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At just 9 years of age, a British girl is spearheading a campaign to stop unsorted plastic waste being dumped in developing countries.
A new year may have just begun, but it’s safe to say we’ve already got a contender for most inspiring story of 2021.
If you were to ask, a self-proclaimed activist will usually be able to draw on the exact moment they decided to take a stand for change. Well, for 9-year old Lizzie, a bright primary school pupil and aspiring Marine Biologist, that realisation dawned after reading a newspaper story with her mother about the dangers of plastic pollution.
Specifically, the story revealed that the UK continues to send tons of unsorted plastic waste to low and middle income countries, such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Turkey, despite government manifestos and EU bans against the practice.
As an avid recycler in her household, Lizzie was devastated to hear that more than 7000 tons of plastic was divvied out to developing nations by the UK in a single month of 2020 – following our exit from the EU. Often ‘unsorted and dirty’ large parts of these shipments aren’t recycled or reused, and instead are destined to be dumped in the ocean or burned.
As a UK citizen, it’s a bleak and vexing reality to live in a country responsible for second largest export of plastic waste, but if the government was lacking in inspiration to address the issue, the attention Lizzie is now receiving may just do the trick. We could very well be looking at the next Greta Thunberg here.
