I cannot recall a single television programme in my lifetime which has had a bigger impact on public discourse than Blue Planet II (Cathy Come Home was 5 years before I was born). As I’ve commented before, we have a wonderful opportunity to engage with the public and business to make a big leap forward in Sustainability.

The only problem is that the War on Plastic is tending towards a ‘plastic is evil’ meme. As Julia Hailes, author of the groundbreaking Green Consumer Guide wrote last month, we’re risking throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Plastic is a fabulous material – light, durable, flexible – provided it is in the right place, i.e. not our oceans, hedgerows or landfills.

Shifting to loose vegetables, for example, could cause more waste problems than it solves. Plastic packaging fulfils an important role in minimising food waste – never mind the carbon impact of that waste, we’d need much more farmland to feed us which means impacting on natural habitats.

Likewise, when my client Interface were looking for sustainable raw materials for carpet tiles to replace virgin nylon, they could not find a source of ‘natural’ material that they could exploit sustainably at the scale required. Instead, they concluded the best raw material for new carpet was… drumroll… old carpet.

The impacts of going plastic-free would be enormous. So the big post-Blue Planet II message must be promoting the circular economy. Not eradicating plastic, but designing products and systems to capture it post-use and use it over and over again.