Plastic decays into a fine grit. It does not go back to a puff of wind. As a fine grit of usually white particles smaller than sand, animals think it is food and eat it. If you pick up an old plastic bag in the bushes, it crumbles and as you run it through your fingers, you can feel the fine gritty powder. You may think that you can see the degraded plastic bag but the animals eat it.
Worse still is the use of clothes with plastic fibres. Each time we wash our clothes, tiny fibres get washed into the drainage system. They are small thin fibres that can get through the sewerage filtration system. Fish breathe in the water and the small fibres get through their lungs into their blood stream. We should stop using plastic in clothes and as a minimum, fit large filters on the exit pipes of wash-machines.
Go plastic free.
- Do not buy or acquiring new plastic.
- Do not cook with plastic.
- Do not store food in plastic.
- Minimize all other plastic use.
We must eliminate single-use plastic. People must carry this out and insist that governments introduce this ban at policy level.
We must move towards a ‘No Waste’ society, rather than a ‘Recycle Society’. Waste, by nature is something that accumulates. For the good of our planet, we cannot let waste accumulate, whether it is in oceans or waste pits.
It is corporations that do not wish to stop producing plastic entities. Corporations put the onus on the citizenry to deal with the end of life disposal of their product. The false argument about the ban on guns follows the logic that we should prevent people from having guns so that they do not kill each other. (Government is allowed to have guns, it would seem, so they have the ability to kill the people!) Carried to the plastic situation, plastics should not be produced to prevent citizens from killing their planet with plastic waste. Some companies are so intransigent that they will not even tolerate the first stage – recycling. Coca-Cola opposes public programs that make it easier to recycle plastic bottles. Solution – ban Coca-Cola.
Be like this conscientious citizen with her ‘Plastic Is Evil’ mini-website. These people are making an effort to change things but it is still not enough.
In the late seventies or early eighties, I remember traveling on a train in India. Tea was served in clay cups that were then thrown out of the window. I thought: “How crude, wasteful, and untidy. Now, the view from a train window contains a sparkle as the sun glints on the vast array of white and clear plastic in the scenery.
On a drive across the Nullarbor Plain in Australia seven years ago, I was stunned by the volume of plastic waste blowing around and littering the bush. This is miles from any city of settlement. It is the middle of a desert. In Thailand, I walked around an Island that I had walked around many years before. Every nook and cranny, I saw plastic waste, mostly fishing waste.
Find ways to live without plastic. Make a websearch for ‘no waste society’ and support the pervayors and receive their emails and updates.
There are already many cities that are committed to going Zero Waste — New York City, Buenos Aires, Dubai, San Francisco are amongst the many. Now it is your turn.
And out of interest, this evening’s surprise was the the charity takeaway rendang meal that arrived this evening was in a compostable container. The tray clearly states:
Made from sugar cane fibre.
Biopak.
It doesn’t cost the earth.
Please compost.
The sweets for afters arrived in banana leaf inside a brown paper bag. I even composted the brown paper bag.
