Your tenure at Environment may be of uncertain duration but that’s no excuse for letting things drift. A reshuffle’s unlikely just now as so much is up in the air, although it’s down below the surface where there are most problems.

Madame Le President may be right in trying to get youngsters more interested in science but it brings its own problems and shouldn’t be at the expense of important subjects like History and English, Literature as well as Language – or even French. Incidentally, Mme Le President is grammatically correct as President is a masculine word, although that didn’t stop the French Assembly president fining a deputy for using sexist grammar. A bit of an attitude problem you might think – although, before trolls start drowning me in lipstick and Coke bottles, I haven’t suggested where the attitude problem lies.

The science problem lies in the way industry is using plastics, in ways you can’t possibly imagine. Mind you, Keith Vaz, a British MP currently in deep water for purchasing the services of two young gentlemen, might have done better to stick to plastic rather than real-life models. After all, plastic is used in almost everything nowadays. Is your shirt 100% cotton or a poly-cotton mix, like your bedsheets and nightshirt? Polyester is, of course, a plastic. And a lot of plastic is not biodegradable – whatever manufacturers say – but only partly so, which is worse than useless. A lot is dumped in landfills, where it will remain for a few hundred years, long after you’ve gone and only I and perhaps the Sage are left.

There’s been enough drift with boats, now it’s time to dive elsewhere. Not enough’s yet been done about even the most obvious plastics, like drink bottles and plastic cups, and adding a tax to them won’t bring about change. Much better to insist on hefty deposits, refundable when the empties are returned. The Admirables will then be much less likely to dump them on the beaches and in their bins. It would be like throwing away ten rupee coins and, even with the Marshall Plan, most people aren’t going to do that. Talking of bins, why hasn’t a scheme been brought in yet so that there are separate rubbish collections for plastic, glass and paper  – for a start? It may not be easy, but nothing should be impossible in a country with few French farmers and students.

I’m thankful I was invented when the gods sat happily in their mountain tops and all was right with the world, natural and otherwise, apart from the odd battle between city states – but that was just to amuse us. We certainly didn’t have plastics. The word plastikos just referred to something that could be shaped or moulded. In case this is all Greek to you, let’s get down to basics.

Microbeads. Happily the micro part is Greek but bead comes from an ancient English word for prayer. They’re everywhere, in cosmetics, soap and even toothpaste, ending up in the oceans, where they’re devoured in their millions by fish before entering the food chain – stuck in both the fish and your insides. They’re killing small fish already; the bigger fry are next.

It might be easier if a reshuffle comes quickly after all so you can concentrate on Civil Service Affairs. You’ve now got so many devoted staff there, you could just swim along happily – through the plastic, visible and invisible.

Yours sincerely,

Epi PHRON