Oceans And Plastic Pollution: What Must Be Done

There is a massive failure to protect oceans and the environment in general from plastic pollution. This includes, but is not limited to the following reasons: First, there is the common use of plastic or synthetic oil based materials, including in clothing, food packaging, plastic bottles, plastic bags, and thousands of other items, without affordable, safer alternatives on the horizon. 

Second, there is a massive failure to properly collect and properly dispose of plastic. In the developed and developing world, micro fibers from clothes and other sources are commonly released into the environment from washing and drying. The developed nations, with exceptions, have not been successful at properly removing plastic waste from the environment. Sweden burns plastic waste, creating energy, while scrubbing out many of the contaminants. Sweden's approach appears to be one of the more effective ones. In many developing nations, plastic waste is burned openly, exposing people, wildlife and the environment to harmful carcinogens. Some developed nations still ship their plastic waste to developing countries already overwhelmed by their own plastic trash. In developing nations, the infrastructure is often lacking to properly collect and properly dispose of plastic waste. Plastic waste and other garbage are often brought to unsecured landfills, where mountains of garbage are created. Winds and storms blow much of the waste back into the environment. In other places, ground water is contaminated when waste is buried improperly or buried at improper locations.

It is critically important that plastic waste and other harmful waste are properly collected and properly disposed. There are billions of people plastic dependent, without ways to collect and properly dispose of their plastic. Proper waste collection and proper waste disposal must become universal. Anything less ensures ocean destruction and other enormous harm continues unabated. 

Third, plastic trash already in the environment is not effectively being removed. Employing impoverished people in developing nations to remove plastic pollution already in the environment is part of the solution. People need employment and plastic trash must be removed from the environment. This part of the solution - employed labor to remove plastic pollution - has been missing. The need for employment is enormous, as is the need to remove plastic trash from coastlines, mangroves, forests and many other areas which can only be achieved by manual labor. A movement is needed to ensure the widespread employment of impoverished people to remove plastic trash. One small organization has a workable model by employing impoverished people to remove plastic pollution from ecologically sensitive coastal areas in a developing country. But the extent of poverty and plastic pollution requires a much greater effort that must have governments and others involved. 

Removing plastic trash already in the environment cannot be successful without manual labor. No individual or organization, profit or nonprofit, should mislead people into believing that the huge amount of plastic trash already in the environment can be removed without an enormous amount of human labor. There is a place for technology, and there is a place for volunteerism, but they are no substitute for the manual labor that is needed to lead mankind out of the plastic trash mess.

Manuel labor is needed to remove all plastic waste, not just the small amounts that can be recycled. Programs that are based on incentives for people to recover recyclable plastic waste miss the boat in that all plastic waste is harmful and must be removed. It is far more effective that people are employed fair wages based on their labor, with fair daily or hourly wages, than having people paid by the recyclables they recover.

Programs that make it appear that products made from ocean plastic, like jewelry or something else, actually helps the oceans misleads people. The minuscule amount of plastic they recover is greatly offsetted by the false narrative that this is something of consequence, leading people into a continued state of blissful unawareness or noninvolvment. The fact is that millions of pounds of plastics pour into the oceans daily, and nothing will stop this massive damage unless: 1. the effort goes into ensuring widespread proper waste management and that plastic waste is properly collected and disposed of everywhere.  2. People are employed to remove the plastic trash already in the environment, including the amounts added every day, by getting paid fair hourly, daily, weekly or biweekly wages.

Similarly, ending the plastic pollution nightmare must not get derailed by narrow focused so called anti plastic advocacy. For example, the advocacy to end plastic straws fails to make it clear that plastic straws are a minuscule part of the plastic pollution nightmare, and that even if all plastic straws are banned, the plastic pollution nightmare will continue unabated. There is a lot of advocacy for ending plastic straws, but virtually no advocacy to employ the necessary manual labor to remove plastic pollution from the environment, and to create the appropriate infrastructures worldwide to ensure plastic trash is properly collected and properly disposed. Plastic straws should be banned, but the advocacy to make this happen should not continue to deter people from addressing what is necessary for ending the plastic pollution nightmare.

As long as billions of people in developing countries are plastic dependent, lacking the infrastructure and ways to properly dispose of their plastic, the plastic pollution ocean destroying nightmare will only worsen. No amount of recycling, plastic straw bans, jewelry or other items made from plastic ocean trash, devices to remove plastic from rivers and oceans, studies about plastic pollution and its prevalence, or volunteer beach cleanups, are of any consequence unless this changes. Millions of pounds of plastic waste continue to pour into oceans daily because billions of people in developing countries have no ways to dispose of plastic other than to openly burn it or dump it into rivers, oceans, and other places.   

While the effort continues to find alternatives to plastic, the critical need for proper waste collection and disposal must be aggressively pursued. This is of the highest priority. Plastic trash already in the environment that can only be removed by manual labor opens the door to what must become one of the largest antipoverty, environmental projects the world has ever known. But this very necessary program can only succeed when proper waste management succeeds universally.