Waitrose stops selling kids' magazines with plastic toys

Over the next eight weeks, magazines with 'pointless plastic' on their covers will be removed from the supermarket's shelves. The ban will not apply to craft items like pencils, or to educational materials.

Many of the 'giveaway' items currently found on children's magazine covers are of very limited play value and tend to end up in the bin, either when they break or when a child becomes bored of them - something that can often happen within minutes! And that plastic then takes hundreds - or even thousands - of years to break down in landfill, or ends up as ocean pollution. The fact that many magazines come wrapped in non-recyclable plastic packaging to contain the toys makes the problem even worse.

Increasing numbers of young people are becoming concerned about the amount of plastic pollution that is building up on our planet. Skye has given us all a brilliant example of what can be achieved by young people. Let's hope that more supermarkets follow Waitrose's lead. It's a step on the way to ending an estimated 3,000 tonnes of plastic waste being created each year.

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