The Problem With Plastics: Our Dependence

We’ve come now to the last in our series of “The Problem With Plastics.” Here’s a boiled-down version of everything we’ve learned so far:

Plastics are made at an alarming rate from petroleum, a highly-polluting, non-renewable resource, and are critically damaging our most important ecosystem on our planet- Mother Ocean- and all the creatures who inhabit her. Plastic manufacturers want to keep plastics in our homes, as single-use items, to keep their wallets nice and plush- and as long as we keep buying plastics, we keep telling them we want them to make more. The Waste Hierarchy is not sustainable, does not work, and that we are backwards in our disposal of plastics, sending half our plastics to a landfill and only 5% to be downcycled into a less valuable, less usable product. Plastics should never have been deemed as “disposable,” as they were designed to last forever, and yet used today to throw away after only one use. When you use just one plastic bottle, or just one plastic bag, you’re contributing to an accumulation of pollution that takes 1,000 years to break down, and during that process, leaks chemicals into the soil we grow our food in and into the water we drink every single day.

Phew!

And now we’ve one more thing to learn about… This one might be a toughie…

Look around your home. How many things are made out of plastic? How much plastic do you touch everyday? What would you do if all that plastic went away?

The last problem, and maybe the most defining one, is that we are unbelievably dependent on plastics in our daily life. And the biggest problem is not that we consume so much, but that we never have to see our trash after it is consumed.

Here are some facts most of us have heard before, taken from ­­­Clean Air, Envirosax, Earth 911, and Green Living Tips:

827,000 to 1.3 million tons of plastic PET water bottles were produced in the U.S. in 2006, requiring the energy equivalent of 50 million barrels of oil. 76.5 % of these bottles ended up in landfills. According to the Beverage Marketing Corp, the average American consumed 1.6 gallons of bottled water in 1976. In 2006, that number jumped to 28.3 gallons.

Of the 2.25 million tons of electronics (TVs, cell phones, computers, etc) retired in 2007, 82 percent were discarded, mostly to landfills.

Approximately 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. That’s more than 1,200 bags per US resident, per year.

Americans consume more than 10 billion paper bags per year. Approximately 14 million trees are cut down every year for paper bag production.

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean.

Greenpeace says that at least 267 marine species are known to have suffered from getting entangled in or ingesting marine debris. Nearly 90% of that debris is plastic.

If the Chinese consume resources in 2031 at a level that Americans do now, grain consumption per person there would climb from around 600 pounds today to around 2000 pounds needed to sustain a typical western diet. This would equate to 1,352 million tons of grain, equal to two thirds of all the grain harvested in the world in 2004. The average American buys 53 times as many products as someone in China and one American's consumption of resources is equal valent to that of 35 Indians. Over a lifetime, the typical American will create 13 times as much environmental damage as the average Brazilian.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in November of 1958 were at 313.34 parts per million. In March 2009, levels were at 387.41 parts per million, an increase of over 20%.

  

We first started to refuse when we saw the plastic trash washed up on our favorite beach. Through research we learned how horrible a problem plastic is. Then we started trying to rid our lives of as much plastic as possible, while simultaneously realizing how incredibly difficult that task really is.

Look… It’s hard to ask you to do something, especially when it confronts our daily lifestyles. Refuse To Use is incredibly aware of the fact that this is a delicate subject. We, as an entire species of humans, have really mucked it all up, and now it’s time to make a change and do the right thing.

Refuse To Use has now laid before you a similar realization- through research and documentation of the pollution the world is encountering- and if you were moved as we were, we believe it’s time to make a decision. Is reducing our use of non-renewable resources important to you? Do you want to reduce pollution that harms both you and the living things of our Earth?

Refuse To Use has laid the groundwork about the problems with plastic, and now it’s your turn to do your part. Refuse the use of single-use plastics in your daily lives, and take the time to search out your daily items of purchase that come in different packaging.

When we first started this venture, we were overwhelmed. But have no fear! We want you to know- you’re not alone. Plastics have infiltrated our lives in a way we are hardly even aware of- that is, until you start noticing and trying to consume more responsibly.

This is where Refuse To Use wants to help you! 

We are here to help you make better choices! We have already written about refusing single-use plastic bags, coffee creamer bottles, and soda/water bottles- and how you can replace them in your daily lives easily, by just simply choosing another option that was already readily available for you.

We will continue to think of as many ways for you to replace your normal essentials that are made out of plastic with items that are not.

We hope you will continue to learn with us how we can refuse the use of plastics and be more responsible citizens of this beautiful planet. 

The Problem With Plastics: A Material Designed to Last Forever, Consumed For Disposability

What to do, what to do...

Psychologists like to do word association- we do, too.

So, what’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of plastic? “Bottle,” maybe? Perhaps “pollution?” How about, “oxymoron?” When I think of plastic, I think of the word oxymoron. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines the word as “a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.” An example would be “pretty ugly,” or “big baby,” or even “honest politician” (we particularly like this one).

The first plastics were called parkesine, and were patented by Alexander Parkes, In Birmingham, UK in 1856. Up until the 1950’s, plastics were used scarcely- mostly for electric and engine parts. Plastics started showing up in the 1930’s and 1940’s in the form of radios, telephones, clocks, and even billiard balls. Then the “Disposable Life” became popular, where plastics were meant to save the modern housewife from the drudgery of so much housework. Why wash your dishes when you can just THROW THEM AWAY!

Apparently, something is written in stone.

Sounds awesome. I know I hate doing dishes. But this is where we went very, very wrong- where the word oxymoron comes into play. Plastics, which are designed to last “forever,” are appropriated to throw away. 

Disposable Plastic- one of the saddest, scariest oxymorons of the 21^st century.

We have solid, scientific evidence that plastics take 1,000 years+ to break down on land- about half that time in water- and yet we aren’t concerned with this when we choose to use all those convenient single-use plastic items.

Think of it this way: that water bottle that you purchased, that you drank from for 5 minutes, will now take at least 500 years to go away.

And as we already discussed (a thousand times, it seems like), it doesn’t actually go away. Through photodegradation, plastics become brittle and break down into smaller and smaller particles. They leak toxic chemicals into our drinking water and soils. The plastic slurry in our bodies of water get eaten by fish and work its way up our food chain, right back into our own bodies.

All for a quick drink on the go.

Does that seem totally backwards to ANYBODY? It seems incredibly wrong to us.

Jumbo Shrimp??

We reject all single-use plastics, because plastics should NEVER have been disposable! We have latched onto a sick, twisted, and false idea of what is disposable. Things that can actually biodegrade, at a reasonable rate, and that don’t poison us- such as corn starch and other organic materials- should be allowable as disposable. Would you try and make a compost in your backyard out of any other material that took 1,000 years to break down? No way! You’d never have any soil- you’d only have a pile of trash.

And herein lies another aspect of the problem- once you take your 5-minute water break and throw that bottle into the waste bin (or the recycling bin, if you’re remotely responsible), or after you throw away that plastic bag you brought home from the grocery store, you never have to think about it ever again. If we could see how much trash we actually accumulate- if it was in our faces, in our very own yards- we might feel differently.

Most of us don’t have to see it and certainly never have to think about it again if we don’t want to. But we’re smarter and better than that! We are intelligent enough that we should stop fooling ourselves into thinking that plastics aren’t a problem. We have gotten stuck in this terrifying paradox, thinking plastics are ok to use without care.

It’s not ok, and it’s time to start making better choices. It’s not just the Earth we’re trying to salvage- it’s humanity as a whole, too.

Refuse the use of single-use, “disposable” plastics because they don’t ever go away.

Thanks for reading, and for REFUSING with us!

The Problem With Plastics: The Unsustainability Of The Waste Hierarchy

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, which we call the “Waste Hierarchy,” has been around since the end of World War 2 when materials (not plastics at the time) were in shortages. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted this Waste Hierarchy about a decade later, around the time when plastics were becoming popular. Adverts for “The Disposable Life!” made people run rampant with plastics. In 1970, the EPA passed the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act in 1972; and in 1990 the Pollution Prevention Act. The last one in particular was created in an effort to focus on “industry, government, and public attention on reducing the amount of pollution through cost-effective changes in production, operation, and raw materials use.”

Good intentions are never enough, however. The EPA has really seemed to drop the ball when it comes to preventing or regulating plastic pollution. You remember in our last blog we discussed the Lobbyists and plastic manufacturers, whom want plastic to stay abundant in our lives. As much as the politicians are making decisions that benefit those with the money, the EPA does as well. Everyone in the entire world knows how cheap plastic is to make and use (we’re back down to $$money$$ again- what a surprise), and so why would anyone in their right mind push to use more expensive materials?

Because it’s more environmentally responsible? Meh! Who cares about that!?

Every single country that employs a Waste Hierarchy agrees that Reduce is at the top of priorities- with Reuse and Recycle following- and that sending trash to a landfill is a last resort. And yet… 50% of all plastics created end up buried in a landfill, while only 5% are recycled.

You might notice a 45% missing for where all plastics created every year end up. That last bit is unaccounted for, meaning it has ended up polluting our forests, rivers, oceans, and other places where it doesn’t belong. You remember the all that trash floating in the 5 Gyres, right?

Our point is… As noble as reducing, reusing, and recycling plastics may seem, they are not sustainable options for plastics.

Reducing is the only option that is remotely practical (a watered-down version of Refusing, really). The best-case scenario for plastics would be to discontinue using disposable plastics (bottles, straws, shopping bags, toothbrushes, cell phones, wrappers, lighters, take-out containers- basically anything you use once and throw away), and only allow for plastics that are used for more permanent or necessary purposes, such as sterile medical supplies or other life-saving devices.

Reusing sounds great, but it still doesn’t do anything to promote reduction in consumption, or solve the problem of where it ends up. Eventually, plastics are not reusable any longer and must be disposed of. Will it be in the 50%, to a landfill? Or maybe the lucky 5% recycled? Even sadder, the possibility of the unaccounted-for 45%…

Recycling, lastly, is unsustainable, as well as misleading. Every time plastics are recycled, they are actually downcycled, which means they are turned into a less-valuable product. Long story short, even if we recycled 100% of our plastics (a LOOOONG shot from our pathetic 5%), they would eventually end up unusable and in need of a disposal solution.

Recycling is expensive in so many ways- equipment, MORE fossil fuels, labor, shipping to and from- and all for a product that is less useful and still toxic.

Reducing, reusing, and recycling sound like excellent solutions to our plastic problem, but the truth is that they are not. It’s not enough any longer.

We have come to a point in our level of plastic consumption where the Waste Hierarchy no longer works.

The EPA has come up with some potential plans for encouraging recycling, such as the Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) program, where you are charged for the amount of trash collectors have to pick up. The more you recycle, the less trash you will be throwing away, the less you have to pay (I hate giving anybody my money, but we generally aren't motivated unless it hits our wallets).

Sounds great- again- but I guess what we’re saying is that (again, again, again) we’re beyond recycling! We need to STOP using plastics, and STOP fooling ourselves that we can just recycle.

Refusing the use of plastics- ridding our lives of this toxic waste- is the best thing for us and our planet.

We hope you will put REFUSING at the top of your Waste Hierarchy. Continue reducing, reusing, and recycling for those items that are impossible to replace, but first REFUSE plastics.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for REFUSING!