About three years ago I watched a documentary about plastic pollution in the ocean, and it completely changed the way I shop. I'm a secondary school chemistry teacher in Accra, in Ghana, and I watched it on a streaming service one Sunday evening with my husband.
The film followed a team of researchers as they sailed across different oceans collecting water samples. What shocked me was not just the big rubbish you could see floating, but the tiny pieces of plastic, smaller than a grain of rice, that were everywhere, even in places thousands of kilometres from land. There was one scene I still can't forget, where they cut open a dead seabird on a remote island and its stomach was full of bottle tops and pieces of plastic bags. My husband had to pause it because I'd gone silent.
The habit I changed was buying drinks in plastic bottles and using plastic bags. Before that, I'd buy sachets of water and bottles of soft drinks every day without thinking. The next morning I bought a steel water bottle, and I now carry cloth bags in my handbag. It had such an effect partly because of the images, which made an abstract problem feel real. But it was also because of my job. I teach teenagers about chemistry, and I realised it would be hypocritical to tell them about polymers and pollution if I was creating plastic waste every day myself. I've since shown short clips of the documentary in my lessons, and a few students have started bringing reusable bottles too, which honestly makes me happier than anything else.