Sir David: The world is waking up

Sir David Attenborough, our favourite renowned broadcaster recently vouched for the world by saying, 'I think we are changing our habits, and the world is waking up to what we've done to the planet,' in an interview with the BBC.

Catham House Prize, a foreign affairs think tank based in London announced the BBC's Natural History Unit (NHU) and Sir David as the winners of the prestigious award for making significant contributions to improving international relations for their Blue Planet II series of documentaries. 

In the series, the NHU and Attenborough exposed how over 150 million tonnes of plastic items are being dumped in the world's oceans. 

In an effort to put this issue in the forefront of the public agenda and drive policy changes, Blue Planet II plays an instrumental role.

Catham House director, Dr Robin Niblett, along with Sir David, describes plastic pollution as 'vile' and 'horrid' and 'one of the gravest challenges facing the world oceans,' causing deaths of over a million birds and 100,000 sea mammals each year.

The series had definitely 'struck a chord' with the public because they showed 'the interaction of plastic and the natural world,' according to the head of the NHU, Julian Hector.

Sir David is confident that there is growing awareness of the damage it can do and that we are indeed shifting our behavior to tackle the situation.

'We still need to know how to dispose of the wretched material, surely if we can invent it, somebody somewhere is going to be able to deal with it, to deal with these mountains of this appalling material,' Attenborough

He truly believes that one of us will find a solution to get rid of this material for good and move towards a cleaner world for both humans and animals alike. 

This story was originally published in the BBC.