Were you in the crowds lining the streets to watch Tavistock Carnival back in July? Or have you enjoyed a similar local celebration elsewhere this summer? For Transition Tavistock, it’s a fun event in our annual calendar – a chance to literally wave a flag and invite a second look. All credit to the Lions Club of Tavistock for organising.

The theme they set for this year’s entrants was ‘Tell us a story’. But which story to tell? Our group, like other Transition Towns, encourages positive local responses to the climate and nature crises. That’s an evolving story – locally, nationally, globally. So, rather than use a traditional tale or the plot of book or film, we decided to tell a contemporary story in which everyone has a part – the story of plastic.

If you live in West Devon, you’ll have a large, weighted, white bag in which to put rigid plastic – bottles, trays, cartons etc – for the weekly recycling collection. Maybe you also put aside soft plastic – film, bags etc – to drop at a supermarket collection point. If all that seems a hassle, it shows how much single use plastic pervades our lives. Yet that started within the lifetime of some readers of this paper.

Seen as a wonder product for the 20th century, plastic use is still growing exponentially. More has been produced since 2010 than the total over all the years since polythene was invented in 1933. That’s one of many fascinating insights in our recent Book Group choice –’Material World’ by Ed Conway.

It would take a full drama series, not a carnival troupe, to outline the science, business or geopolitics of plastic’s history. (Has that been done? If not, why not?) Instead, we sketched the current story drawing on ideas from ‘The Story of Stuff’ – a 20 minute cartoon film from 2007. This was shown at The Wharf in the early days of Transition Tavistock and still available on YouTube. A creative session made storyboard placards: extraction – closely connected to fossil fuels, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. The last two involve us all.

Where does that ever-growing pile of plastic waste end up? The disposal problem goes beyond unsightly litter in hedgerows or wipes choking sewers. Properties helpful for packaging or hygiene stop plastic decaying in soil or water as paper or cloth do. Tiny fragments are still plastic – increasingly found in air, water and inside us. While using the right bin is important, there are challenges and costs for either recycling or safe destruction. Sadly, global talks to curb plastic production and reduce pollution collapsed earlier this month.

We invited carnival watchers to “change the story” by consumer power, rejecting needless growth. People are already taking action – note the trend for refilling water bottles. Charity City to Sea found 58% of Brits tried new ways to reduce single-use packaging in the past year, and 71% want more reusable, refillable and returnable options where they shop. So use the options available, and ask for more!