World News

Note: This article is actually titled "Losing the war on waste".

I have used the by-line for the title instead, as I felt it more representative of the story.

For about 18 years, Dr Jen Lavers has been travelling to Lord Howe Island to study the mutton birds, and every time finds more and more plastic inside them.

Last month, her team Adrift Lab found a bird that broke the record: almost a fifth of its entire body weight was plastic.

“To witness it first-hand, it is incredibly visceral. There is now so much plastic inside the birds you can feel it on the outside of the animal when it is still alive. As you press on its belly … you hear the pieces grinding against each other.

“That changes people.”

The mutton birds have become so full of plastic their bellies crunch and crackle with the sound of it.

It is a graphic sound, but one that the Lord Howe Island scientists want the world to hear.