Climate activist sisters in letter-writing plea to Tesco CEO in bid to reduce “plastic tat” in kids magazines

A PAIR of climate activists sisters have backed a new letter-writting campaign to the CEO of Tesco in a bid to reduce the “plastic tat” found in children’s magazines.

The initiative is just the latest move from Amy, 19, and Ella Meek, 17, who began their campaign Kids Against Plastic in 2016, after being inspired by the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development.

The latest movement – Kids Against Plastic Tat – was founded by the charity’s youth member Skye Neville, 12, with the aim of getting Tesco to reduce the plastic waste on children’s magazines.

Amy and Ella are helping spearhead the cause with the sharing of daily letters that are being posted to Tesco CEO Ken Murphy, asking him to aid in the fight to reduce plastic levels.

The young duo’s climate change journey began with their first initiative, Plastic Clever Schools, with the aim of inspiring schools to become greener, which saw 688 schools registering for the movement.

In 2020, the girls wrote the book Be Plastic Clever, detailing how others can reduce their plastic waste.

They later went on to win a Pride of Britain award and a British Empire medal, as well as conducting Ted Talks.

Speaking today Amy, CEO of Kids Against Plastic, said: “The Letters to Ken action that we’re doing at the moment sits as part of a wider campaign that we’re running through our charity, which is Kids Against Plastic Tat.

“That is a campaign that was founded by one of our youth members, Skye Neville, who is 12-years-old.

“She is on a mission to try and stop comics and magazines from having cheap plastic toys on the front of them in the UK because there’s a massive amount of these produced every year.

“Over half a billion plastic tat pieces come from kids’ magazines every year just in the UK, which is a really astonishing amount of tat.

“It’s unrecyclable, often shipped from halfway round the world, it lasts maybe a minute or two if you’re lucky because it’s really low quality.

“So, we’re working with Skye and her campaign, and she’s already launched a petition and released a coalition return last year, which has been backed by over 40 different environmentalists and politicians like Caroline Lucas.

“A big part of the campaign is also this letter-writing campaign, of which we’re working with schools, young children around the UK to get involved and trying to get Tesco to stop selling magazines with plastic toys on them in their stores.

“Waitrose have agreed to remove magazines with plastic toys, they’ve taken them out of their stores and so now we’re trying to convince Tesco to do the same.

“They actually got really close to doing it a couple of years ago, they even put out press releases – Better Retailing had a press release that showed Tesco was about to make the commitment.

“But then they didn’t end up following through with it.

“So, the Letters to Ken campaign essentially is sending letters written by school children all around the UK, calling on Tesco CEO Ken Murphy to really follow through with this and get rid of magazines with plastic toys in them.

“So, we’re gonna keep sending these letters to Ken until we get a response and hopefully a meeting with Tesco to try to push this more.”

At the time of writing, the Letters to Ken campaign is on its 22nd day of letter-writing to Ken.