Plastics biodegrade slowly, if any, and pose multiple threats to wildlife through entanglement and consumption. Moreover, absorption of toxic chemicals in the water and plastic odors that mimic some species' natural food. It also accumulates up the food chain….to our own stomachs.
Some reports predict that there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. So, what we should be doing is stop wasting and start recycling, right??
Well…. Things may not be so simple. Individual recycling is like hammering a nail into a falling skyscraper. The true problem is the amount of single-use plastics used commercially.
How did we end up misunderstanding the facts?
Beginning in the 1950s, companies like Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Bush, Phillip Morris and others formed a non-profit called Keep America Beautiful, to educate and encourage environmental stewardship in the public. Through campaigns, they have obscured the importance of corporate polluters and mislead the public to focus on consumer recycling behaviour.
Matt Wilkins notes in the Scientific American that what we can do is to:
- Reject the lie: litterbugs are not responsible for the global ecological disaster of plastic. Our problem with plastic is the result of a permissive legal framework that has allowed the uncontrolled rise of plastic pollution, despite clear evidence of the harm it causes to local communities and the world’s oceans.
- Talk about our plastic problem loudly and often
- Think bigger: though inspiring, a zero waste lifestyle will be impractical or impossible for most of us individually. A better alternative is to reform the economy into a more circular model, where waste is minimized by planning in advance.