No. More. Plastic. by Martin Dorey (Ebury Press, £6.99)

Summer’s here so it’s time to head out to the beach. Our beautiful East Coast is home to wondrous sights: I have been lucky enough to see gannets nesting at Bempton, seals in the water at Filey and harbour porpoises out by the marine drive in Scarborough.

So the passion behind this book is close to my heart. Martin Dorey is a surfer and started off a twitter campaign for #2minutebeachclean. It is such a simple idea. Everyone who goes to the beach spends two minutes picking up litter. You can then send a picture of what you collected to an app that logs the results (this data has been collated to show what washes up on beaches everywhere).

Following the success of this idea, Dorey has now come up with #2minutesolution, guiding us through our daily life and suggesting things we can do to rethink our relationship with plastics, solutions that won’t take too much effort or time, but collectively could have a big impact.

The book is littered (excuse the pun) with facts that will make you think, such as the one about the ‘Marathon’ wrapper which washed up on a beach recently having been in the ocean for at least 28 years. They haven’t been manufactured since 1990. Even the marvellous Chris Packham, who has written the foreword, admits that through Martin’s efforts, he has found new things he can do to help our wonderful planet.

Review by Philippa Morris, Little Apple bookshop

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1116730/no-more-plastic/