The following is the text of a short talk I gave in July 2019. The responses I got from people who wanted there to be more information about what they could do prompted the development of this website.

PLASTIC WASTE:
HOW MUCH OF A PROBLEM IS IT, AND WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

I’ve always had an uneasy feeling that I’m being lazier than I should be about dealing with plastics, so I’ve done a little looking into our relationship with plastic that I’d like to share with you. I don’t doubt that you’re all responsible recyclers, but you might be surprised at how completely ineffective plastic recycling is.

How many of you have discovered, in the back of a cupboard, a plastic container you’ve had for a little too long, that’s starting to feel a bit sticky?

That is essentially what happens to plastic as it begin to break down—slow as the process is, the first thing that noticeably happens is that the plastic gets sticky. Towards the end of the life of anything plastic, when it’s broken down into what we call microplastics, all the teeny tiny bits of plastic that float around in the air and drift through the oceans, are sticky. And we are breathing sticky microplastics into our lungs and we are consuming microplastics in all seafood we eat these days—including sea salt. Sticky microplastics which come with heavy metals stuck to them—nickel, cadmium and lead. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this means… hello more cancer?

SO HOW MUCH PLASTIC IS ACTUALLY FLOATING AROUND?

Since we began producing and using plastics in the 1950s, our production of plastics has nearly doubled every decade. And at this rate, we’ll be producing 108 pounds of plastic for every person on the planet every year by 2030 (8.5 billion people)*. Let’s think of that as a solid plastic body double for every person on the planet (and there will be 8.5 billion by 2030) that we’re either throwing out now or later. Every year. Except it’s not one solid body; it’s all kinds of little bits and pieces of plastic, many of which will become microplastics within our lifetime.

Because 40% of the plastic that is produced is packaging. You know, like the plastic clamshells for arugula and strawberries; plastic bags around everything.

This is where we want to believe that we’re can solve the problem by recycling.

But only nine percent of the plastic we produce actually gets recycled, it turns out.

SO OUR FIRST INSTINCT IS TO DO BETTER RECYCLING, YES?

It’s possible that recycling could be done more efficiently. We could be more aware and careful that we’re only putting truly recyclable items in the recycling bins (no plastic bags, no wrappers, no bits of plastic attached to cardboard, definitely no sneakers) and we could be more careful to wash out our containers before we recycle them. Have a look into any recycling bin and you’ll probably see it full of things that are not on the list. There is a lot of ignorance and laziness about recycling—as though someone else will deal with it.

BUT—and this is the crunch—not only is only 9% of our plastic waste getting recycled, but the mechanical recycling we rely on at best turns the plastics we throw out into a lower-grade plastic that gets one more use before it is non-recyclable. A recycled bottle doesn’t become another bottle. We’re not recycling at all. We’re just delaying the moment when we commit our plastics to their non bio-degradable end.

We’re not only doubling our production of plastics every decade but our recycling is just delaying the moment when we commit our plastics to their non bio-degradable end.

WHAT CAN WE REALLY DO ABOUT PLASTICS?

What might be our brightest, best effort would be to retrain ourselves from our current throwaway habits. Like taking our own bags when we go shopping, yes? Like taking our own coffee cup for our morning Joe, yes? Like carrying a metal straw if we like drinking through a straw. And a million other ways. Google what you want to buy that you think only comes in plastic and if you add “plastic free” to your search you’ll probably find you can shop without plastic (and that includes things like shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, etc)

And then what’s going to make the bigger difference is writing to your state representatives to press for changes to the State’s laws. One hand-written letter to a representative gets counted as representing the opinions of 10,000 people so do this and you will make a difference.

New York State is now the third state to place a ban on single-use plastic bags—it’s not going to come into effect until March (2020) and there are exemptions, but it’s coming—and it will help. And we can do more.

Think of some plastic packaging that you could do without and write to your representatives to let them know you’d like that banned. Tell them we don’t want to be all sticky with plastic.

* The statistics I found on plastic usage and plastics dumping were all in metric tonnes. I converted this to the lbs Americans understand in terms of their own body weight for the purpose of creating a metric that’s easy to visualize.