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TV presenter Ben Fogle says he has seen environmental "horrors" at sea, with wildlife and coral badly damaged by our actions.

Writing for Sky, he explains why it is vital to keep pressuring the Government and business to reduce plastic use:

I've spent a great deal of time around oceans over the years.

I've been fortunate enough to spend time on, near and in pretty much every ocean on the planet, and to travel to 40 countries every year.

That means I've really seen first hand the impact we've been having on our oceans.

I've witnessed the horrors of bleached coral, of ocean that was once vibrant forest but is now arid desert. I've seen animals tangled in old fishing nets and birds with plastic caught around their wings.

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I've seen plastics washing up on the remote beaches of Bali, in the Maldives, everywhere.

On a recent trip in Egypt I saw a canal almost totally hidden by plastic, 10ft deep and going on for miles.

But going on expeditions hasn't just been about witnessing what's gone wrong. My experiences have also got a lot in common, symbolically, with what we're asking people to do to tackle the crisis of plastic.

As soon as you're on an ocean, up a mountain or in a desert, all your resources become increasingly valuable.

You're forced to ration yourself very carefully, to preserve that minuscule amount of water you have and to reuse everything. That isn't something we're used to doing in society.

As soon as you're on an ocean, up a mountain or in a desert, all your resources become increasingly valuable

The world in which we live now is materialistic and very much about keeping up with fashions and changing things quickly.

It's a global economy that relies on all of us consuming and producing.

Ideas like reusing and the circular economy don't really go hand in hand with this monetarist system, but as soon as you remove yourself from that you're forced to be resourceful, and to reuse what you already have.

Through campaigns like Sky Ocean Rescue, however, we can start trying to bring this kind of sustainable thinking into our ordinary lives.

As consumers we rely on what we're presented with, and to try and go plastic-free now would be impossible - or at least all consuming - because packaging and production is totally designed around plastic.

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By keeping it in the headlines and celebrating people who are doing great things, Ocean Rescue has helped empower people, and I think that's really important.

We need to address our councils, we need to get the Government to incentivise people to start caring, and we need to keep the pressure up until we see a genuine shift in the behaviour of supermarkets to dramatically reduce the use of plastics.

I believe we are going to continue hearing about positive progress across the board.

We have the microbead ban. I hope they implement the bottle tax, and I'd like to see more on plastic bags: it was great to have a charge on bags brought in, but we need to take cues from countries like Rwanda and Egypt who have banned them completely.

I hope that the future James Dysons of this world can invent alternatives to plastics and we can start reducing our packaging footprint.

It's about us making our voices heard and using that to change things at a higher level on a practical basis.

I know people are motivated to protect our oceans and go plastic-free: I can't remember the last time I was at a beach and didn't see at least some people picking up plastics and cleaning the shoreline.

With the momentum behind us now, we can actually start making a difference.

Ben Fogle is a writer, broadcaster and explorer. He is an ambassador for marine conservation charity Blue Marine Foundation and a UN Ambassador to the Wilderness.