I HAVE just been given a chocolate Easter Egg (total weight of the egg and six small chocolates 215 g) in a box 25 x 17 x 10 cm.

The over-packaging of Easter Eggs (in many cases just a ploy by manufacturers to make the items seem a great deal bigger than they are) is little short of obscene.

It is, of course, a good thing that the government is taking steps to ensure plastic bottles are recycled and to reduce the number of plastic shopping bags that end up in landfill - but these amount to a drop in the ocean of plastic that is killing our planet.

Items such as shrink-wrapped cucumbers, broccoli, swedes etc, plastic milk bottles and countless other foodstuffs must be targeted and millions of other non-foodstuff items as well (razors and blades spring to mind).

Unless draconian steps are taken to reduce, if not put an end to, our use of plastics the ultimate demise of the human race will not be due to war, famine or catastrophic natural disasters but to the invention of plastic in all its forms.

ROBERT READMAN

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth