The earth is being stifled by plastics, its oceans and seas are choking on them and while in some places solutions are being sought, in others there is a lack of awareness – or is it deliberate ignorance – that is both shocking and dangerous.
In a TED Talk published on Spotify about a week ago, plastic pollution researcher Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez estimated that the current total mass of plastic on earth is twice the total mass of all living organisms. If in the mind’s eye one can view this as on a scale, the visual is living things being completely outweighed by plastics – and that’s not all.
Scientists have reported that plastics are being found in fish, and in livestock animals and their byproducts (like milk and blood) in amounts that pose a risk to human health, as well as in other terrestrial mammals. It has also been long established that microplastics (infinitesimal pieces of plastic debris resulting from the disposal and breakdown of consumer products and industrial waste) are present in the air and water, and are therefore in our bodies. Studies have found microplastics in women’s placentas, indicating that not even unborn children are safe. Not surprisingly, a study done at Staffordshire University and published this month, found that microplastics in soil are an increasing threat to farming and global food production.
Despite all of this information being widely available, plastic producers, with their eyes seemingly fixed solely on the bottom line, continue to churn out copious amounts of it on a daily basis. According to Our World in Data, an organisation on a mission to help fix the world’s problems through research and data, plastics production in the world moved from an annual output of 2 million tonnes in 1951 to 381 million tonnes in 2015. Not all plastic is recyclable. However, even among those which can be recycled, about 80 percent is discarded, less than ten percent is actually recycled and the rest is incinerated.
Interestingly, research published by ‘The Plastic Waste Makers Index’ last year, found that US energy giant ExxonMobil, with its contribution of 5.9 million metric tonnes, topped the list of the 20 petrochemical companies responsible for 55% of the world’s single-use plastic waste. Over the last two years, COVID-19 also added to increased single-use plastic waste with tonnes of personal protective equipment heading to landfills and incinerators in countries all around the world.
In March this year, in the face of a warning that plastic pollution had ballooned to 348 million metric tonnes in 2017, some 200 countries attending a United Nations environment assembly in Nairobi, Kenya agreed to develop a treaty by 2024 to address the ever growing problem of plastic pollution. They adopted a resolution: “End Plastic Pollution: Towards an internationally legally binding instrument,” at the end of the conference. This is a step in the right direction, but whether it effectively tackles the urgency and magnitude of the problem is questionable. While the world awaits this covenant, over the next two years, the petrochemical companies producing single-use plastic have the opportunity to manufacture another 700 million tonnes, perhaps more, and flood world markets.
Part of the strategy that should work on throwaway plastics is banning them. If there is no demand, fossil fuel companies would stop producing them rather than contributing to a glut; both would be harsh on profits, but the latter would be more detrimental. However, only a handful of countries have so far completely banned single-use plastics, while others have pledged to ‘significantly reduce’ using them by 2030. Guyana missed the bus on restricting single-use plastics when the APNU+AFC government chose to creep around the issue and only ban polystyrene (Styrofoam) in 2016. The current government, despite all its green gabbing, has not even sniffed at legislation on single-use plastics.
Meanwhile, although disappointing, it was not surprising that the recently held agriculture fora/exhibitions (Guyana – May 19 – 21) and Trinidad and Tobago (August 19 – 21) featured so many products packaged in plastic, a lot of which is clearly single-use. The curries, seasonings, spices, condiments, cereals and snacks among other made-in-Guyana items appeared attractive enough, until one considered that their gaily coloured plastic packaging would end up in landfills contributing to the planet’s strangulation.
Has Guyana finally lost its way? Are the lofty ideas touted by politicians about a green economy just rhetoric at this point? This appears to be the case, since as both an oil producer and consumer, including our penchant for and dependability on the ubiquitous single-use plastics, this country has clearly become a contributor to the problem. If there was a way to weigh Guyana’s burgeoning harmful practices against the much hyped carbon sequestration from our forests that forms part of government grandstanding, we would likely be found sadly lacking.