We’ve Been Sold Disposability; We Can Demand a Material Change

Here is a great report from a lady called Dune Ives

Executive Director, Lonely Whale

 

Our “throw-away” culture first developed during the 1918 pandemic, when disposable items were sold as the safe option to protect against disease. Today, in the face of another global pandemic and rampant plastic pollution, the plastics industry is taking advantage of the crisis, putting profits over people and the planet.

 

One of the reasons the 1918 pandemic spread so rapidly, killing 50 million people worldwide, was due to a common practice of the times: drinking free water from a communal cup known as a “tin dipper.”

Ten years before the outbreak, Boston attorney Lawrence Luellen had created a different type of cup—the “Health Kup”—made from paper. For just a penny per cup, people could get their own individual cup and then throw it away, preventing the spread of disease. Market adoption had been slow over its first 10 years of production, but the pandemic created the perfect conditions for the Health Kup to take off. It was quickly renamed the “Dixie Cup” and is still hailed as a “life-saving technology” today, commonly used in school classrooms and doctors’ offices.

Market copycats soon followed the Dixie Cup, as did other disposable items including Kleenex tissues and paper towels. Importantly, our “throw-away” culture was born. 

With the world’s first plastic, celluloid, having been invented by John Wesley Hyatt in 1869 and repeatedly refined since then, disposable plastics quickly became a key part of this throw-away culture. Items such as plastic straws, cups, and lids were introduced to a growing consumer base whose new normal was becoming one of single-use and throw-away both to keep their families safe from disease and to support a new promise of convenience.

 

An intentional, profitable plastic path

Since its initial introduction, the production of plastics has grown exponentially. Today more than 350 million metric tons of new plastic are produced every single year. And stakeholders in the plastic industry have steep growth plans—from the oil, gas, and petrochemical companies that fuel the manufacturing of plastic, to the consumer packaged-goods companies that use plastic for packaging their products. A new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts predicts that, with those growth plans, production will increase to 400 million metric tons of new plastic by the year 2040. 

Plastic is derived from by-products of oil and natural gas.

These by-products are used by the petrochemical industry to create highly profitable plastic polymer-based items that we now rely on to make our lives more convenient, to ensure products have greater “shelf lives” in supermarkets, and to keep healthcare workers safe from the spread of disease in clinics, to name only a few applications. 

But despite its many uses, there is significant evidence that the growth of the plastics industry is not driven by end-customer demand, but rather by the oil and gas industry’s need to offload supply. As renewable energy options become increasingly competitive with fossil fuels, oil and gas companies are saddled with a surplus of ethylene that they need to convert to a sellable product. Ethylene is the foundational petrochemical for plastic bags and bottles.

Make no mistake, this industry is entirely focused on profitability. 

Earlier this year, Mother Jones reported that ExxonMobil executives had assured shareholders that the company could offset falling fuel demands from electric cars with growth in petrochemicals. And in 2018, the International Energy Agency found that petrochemicals were slated to be the largest driver of global oil consumption, ahead of cars, planes, and trucks. It is clear, the oil and gas industries are increasingly relying on plastics to make their profits.

Never let a good crisis go to waste

Today it is estimated that between 8 and 12 million tons of new plastic enter the ocean every single year. The Pew Charitable Trusts estimates this figure will increase to 29 million metric tons per year by the year 2040 if we continue to operate under a business-as-usual scenario—meaning all current policies to prevent plastic pollution are enforced, but we do not expand these policies or take additional preventative action. 

And this was before the pandemic. We now know that, in 2020 alone, plastic polymers will be used to produce 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves every month to keep frontline health care workers safe. None of these items are recyclable.

Yet beyond these essential items, the modern plastics industry has been taking advantage of the pandemic to further increase its profits, strategically planting unfounded fears and exploiting concerns over surface transmission to encourage greater consumption of all single-use plastic items. We’ve seen pressure by the industry to delay, hinder, or even roll back single-use plastic bans in favor of disposables, especially as restaurants prepare to re-open for business and offer meals to go.

Therefore, it is paramount that we reject the business-as-usual scenario and expand policies that can push back against industry efforts.

Sabotaging its own recycling fairytale

In the 1980s and 1990s the plastics industry was well aware of the mounting waste problem caused by its products. In response to public outcry, the industry spent millions of dollars launching campaigns through the Ad Council and organizations such as “Keep America Beautiful” that told Americans—once we can put our trash in the recycling bin, the waste problem will disappear.

 

Yet after four decades of campaigning, our global recycling rates have hovered around just 14 percent (13 percent in the US).

 

This low rate is due in large part to industry itself. During the same time period that they were pushing recycling campaigns, industry continued to produce increasingly more complex and harder-to-sort plastics that most collection centers cannot accept, simply because there are no buyers for the recycled materials. Simultaneously, the plastics industry began a multi-decade lobbying effort to prevent bans on single-use plastics such as bags and bottles, which it knew were poised for significant growth and profit.

 

 

And didn´t we all fall for it, hook, line and sinker.  I have been faithfully recycling for over 30 years and when I found out that the companies responsible for the next stage were not doing their part, to say I was a bit angry was an understatement.

 

I totally agree with everything that this lady has written about.  The piece was written so well and explained everything  I have been trying to say in one go about this terrible situation that we find ourselves in. 

I have been reading about how the production of plastic will be reduced but we should use what has already been made, however if we buy more then they will make more, it is a catch 22 situation, but if the supermarkets (this is just one area that we can make a difference) are left with large quantities of plastic containers etc, and we buy more products in glass or tins for example,then maybe they will see the benefit of stocking more environmentally friendly packaged items,which should bring the prices down and enable more people to buy them. We have to think like they do, it´s all about money.

Bit by bit we can make a change!

The blog song for today is: " Our house" by Madness

TTFN