‘Recycling isn't good enough,’ says pioneer behind plastic revolution
I was told by the BBC that I’d never be hired as anything higher than producer because I was an older woman,” says Jo Ruxton, director of feature-film, Plastic Oceans - which has been described by David Attenborough as “the most important film of our generation” - founder of the Plastic Oceans Foundation and woman partially responsible for that bamboo-fibre reusable coffee cup you most likely bought this year, or the terrible guilt you’re currently feeling if not.
Within Ruxton’s lifetime, plastic production per annum has increased by 3,900 per cent per year, totalling 315 million tonnes last year, 8 million of which was deposited in the sea. As marine conservation officer at the WWF, where she spearheaded the creation of a marine life centre, and then a producer in the BBC’s Natural History Unit, Ruxton’s career has been dedicated to conservation. But it was only while filming Blue Planet in the late Nineties that the scale of the problem first hit home.
“All the way along the southern coast of Spain I remember you could see polytunnels growing the vegetables that we’re then able to eat right through the year. And quite often,” she continues, “when we were in the water filming pilot whales, there were huge - I mean, massive - swathes of plastic sheeting in the water”.
The hit series’s success hinged on the high-definition image it painted of ocean life, a deceptive one that Ruxton hoped to counteract by producing Plastic Oceans - a feature film which shows, with crystal clear and mercilessly painful precision, the unnerving reality lurking beneath the surface.
Beyond its heart-wrenching visuals of marine life choked by plastic, the film hits closer to home by exposing the way in which toxins, carried by microplastics and then ingested by fish, make their way up the food chain eventually being deposited in our own bodies. “You might think, ‘well I don’t eat the guts of a fish that’s eaten plastic,’ but the plastic eaten by that fish will have absorbed decades-old agricultural and industrial run-off and then entered the animal’s fatty tissue,” Ruxton explains. Buoyed by a zeitgeist of increased health and environmental awareness, the film has won 14 awards so far.
“People don’t want to hear bad news, they’ll switch off,” Ruxton recalls naysayers telling her in the early stages of the film’s production. “I have to say that I’m very surprised about how many people have been interested in this subject,” she admits, “but recycling isn't good enough. Plastic pollution is such an easy one to grasp and change”.
Part of the film’s legacy included the creation of the Plastic Oceans Foundation, a charity dedicated to furthering “the work, science and education,” started by the film. On World Oceans Day last week, the charity launched their first comprehensive set of educational materials - “covering geography, maths, physics, chemistry, creative writing, literacy - did I say maths?” - which have, so far, proven a hit in classrooms across the UK.
Unlike their parents, children aren’t concerned by the everyday impracticalities and financial implications of a plastic-free lifestyle, says Ruxton, who’s witnessed the grassroots activism in action. “I gave a talk at a school last summer,” she recalls, “and afterwards the catering manager told me he’d continue selling water in plastic bottles because it brought in £10,000 of profit to the school each year”. Since that day, not a single child has bought a plastic water bottle from the school canteen.
Such stories are personally rewarding for Ruxton who, through a lifetime spent diving, has seen her own grandchildren’s future slowly and irretrievably slip into a toxic riptide. “As each of my grandchildren have been born I’ve become more and more determined that their future - the world they’ll grow up in - is equivalent to my past,” she says.
One of Ruxton’s suggested steps towards this future is legislation that would either ban or heavily tax single-use plastic items. But before they head to parliament, Plastic Oceans Foundation are taking a softer approach, by focussing on awareness and education with the ultimate aim of “changing attitudes to single-use plastics within a generation. I’d like to think that we knock this on the head in the next 40 years,” Ruxton admits.
And once the plastic pollution revolutionary wave has subsided, what next? “There are so many more critical ocean issues such as gillnetting, draining of the mangroves and illegal fishing that also need our attention,” Ruxton explains. For now, she’s moving from Bristol to live with her family in Cornwall. Of all that she’s achieved so far, it’s her offspring that fill her with the most pride and her marine conservation work, second.
“Obviously it wasn’t just me,” she says, “but I’d like to think that I played some role in the rising awareness of plastics. A lot of people said, ‘nobody is going to watch a film about plastic pollution, five minutes on Youtube will be enough’. It certainly wasn’t just me,” she concedes, “but, I guess, it was me that started it”.
How to vote in the everywoman in Travel Awards
The 2018 everywoman in Travel Awards is now open for nominations and the search is on for the industry’s most remarkable and trailblazing women.
With new categories introduced for 2018, this year’s awards will also recognise the achievements of men who are advancing the progress of women working in the sector along with women inspiring their communities outside the UK. Entries are free and can be completed at everywoman.com/travel-awards before the extended deadline of July 2.
