Plastic keeps me up at night

A few years ago, I was going through security checkpoint at the airport, watching one of those TSA videos that advise you to pack toiletries in a clear plastic bag. I started thinking about a plastic bag for every person at every airport, every flight, every day of every year—and that's a lot of plastic bags. Then I thought about each of those bags ending up in a landfill after journey’s end.

I think about plastic a lot. I think about it when I walk the grocery store aisles and realize how much plastic sits on the shelves. I think about it when I do laundry, knowing that synthetic fabrics shed microplastic fibers that end up in waterways. I think about the plastics we can't really see, like BPA liners in cans, and how the chemicals leach into our food and water. I think about studies that have exposed plastic as a human health issue, and how microplastics have been found in human vascular tissue. Plastic has become pervasive to essentially every aspect of our lives. It’s everywhere, and we don’t have a way to manage all that plastic once it’s served its purpose, and the problem is growing exponentially.

We've been duped into justifying our plastic consumption thanks to the promise of the recycle bin. Based on the numbers, however, recycling plastic is just short of a myth: Only 3-5% of the plastic that enters the recycling stream is actually recycled and it's estimated that 10 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans each year. Over 380 million tons of plastic waste are produced globally each year and production is expected to triple by 2050, with plastic in landfills expected to reach 12 billion metric tons. By then, it's expected that there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans.

A major factor in the plastics problem is that it’s cheaper to create virgin plastic than it is to recycle plastic. Recycling is further hindered because different types of plastic can’t be recycled together, and plastic can typically be recycled only two or three times because heat used in the recycling process shortens the polymer chains in the plastic, degrading its quality each time to the point where the plastic can no longer be used. Recycling plastic creates myriad issues that further compound the plastic crisis: The process creates microplastics, and wastewater from recycling facilities carries these microplastics into waterways, along with toxic chemicals like heavy metals and pesticides, which are also released into the air.

It's maddening to me that companies aren't taking more initiative to minimize or eliminate the amount of plastic in their products and packaging. The burden is then placed on the consumer. This setup assumes that the consumer is responsible for disposal, which may or may not include recycling, and which typically comes with an added cost, whether paying for public sanitation or city dump services. Ultimately, the people responsible for what ends up in landfills and polluted oceans should be the same people who make the things that end up there.

We can vote, and we can vote with our dollars. Elect politicians who can help pass legislature that protects life on this planet, such as regulation that holds companies accountable. Spend your money on companies that focus on sustainability. (Certified B Corporations are great options—see my related post.) Reuse items and buy second-hand. Buy less stuff. If we stopped buying it, they'd stop making it, yeah?

Sources:

• NPR: Recycling plastic is practically impossible — and the problem is getting worse

• Unesco IOC: Ocean plastic pollution an overview: data and statistics