hard
and it can take some deep rewiring of
the neural pathways to really embed a
behavior change so let’s just take a
moment together to really help bring
that message home now I have no idea if
there are people up there oh can I just
and there people up there okay good I’m
gonna need you guys to be particularly
loud okay so everybody on this side of
the room you’re all pee okay if you got
that everybody over here you’re all
paper okay you know what’s going
everybody up there you’re all poo right
the way
okay so when I point at you I would like
you to shout out your P and your paper
and your poo this is a really
scientifically proven way it’s not
actually it’s just a bit of fun so when
you go to the loo just flush that’s good
you guys are good poos okay we’re gonna
do it a few more times just to really
you know bring it home don’t litter the
loo just flush pleasing bog-standard
okay the three P’s when you go to the
loo just flush fantastic well done that
was rethinking
yeah you did really good there so
rethink redesign now I’m assuming you
all have access to a bathroom so here’s
a radical idea how about you get a bin
in your bathroom
in fact why didn’t you get two bins one
for your recycling and one for your
disposables and mucky stuff that you
might not want rubbing up against your
shampoo bottle in fact actually you
don’t need to buy shampoo boxes you can
get shampoo bars instead anyway two bins
in your bathroom so rethink redesign and
reuse if you have periods or you parent
and menstruate err then try switching to
reusable products a menstrual cup cost
between ten and fifteen pounds and can
last up to 10 years washable pads and
period panties are completely disrupting
the period product marketplace and
massively reducing the amount of plastic
being sent to landfill or being flushed
I switched to reusable products a couple
of years ago throughout my life look how
happy you’ve made me
you could be that happy too I am
actually really proud to be championing
the rise of the reusable at home at work
on the go and through my work we’re
inspiring thousands of others to do the
same and I really hope that each of you
will join that number and begin cleaning
out the single-use plastic from your
lives and your bodies and if you just do
one thing then share this film when you
see it online and let’s be part of the
movement to change the world one flush
at a time and if you still don’t feel
inspired to do it for yourself or for
the children that will inherit this
beautiful planet that we live on and how
about doing it for this little lady
how could you resist that thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
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