Cleaning up their act

As a Sheffield dwelling mother to a three and half-year-old I am concerned about the future of our environment, including our seas.

I don’t want my daughter to grow up in a world where there is, by weight, more plastic in the ocean than fish, as some studies predict there will be by 2050.

I have been following the Greenpeace campaign about Coca Cola bottles and plastic waste and I have also been enjoying Blue Planet 2, but have found it very hard to watch the footage of animals suffering and dying due to a build-up of plastics in the ocean.

I find it cynical of Coca Cola to market itself as a family friendly company when it could be doing so much more to reduce its contribution to this build-up of plastics.

Its failure to act quickly and decisively is contributing to the destruction of the natural world for future generations.

Coke are the biggest producer of plastic bottles globally and has a responsibility to clean up its act.

In 2015 alone, the company produced 100 billion plastic bottles and the number increases year on year.

Only a small percentage, (currently 25%), of these bottles are made from recycled plastic, and only a fraction of them end up being recycled.

I welcome any commitments that Coca Cola make to increasing recycled content and reducing waste but feel that its current goal, (to make its bottles from 50% recycled plastic by 2050), does not recognize the scale and urgency of the problem and does not go nearly far enough.

David Attenborough commented on the plastic problem ahead of the release of Blue Planet 2: “We could do something about plastic right now… we’ve seen albatrosses come back with their belly full of food for their young and nothing in it.

“The albatross parent has been away for weeks gathering stuff for her young and what comes out? What does she give her chick? You think it’s going to be squid, but it is plastic…”

Rather than join the queue for a freebie from the CocaCola truck, I will be joining Greenpeace in calling for Coca Cola to clean up its act, and stop its excessive and unnecessary plastic production.

Annie Russell

Sheffield

It’s just not good enough

I totally agree with Katy Merchant, The Star, November 27, regarding the buses.

When I came to Sheffield in 1982, the buses were run by South Yorkshire Transport and were brilliant. You could set your watch by them.

Now they are a joke, especially the 51 Lodge Moor bus. The last few Mondays they have been a complete disaster.

Yesterday when I got to the bus stop for the 9.50am bus, one man had already been waiting 25 minutes and was on the phone with his company to say why he would be late.

That man will be docked one hour from his wages through no fault of his own.

How would the bus drivers feel if they had money stopped because they were late for work?

They would probably go on strike.

If First cannot manage their company better maybe the council should give it back to SYT. It was another 20 minutes before a bus came, so the man going to work late had waited about 45-50 minutes for a supposedly 10-minute service.

It is just not good enough.

M Roberts

disgusted passenger

Sounded like double Dutch

In an increasingly incoherent tirade to Nick Robinson, (BBC Today programme, Thursday, November 30, 2017), Ann Coulter, whose tweet of a video described as an attack by a “migrant” was retweeted by Donald Trump, clung desperately to the distinction between the Dutch-born attacker and a “10th-generation Dutchman”.

But then if Ann Coulter can trace her US ancestry back 10 generations, I’m a Dutchman.

J Robin Hughes

Towngate Road, Worrall, Sheffield, S35

Fantastic prize

I was lucky enough to win two tickets for the Phil Collins concert in a competition in The Star.

The concert was fantastic and so were the seats.

I would just like to say thank you on behalf of myself and my niece Karen who accompanied me.

Marie Blockley

S35

We all need the NHS

I think we could do with a Pudsey day for the NHS.

The money raised would be very useful.

We all need the NHS at some time.

Hillsborough

Goodwill gesture

Jayne Grayson felt it was a poor situation that a fellow bus passenger had to use a food bank, whilst Jayne had just spent £25 in M&S.

If she felt so sorry for this person why didn’t she give her the M&S shopping as a goodwill gesture seeing as Jayne says she pops into M&S most days?

I would also like to remind people that most churches have a collection point for food bank donations and even a packet of teabags is welcome if that’s all you can manage.

K Short

by email

Guzzle and fall asleep

Just read Jayne Grayson’s letter in the Star and it makes you wonder that people have to go to food banks when very rich people can gobble and guzzle and fall asleep in the House of Lords.

PH Siddall

Brinsworth

Birthday poem

I would be so pleased and proud if you would include this poem, done for my birthday by my granddaughter Isabella Hollings, aged 10.

My grandad is special

Precious in my heart

He’s silly and daft

And not so good at art

I love him to bits

Until the world ends

Although we sometimes argue

He is my very best friend

So here’s for the grandads

Especially mine

And best of all

This poem will last until the end of time

Ps not bad for a 10-year-old

J Furniss

Dronfield