At just 11 years old, on a trip to her local beach near her home in Cornwall, South West England, Emily Stevenson noticed there was plastic rubbish everywhere. She decided then and there that she would not sit idly by, but would take action to clean up her local beauty spots. So, along with her father, she founded Beach Guardian - a nationwide NGO designed to empower communities to take responsibility for the plastic littering Britain's coastline.

Emily is also now studying for a PhD in Microplastics, and as she tells Juliet Mann, there could be unexpected consequences for human health from our continued reliance on single-use plastics.

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