Plastic Pollution And The Illusion Of A War Not Fought

Plastic waste will only get worse because billions of people are now dependent on plastic and live in countries that lack the infrastructure to properly collect plastic waste and dispose of it.

Hundreds of millions of people living along coasts, rivers and lakes in developing countries are as addicted to the use of plastic as are people in the developing world, except they live in places where there is no way to properly dispose of plastic.

 Plastic pollution will continue to worsen as long as there is no serious effort to expend effort and spend money on the following:

1. Manual labor - employ people and pay them fair wages- to remove plastic waste already in the environment.

2. Proper garbage collection of newly generated plastic waste (waste management in developed countries means garbage is usually collected weekly). Waste management and garbage removal is nonexistent throughout much of the developing world. Despite this, under the guise of recycling, some developed countries ship their plastic waste to developing countries already drowning in their own plastic waste. Keeping plastic waste from further contaminating the environment, not recycling, must be the priority. Recycling has become a euphemism for not prioritizing keeping plastic pollution out of the environment. The effort to shame companies selling products packaged in plastic accomplishes little to nothing as long as billions of people using their products continue to lack a way to properly dispose of plastic. Corporations must stop being free of responsibility for where their plastic products end. Proper waste management and proper waste disposal are critically needed for billions of people plastic dependent in developing countries.

3.Secure sites where plastic waste and other harmful trash are appropriately disposed, either by proper burial or by the Swedish model of proper burning (not the open burning that takes place throughout the developing world, in which people are exposed to toxic smoke and the environment is contaminated by toxic ash). Throughout much of the developing world, there is nowhere to put plastic waste, so it continues to be openly burned, or dumped into rivers, lakes, and oceans in communities living along coastlines or other bodies of water. Plastic waste gets dumped on land in places where people do not live along bodies of water. Winds, storms and time disperses the plastic waste dumped on land.

Unless plastic waste is properly collected and removed, which requires human labor that no one wants to pay for, and unless the plastic waste is properly buried or burned, which no one wants to pay for, then no device, no technology, no volunteer cleanup, no beach cleanup, no sale of plastic bracelets that are supposed to mean the removal of a pound of plastic trash (remember, every single day millions of pounds or kilos of plastic trash newly enters into the oceans), no complete ban on plastic straws, will amount to anything more than a feel good effort that will benefit a few people, but will not help the oceans, environment, or wildlife.

With billions of dollars floating around in the hands of foundations, nonprofits, and with many rich people claiming concern about the environment, it is striking that there is no serious effort to ensure the proper removal and disposal of plastic waste in developing countries.

Hundreds of millions of people continue dumping plastic waste into rivers and oceans, with well funded devices and volunteer cleanups capturing an amount nowhere close to the new plastic waste that enters the environment in a single day.

The plastic industry got the world addicted and dependent on plastic. The nonprofit world gets the world addicted to false illusions.

And so, like so many other serious problems, nothing of consequence will be done.

Plastic pollution is not like animal cruelty, dog fighting and other problems in which voiceless populations get exploited and the truth about ineffective and harmful programs and interventions do not come out.

The plastic waste disaster cannot be hidden.

By the time people finally make proper waste management and waste disposal a priority, it will be too late. Instead, people prefer to be placated by devices, plastic straw bans, sporadic volunteerism, and plastic bracelets.

The time to get serious about plastic pollution has tragically not yet arrived.