Plastic pollution - who's responsible?

#1

Which corporations make plastics?

There seems to be a campaign to blame us, as consumers, when we have little choice in most cases. Nearly everything arrives made with and/or covered in the stuff.

I’m sure durable plastics appeared to be a miracle. Packaging and protecting delicate products and components. Therefore reducing waste and damage.

However, it didn’t take a genius to ask “what happens when they’re discarded?”

I feel that the corporations which produce, supply and promote environmentally persistent plastics should be made to take responsibility for their reckless behaviour. They either knew or should have known the potential environmental impact.

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#2

I agree. Another side issue is the health effects of plastic additives. It is starting to become clear that these are bad for us, and get into our bodies both through the food chain from plastics in the environment, and through food/drink in plastic packaging. There is next to no information about what additives are in plastics, and this seems similar to when smoking was starting to be known to be dangerous.

The rest of the post below is on another related, but not entirely the same, issue.

I think something that is missed often is how plastics end up in the oceans. Ocean plastic is a huge problem, and people’s default response seems to be to avoid using plastic, but tackling the ways that it ends up in the ocean could be much more effective at reducing it. Dumping near rivers and the sea, largely in the third world, is the main source I think (apparently 90% of the plastic entering the ocean enters it via 10 rivers, can’t remember source off hand). Tackling this seems to be a more effective way to reduce the amount entering the ocean quickly.

I’m not suggesting that we can just do this and then use as much non-degradable plastic as we like, but it seems like the best place to start, and much more effective than trying to shame Wimbledon into not giving out plastic forks with strawberries etc (most likely none of which will end up in oceans).

Funding for proper waste management in the third world seems to be a good way to start helping with this enormous problem.

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#3

I totally agree that health and routes-to-ocean are important points in the wider debate.

Some plastic food/drink containers are now labelled BPA-free. So I’m assuming that BPA is bad for us and that many other plastics contain BPA? Which obviously ends up in the environment and therefore our food/water and consequently our bodies.

I’ve also heard that some plastics can mimic oestrogen. I’m not sure if this is the BPA?

I wonder if the increase in cancer could be linked to environmental pollution, including plastics?

Can you even imagine how many other contaminants are just flowing into the environment?
Eg. What percentage of fluorescent light bulbs, containing mercury, are disposed of responsibly?

BBC news recently reported that Kenya had totally banned all plastic bags with heavy fines and prison for violations.

I visited a huge bio-digester last year. At first, it seemed like an excellent project. Basically, waste producers pay to drop-offer their food waste (eg. Heinz products in it’s packaging). It’s then crushed/ripped apart and fed into a giant artificial ‘stomach’ where it’s digested anaerobically producing huge amounts of methane. This powers a huge engine/generator. 4% of which is used to power the plant and the rest is sold to the grid. The plant also produces ‘compost juice’ which is sprayed on the land.

All sounds great so far? However small pieces of plastic and other contaminants are ‘impossible’ to remove using these processes and therefore are sprayed onto the land with the compost.

Unfortunately everything is now riddled with plastic including us. I’m reliably informed that microscopic plastic threads can be observed attached to our skin and nails.

It’s a bit like GMO, fertilisers/pesticides, asbestos, etc. By the time ‘we’ realise that they might not be such a good idea, they’ve already heavily contaminated almost everything. Again I don’t think it could have been totally unforseen. I suspect short-term greed and other nefarious influences ‘allowed’ it to happen.

I think this is yet another symptom of the current toxic debt-money system. I can’t even begin to describe the misappropriation of resources I’ve become aware of recently. A relative few live in absolute luxury/abundance because they’ve convinced the rest of us that we need money to survive. Obviously some of it filters down to our level, but the environmental destruction is unsustainable and will end in one way or another.
Eg. 40% increase in air travel in 5 years.
How and why is this possible?