During a recent speech at a Brighton primary school, British Plastics Federation (BPF, London / UK; www.bpf.co.uk) director general Peter Davis condemned the illegal dumping of plastic waste at sea. Responding to a recent flurry of Internet articles claiming that a Spanish sperm whale ingested 17 kg of plastics dumped into the ocean by plastics suppliers, Davis said, “If this is true, we must investigate how this happened. The plastics industry does not litter beaches or dump waste in the sea but we do want to change the behaviour that leads to these incidents. Increasing plastics recycling and reducing the amount of used plastics going to landfill is something we work very hard to achieve.”

Davis spoke within the context of the “Bottles Champion Recycling Campaign”, a brainchild of the Marine Conservation Society (Ross-on-Wye / UK; www.mcsuk.org), and aimed at encouraging youngsters to collect plastic bottle tops for recycling.

The federation is currently mulling whether to sponsor the set-up of garbage bins on the country’s beaches to reduce both social littering and to raise opportunities for plastics recycling.

The BPF has been actively engaged in combating marine litter for some time already, including by publishing a manual to prevent plastic pellet loss – see Plasteurope.com of 09.09.2009.