Anyone claiming climate change and environmental destruction can be solved by individuals has obviously never worked in the service industry. Actually that’s true on a number of levels.

I don’t care how many lights you turn off or how many flights you don’t take, climate change is going to happen unless we change what happens in my workplace every single day.

You should see the amount of stuff that is thrown away. It’s disgusting. Everything we give to customers is disposable; the paper plates, the thick plastic cutlery, paper cups, plastic cups. For the branding of the restaurant they wanted everything a certain colour so they got everything printed and once it’s used it gets chucked away. Bags and bags of rubbish heading straight to landfill.

The cutlery could definitely be reused as it’s of a really high standard but no one is going to do it unless we are forced to. The company was too tight to install a dishwasher – paying someone £6.50 an hour to wash up in cold water is cheaper. There are a couple of people who just wash up and they want – quite reasonably – to wash up as little as possible.

Nor are we allowed time to sort out the recycling from the rubbish. Because there is no profit in recycling it’s basically not allowed. You can’t sort stuff with a manager shouting at you to clear tables faster.

We do however recycle glass which rather shockingly makes this place much better than most of the places I have worked. Most pubs don’t even recycle glass because its too expensive to get it collected.

I think we should have a system based on the one in Ireland where recycling is free and easy but people have to pay for every bag of rubbish they get rid of. That is the only thing I can think of that would change the attitude of the company I work for. Their profit margin has to be messed with otherwise they will keep on filling up landfill with specially coloured paper cups.

Fredrich Engels stated that two things are the source of all wealth – Labour and Nature. It’s like Labour is the father of all wealth but Nature is the mother. Neither is currently being respected and this won’t change until we force that change to happen. We cannot keep allowing companies to use the planet as a commodity that is there to be exploited.

I want to be a ‘green collar worker.’ To know that I am part of a responsible use of our resources and that what I do every day isn’t trashing the planet for future generations. I want the work I do to mean something and to produce something for the good of the world not just to be a cog in a failed system.