After Maya Jama was seen wearing the sentimental piece in the final episode of Love Island: Aftersun, people have demanded that the black choker necklace make a comeback.
Love Island host Maya Jama wore the nostalgic accessory while filming(Image: ITV)
Maya Jama strutted onto Love Island Aftersun channelling her inner Majorcan goddess, in a black netted one-shoulder floor-length gown, her hair tied into a ponytail and her neck graced with a simple necklace. To my surprise, she’d opted for a thin black piece of fabric around her neck. Lo’ and behold, the return of the choker necklace.
Chokers have been around for decades and date as far back as the late 19th century. They’ve re-emerged several times, in the 1920s and 1940s and most notably in the 1990s in line with punk, grunge, and alternative culture. Drew Barrymore, Winona Ryder and Gwen Stefani were among the many celebrities getting involved with the choker trend.
Then in the mid 2010s, the choker made yet another resurgence among young people on social media platforms like Tumblr and Instagram, and now it seems Maya is steamrolling their return again 10 years later. It comes as The Mirror recapped Love Island 2025’s shocking moments during second most complained about series.
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Maya Jama hosted the show while wearing the choker(Image: Instagram)
If you were a 90s or 2010s teen, you’d be all too familiar with the retro look, Millie Bobby Brown blew her Gen Z fans away with the “new” accessory in a number of promotional snaps from her most recent shoot with Essentia Watera.
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Lily Gladstone stayed true to her choker, telling People Magazine that she still wears the same one she bought in middle school. “The necklace that Chloe wears, the black choker that’s kind of stretchy and looks like a neck tattoo,” Gladstone said last year. “I still have mine from middle school and I definitely rock it whenever I can.”
Ariana Grande, Zoe Saldana and Elle Fanning wore diamond encrusted ones at the Oscars earlier this year. But for those on a tight budget, don’t fret, it looks like the black plastic, painfully tight, interlaced chokers are making a retro revival.
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Social media users are increasingly creative with their choker designs these days, with many turning to DIY to make their own bespoke necklaces, frequently decorated with spikes, jewels, chain links, pearls, and other embellishments.
On TikTok, there are currently over 180k videos using the #chokernecklace tag. The traditional black choker necklace made a comeback in one viral video from last year, according to creator @daniellemarcan. Another user stated in the comments that they have worn the same pair since 2018 and that they have never stopped wearing them.
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A third user posted a TikTok video wearing hers with the caption “Petition to return choker necklaces! “!
Business has slowed down for the day at the waste dump.
The last few bottles are being emptied by Bamfo and her youngest children, Nkunim, 10, and Josephine, 6, respectively. She will have a nap by 8 o’clock and rise at midnight to study for her Bible before resuming work at dawn.
Bamfo never imagined that she would pick up trash.
When she finally obtained her school certificate at the age of 19, she managed to assemble enough money to pay for a secretarial course by selling oranges. However, she was unable to purchase a typewriter.
She practiced drawing the keyboard on her exercise book while the other girls sat idle in their computers while the other girls squirmed in their computers. She pressed her fingers into the paper to practice.
Soon, the funds ran out. She ended up working on a building site while not the office job she had envisioned.
As she leans forward on her office chair to keep an eye on any final delivery tricycles, Bamfo says, “I see myself – I’m a big loser, and there’s nothing.” The world is against me, I say.
Then one morning when she woke up, she discovered that the building site had vanished overnight, leaving behind a dump with tons of bottles of water and nylon wigs.
Her five children slept through. Her husband had not arrived home, as usual. She urgently needed money to purchase cassava to make banku-dupling stew.
A friend had informed her that plastic waste factories in the city would pay just a few centimeters per kilogram. One of the most difficult jobs there was involved, requiring both stigma and shame as well.
[Costanza Gambarini/SourceMaterial] Lydia Bamfo at her waste yard
People assume that you have no family to care for you if you do this because you are a woman. They believe you to be bad. You are regarded as a witch, according to them.
One day when she returned home, she discovered that her husband had abandoned her. But not before he called her father to let him know that her daughter had turned into a “vulture.”
The shame was only made worse by her father’s separation. Bamfo relocated to the other side of the city with her children to escape the teasing of her neighbors.
She then sold the waste collected from pickers to factories and recycling facilities. There, she took control of her small yard. She gradually constructed a wooden home. She eventually found the courage to call her father.
“I told you to come see my work,” I said. See that it is not a bad thing.
He couldn’t help but be impressed when he saw the yard and the tricycle teams that had become Nkosoo Waste Management, which was Bamfo’s business.
She once recalled him saying, “You are a man, not a woman,” with equal parts admiration and accusation. Your brother doesn’t have the heart you do, even your brother does not.
She now hopes to use some of her resilience. King, the yard’s supervisor, claims that Bamfo and her waste business saved him from sleeping on a nearby dumpsite as a young child. She is so bad that I can’t criticize her. My mother is her.
The polluting plastic tide has gotten a little higher on Accra as the night settles. However, Bamfo claims to have found dignity in the conflict to prevent it.
She claims, “It is important work we do.” “Sometimes, I feel very sorry and disappointed that I didn’t receive the education I wanted.” However, we clean the city. That is what I think.
Around 400 million tons of plastic waste are produced globally each year, more than the total weight of all the planet’s inhabitants.
Only 9% of it is recycled, and a study predicts that plastic production will triple globally by 2050.
The UN has been attempting to broker a global treaty on plastic waste since 2022. However, discussions continue to sour, particularly regarding the proposal to cap plastic production.
Petrostates, according to campaigners, are responsible for thwarting the negotiations on a treaty because their economies depend heavily on oil, the primary ingredient in plastics.
In the most recent attempt to reach an agreement, the UN is holding a meeting this week in Switzerland. However, it could take years before the delegations find a way to reduce the amount of plastic produced worldwide.
In the interim, organizations like the World Bank are looking for alternative solutions in the market. Plastic offsetting is one of them.
What exactly is plastic offsetting? Is it effective? And what do programs like this mean for disadvantaged populations that depend on plastic waste to support their income?
How does credit management work and what is plastic offsetting?
Similar concepts to carbon credits are used to create plastic credits.
Companies that use carbon credits can pay a carbon credit to have their emissions “cancelled out” by funding reforestation initiatives or other projects that will “sink” their carbon output.
The company receives a carbon credit for every tonne of carbon removed. An airline can explain to customers that their flight is “carbon neutral” in this way.
A similar model uses plastic credits. The biggest plastic polluters in the world can pay a plastic credit bureau to collect and recycle the material.
One plastic credit is given to a polluter who pays for one tonne of plastic to be collected.
If a polluter purchases the equivalent number of plastic credits to its annual plastic output, it might be given the status of “plastic net zero” or “plastic neutral.”
Plastic waste bags at an Accra recycling facility [Costanza Gambarini/SourceMaterial]
How effective is plastic offsetting?
Plastic credits are content, much like carbon credits.
Carbon markets already have a value of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, with a potential billions of dollars in their hands.
However, a nonprofit newsroom SourceMaterial discovered that only a small percentage of the nearly 100 million carbon credits actually reduce emissions in 2023.
Companies are making false claims, and then they trick customers into believing they can fly guilt-free or purchase carbon-neutral goods without having to pay anything, according to US carbon trading expert Barbara Haya at the time.
Plastics might experience the same fate. Only 14% of PCX credits went toward recycling, according to an analysis by SourceMaterial of the first plastic credit registry in the world, Plastic Credit Exchange (PCX).
In a process known as “co-processing,” which releases thousands of tonnes of CO2 and toxins linked to cancer, most of the plastic was burned as fuel in cement factories, while businesses that had purchased credits with PCX were receiving “plastic neutral” status.
Co-processing is done under controlled circumstances, according to a PCX spokesperson who spoke at the time.
The World Bank is now pointing out the use of plastic credits as a remedy.
The World Bank released a $100 million bond in January of last year in connection with the plastic credit projects being supported by the Ghana and Indonesian initiative Alliance to End Plastic Waste.
A senior environmentalist from the World Bank stated at the UN talks in December last year that plastic credits were an “emerging result-based financing tool” that could help fund projects that “reduce plastic pollution.”
What are plastic credits thought of by businesses?
At the UN, manufacturers, petrostates, and credit project owners have all fought for market alternatives, including plastic credits.
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste in Ghana and Indonesia, two of which produce plastic domestically and import plastic from abroad, is made up of the oil-rich ExxonMobil and petrochemicals giant LyondellBasell and Dow Chemical.
Given the “benefits of plastics,” those companies are also members of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a lobby group that has warned the UN that it does not support production caps or bans.
What are the opinions of critics and the affected neighborhoods?
Plastic offsetting is described as a “game of greenwashing,” according to professor of human resource management at the University of Toronto Anil Verma, who has studied waste pickers in Brazil.
Verma contends that compensating allows polluters to claim they are addressing the waste problem without sacrificing production or profits.
St. Andrews University in Scotland’s Patrick O’Hare, an academic who has been a part of the UN plastic treaty negotiations, expressed concern over the increasing importance that plastics credits are receiving.
Plastic credits are being promoted in some circles, he continued, “despite the lack of proven success stories to date” and the “evident problems with the carbon credit model on which it is based.”
[Costanza Gambarini/SourceMaterial] Goats at the Accra dump site
Even the biggest companies in the world have shied away from plastic credits.
Nestle, which previously purchased plastic credits, stated last year that it was unsure of their usefulness in their current form.
According to reports, Nestle and Coca-Cola both claim to be “not convinced” that “extended producer responsibility” schemes are necessary.
The World Bank plans to increase its support for plastic offsetting, calling it a “win-win with the local communities and ecosystems that benefit from less pollution.”
Some of Ghana’s poorest people make a living by recycling plastic waste.
Funds for offsetting, according to Johnson Doe, the head of a local waste pickers’ group in Accra’s capital, would be better spent on helping out local waste pickers.
Doe prefers to see investment turn into plastic credits, as opposed to having his association officially recognized and funded. He claims that they are a “false solution.”
This article was created in collaboration with SourceMaterial .
Former England cricketers relive 2005’s second Ashes Test at Edgbaston, regarded as one of the greatest matches of all-time. England won by two runs to draw the series level at 1-1 and keep alive their Ashes hopes.
Watch How to Win The Ashes 2005 now on BBC iPlayer.
Daniel Ogunshakin, a 30-year-old triple jump world record, is discussed by Jonathan Edwards with BBC Sport about the 18.29m mark he set at the World Championships in Gothenburg on August 7, 1995.
READ MORE: Edwards’ 30-year-old world record is “not a good sign for athletics.”
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Daniel Ogunshakin
journalist for BBC Sport
The fact that you have a 30-year track record doesn’t seem to be a good thing for athletics as a sport.
No one has ever eclipsed the 18.29m mark set by Jonathan Edwards at the World Championships in Gothenburg on August 7, 1995, which gives him a sense of pride in his triple jump world record.
According to Edwards, who is Britain’s only track and field world record holder in regularly contested events, “when you think of all the developments in sports science, nutrition, training methods, and all of those things, I don’t think it necessarily speaks to a really healthy and thriving sport,” he said.
Perhaps that underplays his own success. Only seven other men in human history have reached the milestone of 18 meters.
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Edwards was described as “remarkable.”
No one had ever jumped above 18 meters in ‘legal’ wind conditions when Edwards arrived at Göteborg’s Ullevi Stadium.
He had succeeded twice within the first two competition rounds.
In one of British athletics’ greatest performances, he broke the record with his opening-round jump of 18.16m and added another 13cm to it about 20 minutes later.
He also had the record for the longest jump in wind-assisted 18.43m jump in history, breaking American Willie Banks’ previous record by one centimeter with a jump of 17.98. He also had the record for the event’s form athlete that year.
At 71 kg, he was also lighter than many other athletes and has always described himself as a sprinter rather than a jumper. He likens his contact with the ground during the hop-step-jump phases to a pebble skimming the water.
He had changed his technique that season, switching to a double arm movement from an alternate arm movement, which he claimed helped him stay “so well balanced” throughout each phase.
He admitted that he bought sunglasses at the Gothenburg airport to conceal his eyes while warming up so that his rivals “couldn’t see the fear” he had, despite being far from confident.
His rivals’ perceptions were completely different.
Jerome Romain, who won the bronze medal in Gothenburg, said, “We studied Edwards videos day in, day out” during training. He said, “The things he did were just remarkable.”
Athletics “hasn’t kept up” with other sports.
According to Edwards, athletics has not “kept pace with the professionalization of sport,” which means talented young athletes are choosing other sports in order to earn more money. This is why, in his opinion, he still holds the triple jump world record.
He claimed that it doesn’t offer the same rewards as other sports.
You wouldn’t necessarily choose track and field if you were a talented young child. You wouldn’t choose a field event with lower rewards than a track event.
The disciplines were restricted to track races when four-time Olympian Michael Johnson established Grand Slam Track this year, a sport that saw competitors compete for the top prize of $100, 000 (£75, 125) at each meet.
UK Sport announced last year that UK Athletics would receive 8% less from the Los Angeles Games than it did from Paris 2024 in terms of funding for the sport, while UK Sport has cut funding for athletics for the second consecutive Olympic cycle.
Technology might not be a good thing.
Jumps are the top three men’s world records held by men between 1991 and 1995, three of whom have the longest standing records.
Despite that, footwear has advanced significantly since then, including in the form of technology.
However, according to Edwards, the carbon fiber plates on today’s running shoes may not actually help jumpers in comparison to the records-keeping running competitions.
Because I believe we are seeing that on the track, I wonder if a carbon fiber plate can handle the intensity of that impact before offering anything on the rebound.
You’re seeing athletes who actually have a spring effect, which is why you’re seeing some of the same situations as you do. I’m not sure whether the same kind of trampoline effect can have the same impact because the forces are so extreme when people take off, in fact, in long jump, even high jump.
Will there ever be a record-breaking?
The American Christian Taylor jump 1821 meters, which is the closest anyone has ever come to Edwards’ record.
This year’s leading distance is 17.80 meters, whereas last year’s Olympic gold was won with 17.86 meters.
“He can rest easy for a while,” Rogers said. I’m telling you, “This is not an easy feat.
If his record falters, Edwards claims he is unsure of how he will feel.
He said, “I’ve had it for a long time. Actually, it would be nice if it persisted.
