A quick update to say - it feels very surreal to see my name on 2023's Broadcast Magazine Hot Shots list! I have been having a blast working on some really exciting projects for BBC Studios with the most wonderful people, and I very much see this as a joint achievement. Sending a huge shout out and massive thanks to my 'Big Little Journeys' team who have been been so fantastically supportive, and to all those involved with the AP Accelerator Programme who have provided so much guidance, support and advice over the past year! I feel that this year has been completely transformative, and I am hugely thankful to have been given incredible opportunities and memories that I will treasure. Thanks to Broadcast Magazine also for the lovely feature - and great to see two other APAP graduates on the list too! Onwards!!
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What are the barriers to a Plastic-Free Food shop? Originally written for the Surfers Against Sewage Blog found here, I talk about the cost differences I have found between packaged and loose groceries in our supermarkets, and just how hard it is to complete a Plastic Free Food Shop. I'm reposting it here as the issue still stands - why are supermarkets charging more for loose food compared to options wrapped in plastic? The silent barrier to cutting down plasticIt seems the world is beginning to wake up to the impact of plastic. Viral videos of animals tangled in debris and recent heartbreaking footage from Blue Planet II have awakened a desire in the general public to do something about the deteriorating state of our oceans. And whilst it is great that people are becoming aware of the problems related to plastic pollution, the reality is that many people will struggle to cut it out of their lives. It’s not for a lack of empathy or education, or even will… Many of the most aware people will still struggle to live without it, and I ashamedly include myself in this. For all intents and purposes, I should be living a plastic-free existence – I’m a biologist. I’ve studied conservation. I’m well informed on the problems, reading up on plastic pollution and the latest scientific papers almost on a daily basis. Yet I still find myself buying products wrapped in single use plastic… I’ve got the basics of cutting down to a T – I carry a KeepCup, use shampoo bars instead of bottles, ask for strawless drinks if I’m out and bring a homemade lunch to the office most days. I use paper stemmed cotton buds and a cotton shopper, and I always use a refillable water bottle – but I can’t say I’ve gotten rid of this pervasive material altogether. I’ve successfully done Plastic-Free months the past two years, and it upsets me and makes me feel incredibly guilty that I can’t seem to sustain it for much longer. The reasons why are even more frustrating: both times, I went way over budget and spent a lot more time searching to find alternatives. It is incredibly disheartening that my personal barriers to living plastic-free seem to be time and money. The challenges of a Plastic-Free Food ShopI’m working hard to pay off student loans, cover my rent and living costs, and I’m trying to keep expenses down. This means I need to keep a close eye on what I spend at the supermarket and choose the cheapest possible options whilst still trying to maintain a healthy diet. I don’t have a car, which instantly limits the shops available to me, and living in a city means that my food shop nearly always comes from a supermarket where, you guessed it, everything is wrapped in plastic.
And here is where the problem lies. My situation is by no means unique, and more often than not, the plastic wrapped options at supermarkets are cheaper than loose options. Let’s look at three staples of my weekly shop… Loose satsumas at Sainsbury’s would cost me £2.90/kg whilst a plastic-wrapped pack would set me back £1.67/kg (Prices correct at time of writing and discrepancies like these are common at most supermarkets, not just the one mentioned). I could buy a paper wrapped loaf of bread from a bakery for £3 or spend £1 on the equivalent, wrapped in plastic. And a single loose bell pepper could cost me 50p, or I could pay £1 for a plastic wrapped pack of three. Those differences might not seem like much, but if you consider everything you would buy in the average weekly shop, it starts adding up quickly. For me at least, it soon becomes unaffordable and unsustainable. What’s worse is that a lot of the packaging, especially for fresh fruit and veg, is non-recyclable. Plus there are other things to consider, such as the monumental amount of food waste in the UK. Could I justify buying discounted fruit or veg wrapped in plastic if it means that it is saved from going to landfill whilst still perfectly edible? With the majority of the UK population living in cities and undoubtedly doing their food shop at a supermarket, it seems apparent to me that the solution to many of our plastic woes may lie with them. Even with the best of intentions, many people may find themselves bound by tight financial pressures and plastic wrapped options simply make sense from this perspective, taking immediate priority. If we are to truly change our ways as a society, we need to have viable, cheaper alternatives available, and in my opinion, this has to start with the main suppliers. It seems absolutely bonkers to me that you can save money by buying items with an extra material included in the price – surely they should cost more than loose items? On top of this, in a league of their own is the #PointlessPlastics found in many of the big chains – one quick search on twitter brings up plastic-wrapped orange segments or individually packaged muffins… the plastic is completely redundant and these need to be the first to go. Whilst plastic free grocery shops do exist, they are still few and far between and from personal experience, come at a bit of a premium. The onus, therefore, in my opinion, should be on the supermarkets to make plastic-free options more widely available. This is why I welcome the plans for a bottle deposit scheme, which the Co-Op and Iceland have recently backed publicly. It’s not the solution by any means, but it’s a start. The next step in the fight against single use plastic is for supermarkets to lead the way, and I’d implore all of the UK’s leading grocers to consider ways of making plastic free alternatives a financially sensible option for their loyal shoppers. As with the charge for plastic bags, maybe targeting people’s wallets is the incentive people need to make a more permanent change. When single use plastic is everywhere in your office, how do you go about cutting it down? “Ugh. Forgot my bags again, that’s another 5p.” We’ve all had it happen, finally getting to the front of a busy checkout and realising our bags are at home, somewhere in that redundant drawer in the kitchen. And whilst some see this as a modern inconvenience, we forget that less than 60 years ago, plastic bags didn't even exist. The average plastic bag is used for around 20 minutes before it is discarded. More than 1.6 billion gallons of oil are used each year to manufacture them and they can persist in the environment for almost 500 years. And whilst biodegradable plastic bags sound like the perfect solution, they only degrade under certain conditions and are never really gone – they simply break down into smaller bits of plastic. In the first 6 months after the 5p levy on plastic bags was implemented, their use in the UK decreased by 85%. And whilst this is a victory for environmentalists, wildlife and, well, everyone in the long run, there are many more unnecessary single use plastic items we still use to excess that are under no scrutiny. For example, disposable coffee cups and single use plastic bottles. I have been lucky enough to have travelled quite a lot and have stayed in places where it’s advisable to avoid drinking tap water and bottled water is the safe alternative. So I find it bizarre that in the UK, where tap water is perfectly safe, the population drink 2.8 billion litres of bottled water each year. Having recently graduated from MSc in Conservation & Biodiversity at University of Exeter, where a lot of research is focused on plastics and their impact on the environment, I learnt more about the direct and indirect impact single use plastic has especially on marine life. I started with the easy options of cutting out plastic, like always asking for drinks without straws and boycotting products which are unnecessarily wrapped in plastic, but single use plastic is insidious and increasingly difficult to avoid. When I arrived at the BBC, I noticed there were disposable coffee cups on nearly every desk each morning which would be added to during the day by single use water bottles. At one point I remember seeing 4 at one co-workers desk and genuinely felt my heart sink a little. If this was just one person within an organisation of over 20,000, imagine the waste generated each day from coffee cups and bottles alone? Across the UK, it is estimated that 7 million coffee cups are used each day. The awful thing about them is that only 1 out of 400 is recycled, going through a very energy intensive process. The other 399 will end up in landfill and remain there for years. Moment on the lips, lifetime in the tips. I explained the many problems caused by single use plastic to my team as well as its prominence in our office and the fact it was actually making me sad. This gave me an idea to impose a “Naughty Jar”, where any time someone brings in a single use coffee cup or plastic bottle, 10p goes in to be donated to Surfers Against Sewage, a fantastic environmental charity working to protect our UK beaches. After only a week of this self-imposed office tax, nearly every member of the Terrific Scientific team had a reusable coffee cup and bottle. There is now so little money in the jar that I personally have to add a much greater amount when donating to the charity! But this behaviour change within the office is the real victory. It just goes to show that every little does help, and that behaviour and habit change in relation to plastic use is possible, we just need a bit of a nudge. P.S. Many coffee shops offer a small discount on hot drinks when you take in a reusable cup - yet another reason to get one for yourself!
So I know I was meant to talk about plastics in my next post, but I wrote a little something for the internal work magazine and thought I would share it here too... Now, ‘Kale’ us crazy, but at Terrific Scientific we’ve been on a mission to get 9-11 year olds to eat their greens with something called an Exposure study (I promise, it’s not as sinister as it sounds). It seemed an impossible task, but we partnered with Coventry University and asked children at four schools across the UK to eat a bit of kale every day for 15 days. They recorded their reaction to kale every day, ranging from hating to loving it, and we compared their reactions on the first to last day. On the last day, I went into the schools and tested the children’s ‘Taster Status’. Everyone falls into one of three categories: Non-tasters (people less sensitive to bitterness, 25% of population), Tasters (somewhere in between, 50% of population) and Supertasters (people incredibly sensitive to bitterness, 25% of population). Imagine tasting things in pastel or neon, these are the extremes of tasting. We then compared this to their kale ratings and found their opinions had changed! Non-tasters and Tasters showed the most improvement, but Supertasters may have needed more time to get used to the kale. This was a brilliant finding and became the basis of our Live Lesson on 31 January which was broadcast live across the country to primary school children and can now be watched here. We also asked school children across the country to uncover their taster status and send in their results to build a national picture of Supertasters. We’re hoping this is the start of something great for this BBC Learning project, as it’s the first of 10 interactive investigations for 9-11 year olds to do in the classroom. It sounds a cliché, but I never thought I’d be here! I imagined a world of creatives like the BBC would have no room for a nerdy scientist like me. Having recently completed an MSc Conservation & Biodiversity, my background has always been very ‘Biology heavy’. I find this study and those to come incredibly exciting, and only the BBC could pull off something on this scale in such a short amount of time. It's been amazing working with Breakfast and seeing our results on Newsround and even a couple of newspapers! A job aiming to inspire the next generation of budding scientists seems too good to be true, and I’ll always be grateful I’ve had the opportunity to be part of it. For more information on BBC Learning’s new campaign visit the Terrific Scientific website. Teachers, parents and anyone who’s interested can join in the conversation on social media using #TerrificScientific If someone had told me years ago I would be designing experiments for children at one of the most respected organisations in the world, AND being paid for it, I would have laughed. I love my job, i feel like a kid in a candy shop most days and cannot believe my job is producing science content for children. It combines loads of things I am interested in, including science communication and education, and most importantly, it's opening the world of science to people who may have never considered it previously. I love the emails and tweets and letters we've had, thanking us for scientific content. But something is missing.
Even though I love my job and thank my lucky stars I'm here, I can't help but feel like a fish out of water. Working and living in Salford Quays, I am surrounded by water, but all I can see are the artificial lights of our building glimmer in the murky water. The industrial locks are all I have at the moment linking me to the ocean. There's very little wildlife, only the odd fleeting sight of a gull or a goose in the quays, especially at this time of year. I miss the outdoors, the wilderness. Glass and concrete structures are no place for me. The people I work with have had very different experiences to my own, and love the straight lines of the buildings and the squeakier than clean world that has been built around them. I miss nature, working in the field, getting stuck in the mud (or in the sand)... but these are things I feel no one around me can relate to. And, as lame as it sounds, I even miss collecting data. Adding numbers to a spreadsheet, as boring as it sounds, is incredibly rewarding, especially when you know that each count is filled with information of biological relevance. I've been formally studying Biology for 5 years now... 5 years of learning about the natural world, the perils it faces and the work going on to protect it. I've only been in my job for 6 months, but I already feel like the natural aspect is lacking immensely. I read somewhere that most children in the UK spend less than half an hour outdoors each week, and frankly it breaks my heart. As a child, and an adult, I was outdoors as much as I could be. I've never been one for the cold, but even in the depths of winter I would try to at least walk around a local park or go to the beach. Since moving North, this has massively depleted, mainly as the area I live in has very few green spaces and not a beach in sight. Another problem is that barely anyone I know would want to be outdoors for longer than absolutely necessary. So instead, I've tried to bring nature to them. I've shared article after article, news story after news story, pestering colleagues with popular science and new research, making them realise our connection to nature is a lot stronger than it might seem. But I still feel like a fish out of water. How do you get people so detached from the natural world to engage with it more? It's something I have been trying to work on as my own little side project. I have, once again, massively neglected this blog, but in the coming posts, I will be talking about the subtle ways in which biology can be snuck into the office, without anyone realising! First up: plastics. Stay tuned! |
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