Late last year the petroleum giants, including Exxon and
Shell announced an allocation of $180 billion for modernizing plastic
production and distribution, insuring an almost permanent pollution of our
oceans.
Although Theresa May’s UK devoted a great deal of talk to
reducing plastic pollution, a motion last year to enact deposit return on
plastic bottles failed to pass Parliament. But following China’s decision to
ban imports of foreign recyclable material, pushing against these set-backs, Brussels
announced
an allocation of 340 million euros to change poor tax habits, furthering a plan
that aims to make all packaging reusable or recyclable by 2030 in an effort to change
the European mindset.
A
recent article by Reader Supported News calls for an American plastics
intervention, but in the absence of globally-coordinated efforts, looking
to failed government structures—call them nations, especially now—seems unrealistic.
The use of plastics contributes
to endocrine disruption. That alone is a good reason to stay away from all
plastic products, including appliances, as much as possible. Fossil fuels are
killing not only humans but all life on this planet of ours, including what it
does to the soils and the water.
Remember, too, that all plastics are
petroleum products. They are not biodegradable. They do not decompose. At best they break down into minute particles
which find their ways into the digestive systems of land and sea birds, fish,
and mammals, including human mammals..
Anything you put into the earth’s ecosystem that does not
decompose, that is, anything inorganic, pollutes our planet for all eternity.
PACIFIC GYRE
Stuck by the swell
of becalmed seas,
Leno wisecracks
at an empty sky,
Carson gawks
as horsetails track the trades,
a school of canned guffaws
swims just below the shallows.
Cathode ray reliquary
marks culture gone to brine:
Farnsworth’s tube, its cord
trapeze to barnacles.
Garbage accumulation in the seas is driven by the movement
of six subtropical ocean gyres (SOGs), rotating clockwise in the Northern
Hemisphere, and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, the result of the Coriolis
Effect.
Both profit driven and non-profit enterprises are stepping
in where more concerted efforts have failed. Municipal governments can pass
ordinances banning the use of plastic bags. Recently the Icelandic chain of UK
supermarkets announced their packaging would become plastics-free. Greenpeace
is circulating a petition demanding that Coca Cola cease its production of
millions of plastic bottles a year in favor of establishing stations where the
public can draw the product in reusable containers.
How can we live responsibly, given that our lives are embedded
in a petroleum-driven economic culture? How can we reduce and eventually
eliminate the use of plastics in our homes, and our purchasing lives, and in
our planet-spendthrift Christmas giving? Individual efforts make a difference.
One of them, spearheaded by Costa Rican artist Carolina Sevilla recovers ocean
plastic and makes fashions out of it, is an example of such an individual
initiative. But each one of us need to think how best to help compensate for
the absence of globally coordinated initiatives.
.
Most critical of all, R & D allocations need to support
the world’s chemists to develop biodegradable replacement products, to end the
age of petroleum and its byproducts altogether.
For further reading:
Avail yourself of Greenpeace’s
plastic clean-up toolkit.
Ohio’s
dangerously embrittled David-Besse nuclear plant is headed for “premature”
closure as its owner, FirstEnergy Corp runs out of solvency options.
New Orleans passes resolution calling on the city to avoid
contracting or investing in corporations that consistently violate human,
civil, or labor rights—including Israel.
Vermont becomes first in union to legalize marijuana,
reversing decades of criminal incarceration, mostly of people of color.