Plastic: A menace no one is prepared for

Plastic is a perfect example that attests humans lack a reliable foresight. It is one of the scientific inventions which enjoyed a very short lived period of glory. Like many other scientific breakthroughs plastic was invented to meet demands of a growing world. In 1860s celluloid(a semi-synthetic plastic) was invented and used for making combs. By 1930s plastic transitioned to synthetic plastics like polystyrene, polyethylene etc, plastic we know of today. Synthetic plastic did not depend on limited natural resources like celluloid and could be produced at an unlimited scale. It was a boon for mankind. In 90 years the same plastic has instead become a curse for us. Now we perish with it’s flaws.

Plastic’s inventors overlooked an obvious problem this material was going to cause. If they had been prudent they could have invented something which could be managed without leaving such a huge footprint. But then putting all the blame on inventors isn’t fair. They were just doing their part of inventing, isn’t that how most inventions have happened without thinking about their consequences. Let’s put blame on time instead. When plastic was invented the world was getting out of World War II. After the war people just wanted to be happy and overcome the feeling of shortage they had faced during it. Unsurprisingly, buying more things made people happy and was the perfect way to move on. People wanted toothbrushes, clothes, phones, radios, televisions, cars, tand much more. Plastic made it all possible. Plastic was cheap, it made things cheap and people could buy more things. They could afford all the novelties they had dreamed of. Humans were driving a vicious cycle fueled by plastic: when you want more and you get more then you want even more. Times have changed and yet we are still stuck in the same cycle so maybe we cannot blame time either. Evidently, it is us the human consumers of plastic who have to take most of the blame. Time and again our pragmatism has been obscured by our wants and needs. It isn’t the first time in that we are realizing the downsides of plastic. Plastic was identified to be a problem in late 1960s itself. In following decades recycling was proposed as a solution to the plastic problem. However, recycling could not solve the entire problem. There is only so much plastic that can be recycled. There are limited facilities for recycling and the scale at which plastic is produced and used it is not manageable. Single-use plastic like plastic bags are further hard to recycle. Contaminated plastic like plastic wraps have high cost of recycling, with no incentives. Hence most plastic ends up in garbage and from there it ends up in our rivers and from there into the oceans.

Plastic has conquered most land fill sites and oceans. 10 million tons of plastic is being dumped into oceans every year. On both land and water, plastic is taking away lives of innocent animals who mistakenly consume it as food. Every year 100,000 sea mammals including dolphins, whales, turtles die of plastic pollution. These animals assume floating plastic to be jelly-fishes or squids and die after eating it. Even more animals have died due to getting stuck in plastic especially discarded fishing nets. Seabirds and migratory birds have not been spared. These birds feed their young ones plastic which is in abundance on beaches and oceans everywhere. There is so much plastic in oceans that there are islands bigger than the size of France floating in ocean. The great pacific garbage patch which was all over the news in 2018 spans across 1.6 million square kms. The sheer scale of damage can be imagined with these numbers. It is time we reverse what we have created. We need to preserve our pristine oceans and share it responsibly with other living beings of our planet.

Turtle eating plastic bag (*www.shutterstock.com*)

Plastic has also entered human food chain in form of micro plastics(minute breakdown particles of plastic). It has become part of our food chain through water and fishes that we consume. Impact of plastic on climate change is much more than just the carbon footprint caused in its manufacturing. Microplastics have distorted the marine ecosystem which has been sequestering huge amounts of CO2 all this while. Planktons the tiny organisms that are sine qua non for marine life are threatened by these micro plastics. As more planktons die more CO2 is expected to re-enter the atmosphere.

It is not 1960s anymore. Population and consumerism has grown much more since then. We are dealing with formidable amounts of plastic now. This planet will not be able to bear the burden of plastic that we are dumping on it. Not making any change in our lifestyles is going to be 1960s all over again, where the world is relying on a mechanism(recycling) which has very limited potential to fix all the plastic problems. We need to make bigger changes in our lives as consumers. Relying on governments and organizations is a lost cause too. This world is driven by profits. Governments and world leading organizations are only going to invest in causes that bring in more money. It is all about growing the economy. As long as the consumers need plastic more plastic will be injected. (Note: Some governments are making efforts like banning plastic for shopping bags but at the current rate we need a much bigger reform than that.)

If we decide to move away from plastic and reduce our consumption we can drive the world in a direction where plastic is not a menace any more. Some simple ways to move away from plastic would be to use re-usable cloth bags for shopping. Avoid buying pre-packaged produce. Look for items packaged in glass or ceramic containers instead of plastic. Replace drinking water bottles with steel bottles and so on. I have listed down some tried and tested ways at the end of this section which you can follow in your everyday life to avoid plastic. This all can be overwhelming, there is too much to take away from here. I plan to write smaller posts in ways you can change your lifestyle. So, stay tuned.

Last but not the least, reducing our consumption of things is going to make the biggest difference. It will indirectly reduce the amount of waste we produce overall. Use what you have until it completely wears out. Buy only what you really need. Don’t be controlled by consumerism that is being imposed on you.

For now what matters the most is: be conscious, replace plastic and buy less.

Possible actions one can take to reduce plastic:

Always keep spare grocery bags in your bags(purse/backpack) when stepping outside. Keep some of them in your car.
Use cloth bags for buying vegetables, you can buy new ones or use old bags that you might have collected over time.
Avoid buying packaged produce.
Carry your own bottles with you when going on a trip, this way you don’t have to buy bottled water. (Saves money as well)
When dining out avoid to-go boxes if they are of plastic. You can either order only the much you need or carry some boxes from home.
Avoid plastic party supplies like cups,plates etc. Replace those with alternatives made from paper or the ones marked as compostable.
Replace your kitchen sponges with cellulose sponges or these compostable scrubs.
Replace plastic wraps with beeswax wrap for wrapping food.If that is not available maybe you can get innovative and use cloth napkins or paper wraps.
Carry your own re-usable shower cap when traveling or going on trips.
Use a soap bar instead of liquid soap bottles.(Going old fashion is the new fashion)
Do not fall for dubious marketing stunts where items are sold as eco-friendly and alternatives to plastic and they are sold in plastic packaging.

Fun fact: Recently, I saw some posts about cups made from dried leaves circulating on the zero-waste group I follow. Believe me or not when we were growing up plates made from dried leaves were rife in India. I wish we had stuck with that practice and spread it like Yoga to the rest of the world. I think it isn’t too late to go back to the practices we had few years back.

No so Fun Fact: 60% of our clothing material is made from plastic. Almost all synthetic clothing materials have microfibers. These microfibers are nothing but microplastics and get released into oceans when we wash our clothes.

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