Our oceans are swimming in plastic. Thanks to David Attenborough, the British nonagenarian naturalist whose BBC documentary series The Blue Planet II shows albatross chicks choking on the stuff, a large section of the British public is starting to feel distinctly queasy about the mounds of plastic packaging they discard every day. Similar campaigns across the developed world are pricking consumers’ conscience, as they see the residue from 60 years of takeaway culture washing up in some of the most remote parts of the planet.

Governments and consumer goods groups increasingly accept the need for action to clean up the quantities of plastic littering the oceans (one estimate puts it at 800m tonnes); and to reduce the amount of stuff entering the system.

A UN resolution