OVER-PACKAGING is one of the big frustrations of modern life. I’m sure I’m not the only one to have actually damaged items while trying to rip open the layers of packaging they arrive in.

On more than one occasion I have taken a knife to the plastic wrapping of a CD - and ended up scratching the case and stabbing my finger in the process. Why on earth do such things need so much packaging?

As consumers, we use way too much plastic. “Where does it all go?” I find myself thinking, gazing at rows and rows of plastic bottles, cases and packaging in the supermarket.

It’s unsettling to dwell on but, as we’re painfully aware, a lot of this stuff ends up unrecycled and in the sea - with a catastrophic effect on the marine environment and wildlife.

UK consumers use an estimated 13 billion plastic drinks bottles a year. We all know our way around a recycling bin, we all know how to dispose of plastic, along with glass, paper and metal responsibly, yet vast amounts of it ends up as litter, billowing around parks and fields, caught in trees and floating in rivers and seas.

The stark reality is that many people don’t give much thought to what happens to their waste. It takes the occasional Facebook post of plastic bottles floating in the sea, or that shocking Blue Planet II footage of whales eating plastic and mother dolphins passing on pollutants to calves through their contaminated milk, to get folk tweeting in outrage, but it’s an ultimately futile response.

The final episode of Blue Planet II laid bare the impact of human activity on marine life, with Sir David Attenborough making a passionate call for us to protect our environment from the deadly threat of plastic.

That starts with a more responsible attitude to plastic waste. So let’s hope the prospect of paying a deposit on drinks bottles and cans, repaid when handed in for recycling, will go some way towards tackling this. The Government’s plans to introduce a deposit return scheme in England, subject to consultation, comes amid increasing concern over single use plastic waste.

Some countries already have deposit return schemes charging an upfront deposit on drinks containers, ranging from 8p in Sweden to 22p in Germany, redeemed when the empty bottle or can is returned. The consultation will look at how such a scheme could work here, alongside other measures to increase recycling rates.

Greenpeace says plans could make a “huge difference to the plastic problem”. Author Bill Bryson, former president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: “Future generations will look back on this decision as a piece of supremely enlightened policymaking.”

In a poll for waste and recycling company Suez, 74per cent of people were likely to return plastic drinks bottles or cans if they had to pay a 10p deposit. It’s a tried and tested scheme that’s working in other countries.

All too often, plastic is an unnecessary, irritating bugbear of modern life, but its lasting implications are sinister.

When we’re done with all that plastic stuff we fill supermarket trollies with, much of it goes on to choke wildlife and pollute habitats. The future of our planet, says David Attenborough, is in our hands. We have to act now.