When applied to plastic, it is perhaps best coupled with the advice of any number of health and welfare counsellors: the first step towards overcoming any addiction is to recognise that you really do have a serious problem.

Thanks to the efforts of Sir David Attenborough and myriad campaigners, there is a widespread and growing understanding that our species and the planet do indeed have a serious problem with plastic pollution. However, I don’t think that most of us have truly grasped just how huge that problem is.

Every month brings fresh reports on some new aspect of this continuing environmental disaster. In August, it was the UK National Oceanography Centre revealing that plastic pollution in the Atlantic is at least 10 times worse than previously thought.