Plastic vortex in Pacific must be seen as world's wake-up call

Many of your correspondents are now writing about the potential to levy fees on disposable utensils and other plastic items.

Whether a levy, or a rebate, we need to find a way to greatly slow the use of these products in our daily lives.

Both options can provide ways to support an innovative recycling industry, as levies can help with initial funding and rebates encourage collection, meaning more efficient production.

I have just returned from a research expedition organised by Project Kaisei to the North Pacific Gyre, also known as the 'plastic vortex', an area of thousands of square miles in the Northeast Pacific where ocean currents have trapped floating debris.

We have found that human impact has reached one of the largest and most remote ecosystems on our planet.

The problem is pervasive, and was created within the last 50 years with plastic proliferating in our daily lives - 1,000 miles offshore, in more then 1,200 miles of ocean travelled within the gyre, with regular sampling along the way, we found plastic consistently in 100 surface samples taken. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Estimates show that 50 per cent of the plastic created in the world is for disposable, single-use products.