\n<\/p>\n
A petition by a schoolgirl on a remote island calling on the Scottish government to ban all single-use plastics has received more than 26,000 signatures and the backing of MSPs in the Highlands and Islands.<\/p>\n
Tabby Fletcher, a 17-year-old from the Isle of Jura, off the west coast of Scotland, launched the petition after seeing dead birds, their bodies entangled in plastic, among piles of waste washed up on Jura\u2019s beaches after a powerful storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen so much change already in my lifetime,\u201d said Tabby. \u201cSo much plastic, so many gales and storms.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn January, we had Storm \u00c9owyn,\u201d she said. \u201cHuge storm surges brought piles of plastic on to the beach close to my house. I saw dead birds wrapped in plastic. It was obvious from little bits inside their decomposing bodies they had eaten plastic.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Islanders untangling fishing floats from a stag\u2019s antlers on Jura. <\/span> Photograph: Tabby Fletcher<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a dead goat too \u2013 its head stuck in a plastic fishing net. It\u2019s really horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n She has also seen images of red deer, which feed on seaweed, entangled in washed-up fishing nets.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they are left to their own devices, they can starve to death. There are fibres of plastic that come off the netting too,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cAround 50% of the plastic we use in the UK is single use, and by cutting these items out, it creates a more sustainable footprint in the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n Plastic endangers seabirds, seals and other wildlife through ingestion, entanglement and toxic contamination, while microplastics \u2013 tiny particles from broken-down plastic \u2013 pose a long-term threat to wildlife and human health. It can contain any of more than 16,000 chemicals, many of them linked to health issues.<\/p>\n The teenager said that although her community organised beach clean-ups, plastic pollution was a growing problem that would only worsen unless action was taken nationally.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m from a very small community. You don\u2019t get to aim big when you are somewhere small,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it\u2019s good to see people writing to me and having the same thoughts and beliefs as I have.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hoping that Scotland will become the first country in the UK to ban single-use plastics. At the very least, we should have a conversation to prove that it is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n She chose to focus on single-use plastic, rather than the plastic fishing nets or \u201cghost gear\u201d that make up 20% of marine plastic pollution, because the Scottish government has already proposed introducing measures to tackle waste fishing equipment.<\/p>\n <\/span>Plastic flotsam and jetsam washed up in Jura. <\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Tabby Fletcher<\/p>\n The amount of single-use plastic collected on beaches in the UK and the Channel Islands was up 9.5% in 2024, compared with 2023, according to the Marine Conservation Society\u2019s annual State of our Beaches report.<\/p>\n Tabby\u2019s petition will be discussed on 24 September by a petitions committee of MSPs. Next steps could include recommending wider debate, a short inquiry or recommending government actions.<\/p>\n MSPs for the Highlands and Islands say Tabby\u2019s concerns echo those of their constituents.<\/p>\n Emma Roddick, a Scottish National party MSP for the region, said she supported the petition. \u201cThe government could be doing more,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to see a young person taking action like this.\u201d<\/p>\n Roddick said she had heard from constituents on the islands of Eigg and Skye and the Knoydart peninsula about \u201ctiny threads\u201d of plastic washing up on beaches, adding that these were very difficult for communities to clean up.<\/p>\n A blanket ban, however, would be difficult to implement, she said. \u201cFor instance, in the NHS, there are plastic items we haven\u2019t found a substitute for. It is also difficult for the government to ban anything we don\u2019t have absolute power over.\u201d<\/p>\n Ariane Burgess, Green MSP for Highlands and Islands, said she was \u201cincredibly impressed\u201d by Tabby\u2019s campaign and fully supported her petition. \u201cThe amount of plastic waste washing up on coastal communities\u2019 shore is overwhelming,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Kim Pratt, circular economy campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: \u201cThe first thing the government needs to do is to enforce the existing ban<\/p>\n \u201cThe Scottish government has banned some single-use plastics, such as cutlery, plates and expanded-polystyrene food containers, but it is not enforced,\u201d she said. \u201cCreating a ban without acting on it is meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A petition by a schoolgirl on a remote island calling on the Scottish government to ban all single-use plastics has received more than 26,000 signatures and the backing of MSPs in the Highlands and Islands. Tabby Fletcher, a 17-year-old from the Isle of Jura, off the west coast of Scotland, launched the petition after seeing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[918,1123,1321,14294,6387,5764,10679,694,6681,1975],"class_list":{"0":"post-23428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-development","9":"tag-global","10":"tag-parliament","11":"tag-petition","12":"tag-plastics","13":"tag-scottish","14":"tag-singleuse","15":"tag-support","16":"tag-teenagers","17":"tag-wins"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}