Germany is repeatedly chided – and not entirely without justification, we might add, despite our inherent neutrality – for how sacrilegious the mass export of plastics waste to the so-called Third World is. After all, not everywhere that containers full of fermenting packaging waste come ashore is the material recycled in the way that the industry likes to claim.

But waste tourism on an unimaginable scale is also taking place in Europe. UK-native seabirds wintering in Málaga, Spain, have been caught in the act: ornithologists have witnessed these seasonal expat polluters vomiting up plastics waste they swallowed in their English homeland unscrupulously onto the ground of their host country.

The origin of the plastic chunder, the scientists emphasise, could be precisely traced through meticulous analyses. Every year, the United Kingdom exports by air a whopping 400 kg of plastics waste to beautiful Spain by means of its feathered friends. The seagull as environmental glutton – Attenborough would be horrified.