Not necessarily a new story per se, but just a different way of looking at the issue. This is a particularly critical time to focus on plastics, as the industry has used the COVID pandemic as a convenient excuse to roll back regulations and bans, particularly on single use plastics.
• While many associate single use plastics with pollution, particularly of the world’s oceans, many people don’t realize that single use plastics represent a “triple threat” in terms of harm to living things, the environment, and the climate. While many have drawn the parallel of the plastics industry and the tobacco industry, smoking was really only a threat to human health, and not other species, the planet and climate. Plastics pose a far greater threat than tobacco ever did.
o Climate Impact
Plastic production contributes to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions at every point in its life cycle, from fossil fuel drilling, to refining, to “cracking” – the method of creating the building blocks of plastic products. (24 of these ethane cracker facilities have the combined carbon output of 3.8 million passenger vehicles). Microplastic in the oceans may also interfere with the ocean’s capacity to absorb and sequester carbon dioxide – which is the largest “carbon sink” on the planet.
o Harm to Humans and Wildlife
The average person consumes the equivalent of a credit card’s worth of microplastics every week. Exposure to microplastics, as well as the chemicals that are added to plastics during processing, harm our health. Many of the chemicals in plastics are known endocrine disruptors, and research has suggested that human exposure could cause health impacts including hormonal imbalances, reproductive problems like infertility, and even cancer. Scientists estimate that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by weight in 2050. At least 700 species worldwide have been adversely affected by plastic ocean pollution, including those consumed as food by humans.
o Pollution
Annually, about 8.8 million tons of this plastic waste enters and pollutes our oceans. Plastic debris constitutes 60-80% of all marine pollution. Waste exported to Southeast Asia is often incinerated, releasing toxic fumes that have links to a number of ailments, including cancer.
• Alarmingly, the COVID pandemic has led to a resurgence of single use plastics (which, without evidence, are viewed as safer than reusables in terms of virus transmission) and a rollback of bans that had been put in place to stem their impact. o Many state and local governments have suspended plastic bag bans and are prohibiting the use of reusable bags to stem the spread of COVID-19. This includes either rollbacks on restrictions, or outright orders for retailers to switch to single use plastic bags (including places like San Francisco, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York). o Predictably, industry is leading the push back to these pollutants: Judith Enck, founder of the environmental group Beyond Plastics, says the industry is using scare tactics. “Plastic bag lobbyists are attempting to exploit a public health crisis,” she says. “There is no evidence that reusable bags contribute to the serious problem of COVID-19.”
Selected sources: https://www.nrdc.org/stories/single-use-plastics-101#why https://www.ciel.org/plasticandclimate/ https://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/env212/single-use-plastic-and-its-effects-on-our-oceans/
Comments
Post a Comment