Renowned broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has said that the world is starting to address the threat of plastic waste and behaviors are changing.
In an interview with BBC, Sir David Attenborough said that the world is beginning to tackle plastic pollution and people are changing their habits toward plastic waste. "I think we're all shifting our behavior, I really do," Sir David said.
He described plastic pollution as "vile" and "horrid", and pointed out that there was growing awareness of the damage it can do. He added: "I think we are changing our habits, and the world is waking up to what we've done to the planet."
Attenborough and the BBC's Natural History Unit (NHU) won the prestigious Chatham House Prize for their Blue Planet II series of documentaries. The prize is awarded by Chatham House, a foreign affairs think-tank based in London, o people or organizations making a significant contribution to improving international relations.
According to its director, Dr. Robin Niblett, plastic pollution is "one of the gravest challenges facing the world's oceans". He added that Sir David and the BBC Studios Natural History Unit played "an instrumental role in helping to put this issue at the forefront of the public agenda".
He claimed: "Blue Planet II spurred a passionate global response and generated clear behavioral and policy change."
The documentary series provided an insight into how plastic items, which are estimated to total over 150 million tons, are drifting in the world's oceans and causing the deaths of one million birds and 100,000 sea mammals each year.
One of the remarkable scenes in the series showed albatrosses feeding their chicks with plastic, which would eventually cause their death. Julian Hector, the head of the NHU, believes that the documentaries have "struck a chord" with the public because they showed "the interaction of plastic and the natural world".
