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Now Amanda Keetley is the founder of Less Plastic, consultancy in South Devon that advises on how to use less plastic. Good afternoon to you.

Hello, good afternoon.

Can you explain what you actually do?

Yes. We’ve been raising awareness about the plastic that’s been washing up in, on our local beaches, ever since we moved down here recently and also just realized that it’s because we’re all using far too much plastic it’s… just got out of hand. Our addiction to throw away plastic in particular and… so we’ve designed some infographics which have really been popular on social media and they’ve helped raise awareness of both the problems with single-use plastics but also simple steps that… we’ve been targeting individuals so simple steps individuals can take and also businesses in terms of reducing plastic packaging or um… if they’re food and drink establishments… reducing, you know, serving drinks without straws and not selling plastic water bottles for example or using some kind of deposit return scheme to get plastic water bottles returned and so they’re kept in the recycling loop (1C).

So what do you make of the Prime Minister speech?

Well, interesting question. It had lots of good things in there, it’s definitely a positive start. However, it’s not got enough detail in it (2A). She didn’t mention anything at all about plastic bottles, which … that’s the items we find most on the beaches near us; either whole bottles, fragments of bottles, caps, you know…

Or disposable coffee cups, which we heard a lot about last week.

Exactly. And… so, it would be great to hear more about the latte levy, and, about, you know, when the 5p bag rule will be rolled out to smaller stores. You know, our town is a small town with small stores and we have to set up with some other local campaigners something called ‘borrow a bag’ scheme to get people to use reusable bags even when they forget because the initial rule that went in in 2015 has been successful but not everywhere because so many shops have been exempt (3A) so it’s good that she’s going to be addressing this.

And do you think we do need new laws to make us change our behaviour?

Yes. All my efforts have been on, my background is marketing and I’ve been putting my efforts into persuading individuals to make the change to use their pressing power to make sort of more eco-friendly decisions but at the end of the day the quickest way to do this is with legislation and taxes. So, you know, it’s everyone: businesses have responsibility as well, but I think the government have the most important role to play because they can solve it very quickly (4A). This is the other point, she’s talking about this 25-year plan, single-use plastics are accumulating daily in everyone’s lives and, you know, unless you’re making an effort to avoid them, they’re just part of our society and it needs to happen as soon as possible because the numbers have just passed of what’s getting into the ocean and our waste systems can’t cope with it. We don’t have the infrastructure.

Amanda Keetley, thank you very much indeed.

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