The Ross-on-Wye based Marine Conservation Society is asking everyone to take on the Plastic Challenge this June. Participants are encouraged not to use single use plastics, such as bottles for water, food containers or even bags, in any way for a day, week, or a month. They are doing this to try to show people how much single use plastic is used everyday, and to help people understand the issues of single use plastics for the environment.

The volume of plastic waste in the sea and on beaches has become one of the charity’s major work areas. Recently, the charity has been campaigning to implement a national plastic bottle deposit system.

If this system were to come into effect, everytime anyone buys a bottled drink, they would be required to pay a small deposit charge which they would get back when they returned the used bottle to a conveniently placed deposit base.

Kate Wilson, who works for the MCS told the Ross Gazette that the charity has also got many UK manufacturers to commit to not putting plastic microbeads into their products, and they are now trying to get this to happen across Europe too. This is because marine life often mistake it for food. Litter kills seabirds, dolphins, turtles and other wildlife, so the charity is constantly campaigning to stop litter getting into the sea in the first place.

She said:?“The Plastic Challenge is another tactic to try to get people to use less plastic by helping them understand how much it is used and how detrimental is it to the environment.”

The challenge is to say goodbye to conveniences like pre-packed sandwiches, ready meals and plastic-bottled drinks for a day, a week or the whole month.

The Marine Conservation Society is a national charity set up to protect the sea and marine environment and based in Ross. Set up in the 1970s by scuba divers and academics who were seeing sea pollution occur before their eyes, the charity, which started in a very small way, has become one of the UK’s leading charities in marine conservation.

Kate told the Ross Gazette that the society’s base in Ross is ideal as members of the team can easily travel throughout the UK from this position, to the very north of Scotland to the south of England.

She said that although it may seem unusual that a marine society is based in a non-coastal area, this is actually beneficial to the charity. It means they are not solely associated with one coastal region, allowing them to work nationally.

Last year almost 850 people took part in the MCS Plastic Challenge, and over 95% said they would continue reducing their plastic use after the challenge was over. The charity hopes even more people will take part in 2016.

Register to take part in the Plastic Challenge at www.mcsuk.org/plasticchallenge. MCS is offering help and advice through an online community in the run up to the challenge and all through the month of June.