Attempts to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have proved less than successful. Image by Chile Today.
Monday, April 22, is the 54th anniversary of Earth Day, a day established in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin after a series of environmental catastrophes in the United States spurred him to action. The theme is a challenge to government leaders and especially to corporate America, to reduce plastic production by 60 percent by 2040.
Environmentalists and event organizers also call on the public to fully eliminate single-use plastics by the end of this decade — only six years from now. This is not a central goal of the corporate producers and users of plastic; which we should remind readers is a petroleum product.
We should all be aware that as the world’s economies shift from oil and gas energy to renewable energy, this threatens the revenue of traditional oil and gas energy producers. Their response may well ramp up the production and marketing of plastic products; especially in the packaging category. Anyone who has ever struggled to get a child’s toy out of the layers of packaging it is wrapped in can appreciate this concern.
Internalized Environmental Concerns
All these decades later, the “Planet vs. Plastics” theme this year could just as legitimately be spoken as “People vs. Plastic.”
As environmentalists have now documented, we, ourselves have become the plastic product –breathing in microplastic particles that are now within our bloodstreams. Human breast milk has been confirmed to contain microscopic plastic. Some 95 percent of U.S. water systems contain plastic micro-fibers.
According to Earthday.org President Kathleen Rogers, plastic isn’t just in our bloodstreams, it adheres to our internal organs. It can contain heavy metals that can cause cancer and other diseases.
“The Planet vs. Plastics campaign is a call to arms, a demand that we act now to end the scourge of plastics and safeguard the health of every living being upon our planet,” challenged Rogers.
Our households don’t just consume vast quantities of single-use bottles, and single-use plastic bags (well, Colorado is in a campaign to curb that, but plastic bags are “alive and well” across other states and the world) and we discard them to remain forever in the environment. You see, plastic never degrades.
Most plastic trash does eventually find its way into the oceans, becoming what has been called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” There are five massive areas of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, one of the largest is between Hawaii and California. But they are not floating islands in the traditional sense. Instead, the garage areas are composed of tiny plastic bits that linger unseen beneath the surface, ranging in size from a few square inches to barely visible specks, all sloshing around together. Fish and sea animals consume them, and they get into our food cycle.
The Road Ahead
The original Earth Day began after oil drillers created massive oil spills and didn’t want to clean them up. Rivers were so polluted that they caught on fire (the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire). The air over cities like Denver was covered in toxic brown clouds that made it hard to breathe. Environmentalists such as Rachel Carson pointed out the impacts of pesticides on both animals and farm workers in books such as her ground-breaking 1962 book “Silent Spring”.
Back then, activists began to work on these various environmental concerns, but individually. No one at the time was thinking of these things as having anything to do with each other — as a multi-pronged assault on the environment of this planet that we all call home.
That was before we began to see the impacts of environmental degradation, species die-off, rising temperatures, extreme and violent weather, and the global instability of climate refugees.
It might be easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of environmental challenges we face, but on the local level, there are some things we ordinary people can do. Here are three simple things to support the planet, instead of plastic:
- Begin to use reusable water bottles – Salida now has one water bottle refilling site near the Arkansas River, and it appears that this summer a second one will be added.
- Switch to non-plastic products — all toys don’t need to be plastic, and all products don’t need to be enveloped in plastic.
- Practice personal environmental leadership – speak up, and remind those around you that plastic is here forever. Wouldn’t we all like the planet to be around and livable too?
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