EVERY weekend in the run up to Christmas the streets of York fill with traffic. It flows through shops from door to till. It is carried into cars or trains to be deposited in houses and flats all over the country.

I refer, of course, to our collective orgy of highly-packaged purchases gathered in the name of Yuletide - usually in plastic bags destined to choke living creatures in oceans all over the world.

What is it about our desire to dress up things as better or more precious than they are? In his masterpiece, King Lear, Shakespeare has the play’s royal hero cry in a fit of madness as he tears off his kingly robes: “Off, off, you lendings!”

I would argue the time has come for us all to take up King Lear’s cry when it comes to excess packaging. And especially plastic, non-biodegradable wrappings.

Recently David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II illustrated the damage to oceans that is being inflicted by our obsession with packaging.

Who can forget the pictures of pilot whales feeding in the Atlantic Ocean far from land, becoming entangled in plastic bags and dying from poisoning caused by the ingestion of plastics? Particularly the footage of a mother whale carrying her dead baby calf in her mouth - while other adult whales refuse to feed in apparent sympathy.

It is highly likely the calf may have been poisoned by his mother’s milk due to a food chain polluted with toxic plastic.

There is also the financial cost of excessive packaging to consider. Who actually profits from wrapping everything from clothes to electrical goods to essential food items in layers of plastic and polystyrene? A tiny percentage of the population make big money from packaging and their narrow interests seem paramount to our political elite. Let’s not forget the influential oil lobby generates huge profits from plastics. Politicians all too often see their role as servicing powerful corporations and their owners.

So here are a few suggestions to give the planet (and therefore our species) a collective Christmas present by reducing our packaging fetish.

Firstly, cut down on plastic carrier bags by bringing your own. And I don’t just mean to the supermarket.

For those who think mankind cannot learn to live better when it comes to our wastefulness, consider this. Since supermarkets started charging for bags in 2016 we’ve seen a massive 85 per cent drop in the number of plastic bags being used in England. Indeed, the number of plastic bags picked up on British beaches last year was down by half.

Next, stop buying bottled water and drinks and, if such a service exists in your area, switch back to getting your milk delivered in reusable glass bottles.

Perhaps the most important step we can all take is to consciously choose cardboard and paper over plastic containers, bottles and bags whenever we can. For example, pasta in a box instead of pasta in a bag, or detergent in a cardboard box instead of a bottle.

Really, supermarkets should be making this choice for us. Think of the small plastic bags they offer for fruit and veg. Is it really beyond the wit of humanity to provide paper or cardboard alternatives? With a little will and imagination vast numbers of reusable containers could be part of a national, standardised deposit scheme that would allow us to buy basics like rice and cereals in a loose form for transport to storage jars at home.

And, of course, one way we could all send a powerful message to retailers is to leave excessive packaging at the store.

Finally, why not ask yourself whether every Christmas present truly requires square metres of shiny wrapping paper. After all, the damn stuff will be in the bin sooner than you can say global warming or catastrophic climate change.

David Attenborough summed it up: “The future of humanity, and indeed all life on Earth, now depends on us.” It is high time we pressurised our politicians to take wide-ranging action, enforced by the full weight of the law, to stop squandering precious resources and poisoning the only home we’ll ever have: namely, Planet Earth.