A Letter From Phoebe Hicklin

Having strong green initiatives sets the tone for the heritage that we have proudly formed over the past thirty-three years. Our devotion to greener practices is what makes our company as sustainable as it is. 

One of our artisan's daughters feels the same way that Northern Lights does when it comes to sustainability. Phoebe Hicklin, daughter of Dale Hicklin, wrote to our Managing Director, Donna Bruce, to express her concerns about the planet's plastic problem and make suggestions on how we can minimalise our use of plastics in day-to-day life. Phoebe, who is in Year 6 at Old Hall Junior school in Chesterfield, bravely wrote the following:

To Northern Lights,

I am a Year 6 pupil who is currently attending a local primary school (Old Hall Junior School), and I am writing this to you to make you more aware of our plastic problem and why the world's oceans need our help. Marine life is getting killed; therefore, we need to act now.

Sadly, there may now be 5.5 billion macro and microplastic pieces floating around in our oceans. Even in the Mariana Trench, plastic was found. If the world continues at its current rate, there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish by 2050. Contaminating our oceans, plastic and microplastics are killing more and more animals every day. Hopefully, there will be more people like David Attenborough who care that much and try to help our earth as much as they can. He and the Blue Planet team collected every piece of plastic they came across while filming.

As you will now be aware, plastic is a big problem in our world. Unfortunately, all baby sea turtles have plastic in them, and plastic is killing more than 1.1 million sea birds every year. As trapped as prisoners, the underwater animals and a plastic-filled turtle is dying right now because of our plastic problem. Did you know that only 9% of plastic gets recycled, 12% gets burnt, and the other 79% ends up in our oceans or landfill? There is now an estimated 12.7 million tonnes of plastic that we throw away every day. Do you really want this to carry on in our earth?

Now you know this you could help save our earth and here are some ways: you could recycle or buy in bulk, so it comes in less plastic. You could do litter picks, as my year group did one just around our school and managed to get 2,000 pieces of litter! Don't buy water; instead, use tap water. Other things you could do are buy things that come in less plastic (paper or cardboard). You should buy things made out of bamboo because we have enough of that in our world, and it's a better substitute for plastic. Even though humans are trying to do something, we need to do more. Make change fast.

Thank you for reading this letter. Hopefully, now you can make a change, as the future of humanity and indeed all life on earth now depends on us. Never before have we had such an awareness, and never before have we had such power to do something about it. Surely we have the responsibility to care for our blue planet.

Yours Sincerely,

Phoebe

We genuinely admire Phoebe's heartfelt message, and Donna Bruce was sure to get in contact with her to tell her all about Northern Lights' green initiatives and how we are doing our part to ensure that sustainability is constantly on our agenda. To see more of our pledges for a greener workplace, head over to our Green Initiatives page.