“You think you’re special. You’re Plastic! Made to be thrown away!”
Lotso, to plastic toys about to be incinerated, “Toy Story 3”
The Problem with Plastics
Every day, disposable plastics (bottles, bags, packaging, utensils, etc.) are thrown away in huge quantities after one use, but they will last virtually forever. Globally we make 300 million tons of plastic waste each year. Disposable plastics are the largest component of ocean pollution. While Fresh Kills Landfill in New York was once known as the planet’s largest man-made structure, with a volume greater than the Great Wall of China and a height exceeding the Statue of Liberty, our oceans are now known to contain the world’s largest dumps. These unintended landfills in our seas may cover millions of square miles and are composed of plastic waste fragments, circling the natural vortexes of the oceans like plastic confetti being flushed in giant toilets.
Plastics are made from petroleum; there is less and less available, and we are going to tragic lengths to get at it as evidenced in oil spills around the globe with loss of life and habitat. Should we be risking life and limb for single use-bags and plastic bottles that can easily be replaced with sustainable alternatives? Should we be risking our food chain as plastic fragments become more plentiful than plankton in our oceans? Should we be exposing our fetuses, babies and children to the endocrine disrupting chemicals that leach out of plastic food containers into our food and drink? These questions and their answers are exactly what the plastics lobby wants you to avoid.
Plastic Industry Tactics: Aggression and Distraction
The Plastics Industry has been forced into a new position in order to preserve its global market. It is no longer enough to pitch affordability and convenience of their products when consumers are concerned about being poisoned by the chemicals in plastics and are tired of seeing more plastic bags than flowers on the roadside.
Every legislative restriction on plastics defeated by the industry and every consumer mollified into believing that using disposable plastics is a sustainable practice means the continuation of enormous global profits for industry. The petrochemical BPA, a hardening agent used in plastics that was developed first as a synthetic estrogen, alone generates 6 billion dollars in sales for the American petrochemical industry. As preeminent endocrine researcher Dr. Frederick Vom Saal observed: “If information [about toxics in plastic] had been known at the time that this chemical was first put into commerce, it would not have been put into commerce…. but because it already is in commerce, and chemical industries have a huge stake in maintaining their market share using this chemical, how do they now respond to evidence that it really is not a chemical that you would want your baby to be exposed to? [The industry] is still in the attack phase.”
Source: Huffington Post
By Lisa Kaas Boyle