Plastic-Free July and Forward
Consciousness of the problems surrounding plastics and the ecological harm done by the single-use, disposable culture they create is growing and activists have declared July World Plastic-Free Month, a great time to learn more about the cycle of manufacture, disposal, and degradation that plastics producers would rather we not think about. PlasticFreeJuly.org has a great set of resources for identifying ways to reduce our dependence on plastics in several settings where we find them.
It’s crucial to understand that post-consumer recycling is a 2% solution, and that by and large what many of us think of as mainstream “sustainability” and eco-consciousness is a greenwashed blame-shift by the original producers of single use plastics to keep producing ubiquitous, cheap, disposable items. Put another way: When you throw a plastic bottle in a trash can and it ends up in the ocean, that’s in no way your fault. Producing that plastic bottle was the manufacturer’s choice, even when options like glass or aluminum are only slightly more costly.
Those same producers spend a great deal lobbying to defeat any proposals that might place responsibility for creating infrastructure to meaningfully reclaim their waste like “bottle bills”. You’ve likely heard of similar schemes: each time you purchase a bottled beverage, some infinitesimal portion of the sale is considered a deposit on the container, and for each properly returned container that deposit is refunded, incentivizing people to return them instead of putting them into the trash stream. Bottle bills are certainly not the end-all-be-all of recycling schemes, but they’re one that exists today in certain American states and is therefore demonstrably feasible.
There are rumblings of legislative action to make progress on the issue here in the US: As reported by noted environmental activist Laura Turner Seydel Earlier this year, Sen. Tom Udall (NM) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (CA) introduced the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. Some of the bill’s proposed solutions include:
- Prevent Plastic Waste from Being Shipped to Developing Countries that Cannot Manage It
- Require Product Producers to Take Responsibility for Collecting and Recycling Materials
- Source Reduction and Phase-Out of Single-Use Products
Plastic-Free Month invites us to imagine other policy and industrial frameworks for a world less littered with the disposable remnants of yesterday’s lunch. There are myriad solutions in the realm of possibility but the deluge of plastics all around us in ecologically sensitive places like the ocean, and even underfoot in urban and suburban areas of human settlement is evidence that the current concept is failing. In fact, as noted in The Atlantic, half of all the plastic ever made was manufactured in the last ≈14 years. A drastic reimagining is needed, I hope you’ll join me in taking July to examine your own household and workplace plastic habits.
