Apr 18th, 2023 by Admin

Beyond Recycling : Why We Need Comprehensive Solutions to Tackle Plastic Pollution

Lies are only worse when you are unaware that they are lies. Plastic pollution is a major issue for the earth. The truth is that we could all do more to lessen our plastic footprints.  

Wasteful consumers aren’t solely responsible and changing individual habits alone won’t fix the problem. 

Individual practices are intended to fix the plastic problem, and wasteful customers are blamed. 

Plastic recycling is like pounding a nail into a skyscraper to keep it from toppling. When you find a location to do it, your efforts are rewarded.  

Although your approach is completely inadequate, it diverts attention away from the underlying reason the building fell in the first place.  

One of the major issues with single-use plastics is that it is quite risky to utilize technology in this manner, which means that the act of making goods like shopping bags, which we use for an average of 12 minutes but may persist in the environment for half a millennium, is extremely dangerous.  

More recycling will not address the issue of single-use plastic manufacture, which should have been avoided in the first place. 

Plastics biodegrade slowly, if at all, and pose many risks to animals through entanglement and eating, according to scientists. 

Most recent findings emphasize the threats posed by harmful chemical absorption in water and synthetic scents that resemble the natural diet of some species. 

Experts have recently established that humans may be consuming plastics through fish. If humans are to blame, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by 2050. How can we possibly fail to respond? The short answer is that it is difficult. 

Keep America Beautiful is a non-profit organization, which was found in the 1950s by Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Phillip Morris, and others. 

The objective of this organization was to provide public education and promote environmental care. Via its association with the Ad Council, they introduced the term “litterbug” into the American language because of their marketing efforts against careless persons. 

Two decades later, the “Crying Indian” Commercial became a driving force in the US environmental movement. The advertisement depicts a Native American guy kayaking near a motorway where a vehicle has strewn rubbish.  

The camera captures a picture of a tear streaming down a man’s cheek. Since they tapped into a common national shame for Native American oppression, PSAs became potent symbols of change.  

The Ad Council and Keep America Beautiful created “I Want to Be Recycled” to urge customers to imagine shampoo bottles and boxes being recycled, beginning with the material collection and processing and ending with remolding. 

Although appearing to be charitable, these attempts mask the true issue, which is companies’ role in destroying the environment.  

Keep America Beautiful, according to Heather Rogers’ book, is the first corporate greenwashing front, since it turns public attention to recycling habits and deliberately opposes legislation that would expand producer responsibility for waste management. 

Vermont passed legislation prohibiting the sale of drinks in non-refillable containers in 1953. Manufacturers were ecstatic about the larger profit margins involved with selling single-use containers with their products rather than cleaning and reusing them. 

 “Keep America Beautiful”, was created that year to resist such measures. Once Vermont lawmakers let the rule lapse, single-use containers spread unabated for over 20 years. 

In 1971, Oregon approved a bottle bill that required a five-cent deposit on beverage containers. Keep America Beautiful and other industry lobbying groups have long fought bottle deposit regulations. 

Reduced plastic footprints include carrying reusable drinks and takeaway containers, avoiding bottled water or sodas at all costs, and knowing where to dump single-use plastics. 

Because most restaurants and gas stations do not have recycling facilities, we must carry recyclables to another facility that does. Yet, more plastic bottles than recyclable bottles are used to make synthetic garments and carpets. 

Various regulations have been suggested to encourage and enable recycling, including nationwide bottle deposit bills and bag fees proposed in 2009, as well as bans or opt-in rules on single-use products such as plastic straws. These initiatives would lower the projected economic potential cost of plastic trash by $8 billion (about $25 per person in the US) per year. 

Plastic bag distribution has been prohibited at checkout in several places, but preemption laws preclude municipal limits on plastic. 

Litterbugs are not to blame for the worldwide ecological crisis caused by plastic, thus making responsible plastic usage a reality demands rejecting that falsehood. Also, the legislative structure must be altered to prevent uncontrollable increases in plastic pollution. 

Discuss plastic pollution with your family and friends, contact your local legislators, and oppose preemptive restrictions on municipal plastic control. 

In an endeavor to attain zero waste, almost everything is now reused, recycled, or composted. This is a superior alternative to the present economic system since it anticipates how resources may be reused and recycled at the end of the product’s life.