My Problem with Plastic

Plastic. Where do I begin? I could honestly write a novel titled ‘My Problem with Plastic’ but then my editor would probably force me to include a romantic sub-story and call it my memoir which would eventually be exposed as a ‘novel based on true events’ and then I would have to apologize to Canadians while being interviewed by Don Cherry, so I’ll just keep this topic to a blog.

Anyways, I’ll begin my gripe with plastics at the beginning. Ironically Alexander Parkes invented plastic in 1862 to help save the elephants. That’s right people, plastic was invented to help the wildlife. Before plastic, ivory from elephant tusks was used in everything from billiard balls to toothpicks.

It took a while for the invention to catch on, as plastic only became commonly used in the last few decades but when it did, it caught on like wildfire.

For instance, plastic bags were only introduced in the 1970’s and although an entire generation hasn’t even passed, they’re already the #1 item found in landfills (we go through about 1.2 trillion a year). And why are we using plastic, something that will take almost forever to go away for products that we use for less than an hour? The estimated half-life for a plastic bag is 500 years, but then again no one knows for sure because plastic doesn’t break down like other matters. Plastic is never broken down by bacteria, instead it keeps breaking into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic that eventually find its way into our air and food.

So problem #1 with plastic is that it is made to last forever but is used for a nano second.
In addition, when plastic is recycled it’s just a bull***t process that eases people’s conscious. Now I’m not saying we stop recycling immediately but we can’t assume that it’s the answer to all of our plastic woes. For instance, when plastic is recycled (which is more complicated than recycling glass or metals) it is melted down and releases toxic chemicals into the air.

So although recycling plastic is essential, it doesn’t justify our extensive use of the material.
Thus problem #2 with plastic is that even when plastic is recycled our air and health is put in jeopardy.

Plastics have been making the news quite frequently lately, it seems that we’re constantly being alerted to different plastics that children shouldn’t be playing with or that we shouldn’t be heating up or that shouldn’t be used to carry our drinking water.

Today plastic has never been more prevalent and it has a history of being linked to cancers and other illness which have also never been more prevalent (Don’t believe me? Check out www.cancer.ca).

Problem #3 is that plastics are likely harmful to our health and the reason I say likely is because the material is relatively new and widely used, we haven’t been able to judge its effects on an entire generation yet.

Finally, my last gripe (#4) with plastic is that it’s made from petroleum!! Now, the oil companies claim that plastic is made from a by-product from drilling oil that would otherwise be discarded and wasted. However I have two questions: Would the waste that is discarded bio-degrade like a natural material? And aren’t we trying to lesson our dependency on oil anyways? By buying plastic and continuing to have it in our everyday lives we are supporting a shady oil industry which is another blog in itself.

Plastic Island

One of my biggest grips about humanity is our 'out of sight, out of mind’ mentality, once something is put in the garbage and taken away by the garbage man (or woman no discrimination here!) it’s gone forever. We hear statistics on how much waste is accumulated annually but our cities our so clean and we never see any of it so how bad can it be?
The answer is it’s bad, and a lot of it ends up in our water.

Greenpeace estimates that 10% of ALL plastic ends up in the ocean. Just think of how much plastic you go through in a week, from packaging on a chocolate bar to empty pens to old toys to appliances to WHATEVER. 10% ends up in the water (or approximately 10 million tons annually).

Well we don’t see that much plastic at the beach so where is it? The answer is Plastic Island or the Plastic Vortex and the reason we don’t see photos of it everywhere is because it’s all underwater. But it’s there in the Pacific Ocean and it’s said to between the size of Texas and the size of the U.S.A.

I think that the detrimental effects of this are obvious (highly toxic pollutants in our water from the plastic which ends up concentrated in the fish that most people eat, destroying wild life and ecosystems….etc) , but for those who need a visual:
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Sea-Plastic-LN-PG5oct05a.jpg

Essentially after garbage and debris make their way into our beaches (from wind, litter, or from ships) it is picked up by the current and the ocean’s vortexes until it gets stuck in the ones between North America and Asia. I’ve heard people ask “Why don’t we remove it?”. Well, again it’s under water, it’s the size of Texas, and where do we put it? And like all issues, governments usually don’t tackle these things on their own until a huge public outcry (even then they drag their feet).

So what do we do? I usually don’t recommend solutions on this blog because for the most part I think these solutions are usually pretty obvious but aren’t used because they are considered inconvenient: Banning plastic bags are a good step but I think we shold ban plastic, examine our outlandish consumption, habits, and force ourselves to really be responsible for our garbage which is more than just putting it in the garbage can.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with why plastic is public enemy #1, that will be tomorrow’s topic.