SIR - As much as I welcome growing campaigns by Greenpeace and others to get rid of the world's plastic pollution, I fear it may be too late. The problem could be irreversible.

It is not just the companies that produce disposable plastic in an increasingly convenience-based world economy but the idiots who throw it into the sea and other places of once natural beauty, often condemning sea creatures to a slow and painful death.

The notion of putting one's self before the environment has been systematically promoted by western governments and commercial forces for decades and could be the catalyst for our ultimate demise as a species.

The paradox is that while the world has produced an army of selfish, profit making people only interested in their own immediate material well being, driving around in polluting vehicles and tossing plastic water bottles and wrappers around like confetti, they continue to bang on about their kids and their future. They remain oblivious about the affect their behaviour will have on this.

If the human race in all its shallow decadence was ultimately wiped out by contaminated fish in the food chain with billions of tiny plastic fibres in them, that would be poetic justice.

Alan Bates, Bowland Avenue, Baildon