There has been an increased awareness in the UK about plastic waste – the unnecessary use of single-use plastics, plastic straws and plastic bottles in particular. But the British public tend to be easily distracted – manipulated even – by big business, the media and politicians. These news-generators all know the half-life of a particular event is short, and it can be shortened even further by creating noise around something else, as a means of distraction.
Smoke and mirrors. The Conservative governments since Thatcher have shown their increased mastery of this time and again.
It’s for this reason that so much of the public’s awareness of an issue comes in cycles – the same issue, each time being seeming like it’s something new, has actually been highlighted repeatedly over the past 30 or 40 years. Each time the sense of urgency is heightened by the inaction that results in its rise to the surface of people’s consciousness once more.
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