More Vegan Cats....

It will fall to their generation to attempt to clear up the plastic waste with which we have polluted the oceans.

But the future is in safe hands if nine-year-old Ella McEwan and her sister Caitlin, seven, are anything to go by.

Do they plan to be inventors or refuse collectors when they grow up?

After learning at school how rubbish is endangering sea life, the eco-aware pair from Southampton set up an online petition for fast food giants to stop putting plastic toys in children’s meal boxes.

Ah, no, silly me. They plan to grow up to be smug collective punishment advocates. Probably something they learned at home.

Or...was it?

‘The girls have had lots of lessons about protecting the environment and they were quite worried about it,’ said their mother Rachael, 49.

When I went to school at the age of seven and nine, I had 'lots of lessons' about French, German, English, English Literature, history, geography....

‘Ella came home after they’d seen a short film about plastics in the sea. They were talking about turtles with plastic bags round their necks, and that really upset the children.

‘They noticed the toys they got in the kids’ meal boxes weren’t great, they didn’t really want them, and a lot of the time they were plastic, wrapped in plastic,’ their mother said.

‘We started giving them back unopened and then, because they know about petitions, we talked about starting one and they were keen.’

And now I'm wondering who exactly is driving this..?