Thank you very much Antony. So, as Anthony said, this is a really important topic and I'd just like to say a big thank you to the webinar vet for putting on this session this morning about plastic pollution. Thanks to the Blue Planet effect, it's become one of the most talked about subjects of 2018, and Anthony mentioned, last year it was actually single use was the, was the word of the year.

And we are in a very exciting and privileged position as vets and vet nurses to do something positive about this crisis, which I'll be touching on later in my presentation. So, my name's Carl Major. I graduated from the Royal Dick in Edinburgh in 2012.

And I'm going to start with a little bit of background about plastic pollution for those of you who might not know, necessarily all the facts and figures, my involvement with campaigns, and then a focus on how I think the crisis is best approached as individuals and as vets. So this is essentially how my journey with plastic pollution began. I'm a very keen surfer, and this was one of my favourite surfing beaches in Cornwall when I lived in Plymouth.

And after every session in the water, I'd come out to be greeted by this. So I love this place and I love seeing dolphins and other wildlife here, and I just couldn't stand to see them threatened by something that we had created. I needed to do something about it, so I started volunteering with Surfers Against Sewage, which is a local Cornish environmental charity.

And that's where I found my tribe, a like-minded group of people, all caring about the environment for their own reasons. And I began running community beach cleans like this one you can see here, which is bringing people together to help tackle this issue of plastic pollution on the beaches. These beach cleans were often the first step in people's conscious, consciousness in connecting what we're finding on the beaches with what was being used in our everyday lives.

And we could all then begin to ask the questions as to how we could do things differently. So I recently actually made a video called Why bother with the Beach queen, and it's posted on my Facebook page, which is Carl Major hyphen Paddlegainst plastic, if any of you want to check it out, which gives a bit more background into the value of beach cleans for community engagement, education and empowerment. So you'll find plastic on every beach you go to in the UK in some form, and globally, the issue is immense.

So 8 million tonnes of plastic into the ocean each year it's estimated, and it's estimated that by 2050 there'll be more plastic in the ocean by weight than fish. A plastic bottle will take 450 years to break down, and again, that's an estimate because we just don't know how long it will take to break down because plastic's only been around for less than a century. But as it does break down, it fragments into smaller and smaller pieces along the way, becoming more easily ingestible by fish and marine species.

The chemicals in plastics cause endocrine disruption and carcinogens readily bind to plastic in the ocean. The economic implications of plastic pollution are enormous too. But this is the fact that stuck in my head.

It's estimated that 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die every year as a result of plastic pollution. And this can be through entanglement or ingestion. And it's not just marine animals that are affected.

So this is a cow I came across while I was paddling around the Isle of Skye in Scotland, and their grazing area extended to the coast. And this cow here, she was chewing on a piece of fishing net that had washed up onto the beach, and she had swallowed part of it. And upon questioning local farmers, I was also told that they had regularly had ill thriving animals that needed to have fishing nets and plastics surgically removed from their rumens.

I was, I was horrified by this, you know, we hear about the dolphins being entangled, but we don't think about our domestic creatures more close to home. So where does all this plastic in the ocean come from? Well, 80% of marine litter originates from land-based sources, and a lot of that is single-use plastic, and single use plastic is the stuff that's used for a matter of minutes and it's normally packaging before it's discarded.

So some of the marine plastic is litter that's dropped, whether that's by the coast or further inland, making its way out to sea by rivers and canals. Nurdles are the tiny bits of plastic you find on the strand line of beaches, and these are the building blocks of the plastic industry which are melted down to make plastic products. They're washed down drainage systems in factories and directly out to sea, and they're so tiny that they're very, very difficult to pick up off beaches and they're very easily ingestible by animals.

This is a handful of plastic cotton bud sticks that I collected in just a couple of minutes on the beach in Scotland. The whole beach was covered in thousands of them, and these are the sticks from the things the cotton buds or Q-tips that you clean your ears with that had been flushed down the loo and directly out into the ocean. So one of the campaigns I was involved in with Surfers Against Sewage was called Think Before You Flush, where it was encouraging people only to flush the three pes down the loo, which is pee, poo and paper, and anything else has to go in the bin.

So a lot of sources of plastic that perhaps we don't necessarily think of. So in 2016, I wanted to do something about this problem, and there was one particular fact about single use plastic that stuck in my head. In the UK alone, we use 38.5 million plastic bottles every single day.

And less than half of them are recycled. This was and still is one of the most common single-use plastic items I was finding washed up on beaches, and for me it became the epitome of how we stop single use plastic from ending up in the ocean. We need to stop it at source by using less unnecessary single use plastic packaging, water bottles being the first obvious step.

Recycling here is unfortunately not the answer. Plastic bottles are not infinitely recyclable, so they degrade each time they're recycled. Not all bottles that you put in your recycling bins are recycled, and there's lots of energy involved in recycling plastics.

So where we can, we need to actually stop using unnecessary single use plastic. So in 2016, I'd recently taken up stand-up paddle boarding and I was really enjoying exploring the coastline around Cornwall. And the picture here on the left is actually a remote cove in Cornwall that, that can only be accessed by water.

And paddle boarding one day, I'd found 80 plastic bottles at the back of this cave that had been washed in there. I just needed to do something about this, I needed to talk to people about this, and, and help them see that actually there's something really positive that we can all do here to help to help affect this issue. .

So I very naively decided that I'd paddle around the whole coast of Cornwall, which was 300 miles from Plymouth to Croyd, to highlight this issue of plastic pollution, but moreover, to bring a positive message and a call to action that plastic water bottles are avoidable, and choosing a refillable bottle instead could help alleviate this issue, stopping the pollution at source. I really wanted people to feel empowered to do something positive, something that they could be proud of and hopefully that would inspire further positive change both in their own lives and in other people that they met. I think there's a lot of doom and gloom around environmentalism, a lot of negativity, and that's such a turn off to to action, and I think actually we really need to focus on the positives and on the things that we can do if we want to engage people in in making positive positive steps.

So this is what I'd expect expected Cornwall in the summer to look like. I thought I was letting myself in for 3 weeks of whales and dolphins and sunfish and maybe get a suntan, and the reality was very different. I battled for 3 weeks through head-high waves, fog, gale force winds, driving rain, and at one point I was even chased by angry seals.

I don't know if any of you are stand up paddle boarders, but you're essentially balancing on a glorified surfboard trying to propel yourself forwards. And it's wonderful on a flat calm day, but a little different if there's any wind or swell. So I called my campaign Paddle Against Plastic and this campaign continued on through the last few years with expeditions that I was using to to highlight the issue of of plastic pollution and to bring a positive message to that issue.

And I know a lot of you were incredibly supportive of my expedition last year, which I'm so grateful for, where I stand up paddle boarded from Land's End in Cornwall, 1000 miles to John O'Groats in the north of Scotland, which is the entire length of the UK. Again, to bring a positive message about plastic pollution and to look at, yes, there's the pollution that was affecting the whole of the UK, but also the incredible positive changes that were happening the length of the UK to, to help tackle it, the communities that were being involved and, and what we could do about it. There's I'm not gonna talk too much about my expedition this morning.

There's more information on my website which is paddle Against plastic.com. If you want to know more, there's a few videos on there as well.

So I was expecting to find lots of plastic on the way, and I did. This was a very remote beach in Cumbria that only had access from a farm, so tourists weren't coming to this beach. This wasn't plastic that was being left on the beach by people coming for picnics.

This was all being washed in there. And this bag here, this was within about 5 minutes of arriving on the beach. I'd already collected 150 plastic bottles and it barely looked like I'd even made a dent on the rest of the bottles that were there.

So I was expecting this plastic, I was expecting to find this after my previous expeditions and and my campaigning and beach cleans. But the most profound lesson I learned was that people protect what they love, and this theme reared its head on several occasions when I was visiting coastal communities, but no more so than in the village I was washed into called Portpatrick on the west coast of Scotland. So I arrived here after having paddled through the night to get around the Mull of Galloway, one of the most dangerous headlands in the whole of the United Kingdom, and I washed up there in a storm, freezing cold, soaked to the bone, and absolutely exhausted, and I kind of just dropped my board on the beach and dragged myself and my bags into the nearest pub where I passed out in the table in the corner, and I woke up, I don't know how long I'd been asleep for, but I woke up.

Surrounded by slightly inebriated local men, or very curious as to what this bedraggled woman was doing in their pub, he began questioning me on what I was doing there. And as soon as I started explaining my mission and my reasons, they started excitingly telling me about the work they were doing to protect the local beaches from plastic. So the local B&B owner who'd removed all single-use plastic packaging from his B&B and cleaned the beach almost daily, offered to put me up for a couple of nights until the storm passed.

The pub provided me with free food. The local primary school asked me to come in and see their presentations they've made about plastic in the ocean and how to protect the animals they loved by reducing their plastic footprint. And they organised a community beach clean for the following morning for me to be involved in.

They were so, so proud of all the actions they were taking. They were so connected to their coastal environment and wanted to do whatever they could to protect what they loved. I was so warmed by their reception and and by their friendship and by their passion, and for me it really highlighted this theme that people will do what they can to protect what they love.

So this is Gordon and Caroline, they were right characters. They ran a takeaway truck by the seafront in this little village in Scotland, and they'd switched all their polystyrene and plastic packaging to compostable plant-based packaging, and they were so proud of this, and we spent ages talking about it and the effect it had had, the cost implications, which were much more minimal than they'd expected, and their argument was if they could do it, running a small business on the coast of Portpatrick, why couldn't everybody else? And I'm very excited to be hearing from Hill later about Iceland's pledge in this matter as well.

So The worst affected part of my trip was the canals of North Manchester, so I paddled from one end of the country to the other, and 800 miles of it was ocean and 200 miles was canals and rivers because I wanted to look at what was going on inland as well. A lot of the plastic pollution we're seeing out to sea is originating inland and it's washing out through the canals and through the rivers. On one day in North Manchester in the canals, I counted 691 plastic bottles in the first hour of paddling.

Floating on the surface of the canal. So I wanted to really connect people to this idea that it's not just plastic that's originating out to sea that's ending up washed up on the, up on the coastline, it's also stuff that's starting in land. I feel that as a society in general, we're quite disconnected from the natural world and that that's where the indifference to environmental crises is often born.

We need to really reconnect our lives and land to what's going on out to sea and in the world at large, if we want to stand any chance of protecting it. And to do this, we all need to find a way that we can connect to nature in some way that is meaningful to us. People protect what they love, but they only love what they know, and a personal and meaningful connection to nature will nurture a desire to protect it.

And this is the way that we help empower people to protect nature by choosing to use less plastic or to support initiatives and policy that enable this. So this is now where I'm focusing my attention on bringing the message inland and attempting to connect more people to their environment. There was also another element to my trip, and I was raising money for vet life and the Samaritans and highlighting how important time in nature is for our mental wellbeing.

I love this quote from John Muir. Thousands of tired, nerve shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home, that wildness is a necessity. It doesn't have to be the mountains, it can be the ocean, it can be rivers, it can be a park, it can just be your back garden.

I don't think that this is unrelated to a desire to protect someone either. I think connecting to what a place means to you for whatever that reason, nur nurtures a desire to protect it. Whether you love its beauty, realise its importance to your well-being, or simply wish to protect the animals and ecosystems.

We also all need time out in whichever natural environment speaks to us the loudest, and I think as busy vets we sometimes neglect this need. Which is not just a privilege but an important part of us as humans. So I'd strongly recommend that if you're feeling tired, nerve shaken or overcivilized, then head out somewhere wild and it won't be long before you're feeling a little bit better, if not a lot better.

Now the beauty of the plastic pollution crisis is that it's tangible. People can see the problem and connect that to that to something positive that they can do about it. And change really is happening fast.

In the years that I've been campaigning for behaviour and policy change, I've seen enormous leaps in awareness, collaboration. And community as well. So I helped to run the Surfers Against Food Plasticre co-signs campaign in my local community, where the degree of pride people are taking in coming together to do something positive, it is what keeps the fire stoked.

More people are aware of the issues and refusing single-use plastic in their daily lives where they can. And also adding their voice to the growing number of people demanding change from policy, companies, and government. So in the last year or two, we've actually seen the government adopt a plastic-free parliament, leading by example.

And they're also debating the implementation of a deposit return scheme for commonly used plastic packaging, such as plastic bottles to improve recycling rates, and that's where people will return an item of plastic packaging, which they've paid maybe an extra 10 10% for, and then receive that 10% back once it's returned to an appropriate outlet. We're also starting to see companies respond to the demand from their consumers to operate in a more environmentally minded way. And we've seen certain companies leading the way with bold pledges and exciting changes.

And again, that's where Hillary's presentation on Iceland's commendable work, will come on later this morning. So what is our role? As vets in this crisis, .

Well, I think we are in an incredibly privileged position of trust as vets. The general public may not always feel able to form their own opinions or decisions based upon research, literature, and media hype. However, they will often be willing to take a cognitive leap and trust the opinions or voices of members of society that they trust, and that's us.

We have a responsibility to speak out about these issues, to learn about them and to do what we can to inspire positive change. We've mentioned already, and you'll be hearing more from Claire in a moment about the impact that plastic pollution has on animals. I think we as vets are very fortunate to be able to look after the animals that come into our clinics, but also with the plastic pollution crisis particularly, we are also in the position of being able to protect the animals in the wild in a more general sense, by implementing our opinions and our, and inspiring people that trust us to make change.

There's also the one health model which relates to human health, animal health, and planetary health, and these are of course intrinsically linked. And as vets, we understand this as much as anybody. We can't expect to lead healthy lives without a healthy planet, and we can't expect the incredible animals that inhabit this planet to lead healthy lives without a healthy planet and healthy people that are passionate about respecting and looking after our earth.

So I think as well as it being, as well as being in a, in a privileged position of affecting and empowering change, it's also our responsibility to, to do what we can to help protect the ecosystems and and the animals that live out there. So my most important takeaway for you is this, not this mountain, not my star jump, which is a bit dodgy, but connection. Connection to the natural environment that means something personal to you, whether it's the ocean, the mountains, parks, or rivers.

Connection to our lives inland and how they affect the oceans, connections to our actions and how they affect the planet. Connection to our own wellbeing through time and nature, and connecting the public who look up to us for guidance to set an example for best practise. Connection and collaboration with colleagues and with other passionate people.

I honestly really do believe that we have a chance of making even bigger steps forward in this fight against plastic pollution, even bigger than the steps we've already made, but it has to be with connection to the right reasons and the people behind it. So if you want to ask any questions, please get in touch with me via my website and thank you very very much for for listening today and to Webinar. Thank you, Kel.

That was absolutely fabulous and so, so inspiring. I, I, I'm sitting here with goosebumps and Tears in my eyes. I, I think people like you are, are really making a big difference and we, we really need all need to be supporting you in this campaign and it is really such a worthwhile thing to do.

Thank you so much. Thank you.