In its moves to eliminate avoidable plastic waste, it was announced this week that England is looking to add plastic plates, cutlery and polystyrene cups to the list of items already banned, which includes single-use plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds. This is in light of the fact that of the over 5.3 billion of those items used in England every year, just 10% are recycled. As next steps, it will examine other sources of plastic pollution, such as wet wipes, tobacco filters, condiment sachets and other single-use cups with a view to banning plastic in these items in the future, as well as introduce a plastic packaging tax among other measures.
With very few exceptions, the countries of the world are wrapped up in and choking on plastic. Convenient for storage and so many other little things, plastics have infiltrated our lives to the extent that there are few households, if any, which could boast today that they are plastic free. Yet, most plastics are dangerous.
Over eight million tonnes of plastic enter the world’s oceans each year leading to degradation of marine habitat, which eventually affects aquatic organisms. Humans ingest the toxic chemicals in plastics which leach into food and drinks stored in them for long periods or if they are exposed to high temperatures; this may cause serious illness over the long-term. Disposal of plastics in landfills leads to the chemicals filtering into groundwater over a period of time. Burning plastics can release toxic chemicals into the air causing public health hazards. One would imagine then that the simple answer is to stop producing plastics. It is not that easy.
In March 2019, at the United Nations Environment Assembly, a precursor to the Climate Action Summit that September, 170 countries pledged to significantly reduce the use of plastics by 2030. That pledge was a compromise, reached after the initial proposal to phase out all single-use plastic by 2025 was opposed by several countries, including the United States. The opposition from the US was not surprising considering the direction in which the country was heading at that point, beginning with the announcement by then president Donald Trump in 2017 that it was pulling out of the Paris Agreement.
However, there’s more. A huge consideration has to be the fact that the Texas-based oil giant ExxonMobil is said to be the world’s largest plastic producing company both in terms of revenue and market capitalization. In addition, Chevron and DuPont are among other US oil companies with vested interests in the worldwide plastics industry where demand is escalating. These companies wield tremendous amounts of power, not just in the US, but in other countries around the world where they operate. This is a fact we are well aware of in Guyana.
When people use the term single-use plastic they tend to focus mostly on those ubiquitous plastic bags, beverage bottles, plates and cups that are seen littering the environment. Most do not consider the other items that are too numerous to mention here, but which include the bottles and jars that hold laundry detergent, hand soap, sanitizer, shampoo, conditioner and creams; toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes among other things. These containers are usually labelled ‘recyclable’, which is most likely true. However, the fact is that the majority of them never get anywhere near a recycling plant after use; they are tossed in the trash and end up in landfills. Globally, only about 12% of plastic waste is recycled.
Most of the companies using these types of plastic packaging are famous for greenwashing, a term coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986. Greenwashing is nothing more than dishonest verbiage designed to convince consumers that products are sustainable when they are not. One example is promoting products as “made with natural ingredients” when the fine print actually says otherwise, or the product is delivered to the consumer so smothered in plastic wrapping that it denotes some amount of irony.
The latest moves by plastic-loving companies too lazy to conceptualise different and truly environmentally-friendly packaging can be seen in their collaborations with cement plants. A Reuters report published last month revealed that US conglomerate Unilever, parent company of Dove, Vaseline, Hellman’s and Seventh Generation among other well-known brands, has funded a project in Indonesia where discarded plastics are burned in a cement kiln.
Further, according to Reuters, there are eight more such collaborations, all launched over the last two years, involving Coca Cola, Nestle and Colgate-Palmolive paired with cement companies based in Switzerland, Mexico, Indonesia and the Philippines. The report also named Costa Rica, the Philippines, El Salvador and India as among places where these cement factories exist.
The greenwashing at play here is the hype that these operations are burning plastics which would otherwise clog the environment, while not emitting toxins. However, the US Environmental Protection Agency is not convinced. It has stated that there is no significant climate benefit to be gained from burning plastic in kilns, as it can create harmful air pollution that must be monitored.
Bans and taxes on plastics, which many countries are implementing, have to be so punitive that companies will think twice and begin to truly move towards green packaging. It is possible. We live in an era where humans have begun orbiting in space for pleasure. If we could find a way to do that then surely replacing plastic as packaging would be a piece of cake.
