Read the transcript while you listen again.

It’s not pretty, our blue planet polluted by the flotsam and jetsam of our consumer society, the sea clogged with dirty broken plastic rubbish. If you’re anywhere near a TV bulletin today you won’t escape those powerful pictures. The Prime Minister speech on environmental policy was seemingly panoramic (1), ranging from Beatrix Potter’s Lake District to beavers in the forest of Dean, from electric cars to the ecosystem of an individual tree. But plastic pollution was at its core.

Now we look back in horror at some of the damage done to our environment in the past, and wonder how anyone could have thought of that, for example, dumping toxic chemicals untreated into rivers and how could ever thought that was the right thing to do (2). In years to come I think people will be shocked at how today we allow so much plastic to be produced needlessly. In the UK alone the amount of single-use plastic wasted every year would fill one thousand Royal Albert Halls. This plastic is ingested by dozens of species of marine animals and over one hundred species of seabirds (3), causing immense suffering to individual creatures and degrading vital habitats. One million birds and over one hundred thousand other sea mammals and turtles die every year from eating and getting tangled in plastic waste. This truly is one of the great environmental scourges of our time.

She said more had to be done.

We must reduce the demand for plastic, reduce the number of plastics in circulation and improve our recycling rates (4). So we will take action at every stage of the production and consumption of plastic (5). As it is produced we will encourage manufacturers to take responsibility for the impacts of their products and rationalize the number of different types of plastic they use. As it is consumed we will drive down the amount of plastic in circulation through reducing demand (6).

Mrs May went on. The government will work with supermarkets to reduce the amount of plastics they use and there might be more action.

In 2015 we started asking shoppers to pay a 5p charge for using a plastic bag. As direct consequence we have used nine billion fewer of them since the charge was introduced (7). This means the marine life around the shores of the UK is safer, our local communities are cleaner and fewer plastic bags are ending up in landfill sites and this success should inspire us. It shows the difference we can make and it demonstrates that the public is willing to play its part to protect our environment. So to help achieve our goal of eliminating all avoidable plastic waste (8) we will extend the 5p plastic bag charge to all retailers to further reduce usage and next month we will launch a call for evidence on taxes or charges on single-use plastics.