Plastic Pollution War Is Being Lost. Big Money Made In The Process

There are three possible ways in which plastic pollution can be removed from the environment - by technology, by volunteers, or by employed labor. Technology cannot remove plastic from mangroves, rocky shores, coastal forests, river banks, and most coastal, water and land areas. It cannot remove the microfibers and micro particles already in the oceans and waters, air and land, with trillions more fibers entering every hour from synthetic clothes and many other sources. Volunteerism is extremely limited in many developing countries where few people can afford to be volunteers. If technology or volunteerism worked in the many developing nations that are being environmentally destroyed by plastic pollution, it would have happened already. 

There is no movement to address poverty and plastic pollution by the widespread employment of disadvantaged people to remove plastic pollution from the environment. People would rather complain, protest, support already wealthy organizations claiming to do something, than actually do anything meaningful about plastic pollution. 

There is no movement to ensure plastic waste is properly disposed of worldwide. The plastic entering the oceans from far away places breaks down and contaminates all environments. It does not remain a localized disaster. 

There is no movement to move away from synthetic clothing and other materials and products that release enormous amounts of micro fibers and micro particles.

There is no movement to wean ourselves from the plastic addiction, or at least keep plastic waste out of the environment in all corners of the world. Most places in the world dump plastic and other contaminants in unsecured landfills, or in open pits or on garbage mountains. Or it gets openly burned, exposing people to its toxic smoke and contaminating the environment with its toxic ash.

There is big money in plastic from every single angle, including those that profit from this disaster by selling themselves as the answer and savior. There is hardly a problem in the world that someone, some organization, does not exploit and profit from.

And so the plastic pollution crisis only gets worse. Hundreds of millions, even billions of people in the developing world have become as addicted to the use of plastic as those in the developed world, with no means to properly dispose of the huge amounts of plastic, almost all of which is non recyclable, on which they now depend. And so the plastic accumulates along coastlines and many other areas, destroying coasts, oceans and wildlife, with millions of kilos added daily, breaking down into ever smaller harmful particles that can never be recovered.