There was plastic aplenty at today’s Extinction Rebellion rally in Parliament Square. Plastic shoes, plastic badges, plastic sunglasses, plastic phone covers. A woman offered me a sticker peeled from a strip.

‘Are they plastic?’

‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Someone gave them to me.’

XR is starting a week of demos and civil disobedience. I arrived just as a sit-down protest opposite Parliament was being cleared by police liaison officers.