The Problem with Plastic

 

The problem with plastic is that in many ways it's amazing stuff. Plastic is a very versatile and useful material that can be made into so many forms. This means that we've started using it for all sorts of things and it's everywhere. Unfortunately it's also toxic and long lasting. Also, plastic is made from fossil fuels, so its production is a serious source of GHG emissions.

Plastic is Extremely Harmful

Whilst acknowledging that plastics have conveyed great benefits to humanity and made possible some of the most significant advances of modern civilisation a report in the Annals of Global Health earlier this year went on to say is now clear that plastics are also responsible for significant harms to human health, the economy, and the earth’s environment.

The report continues:

These harms occur at every stage of the plastic life cycle, from extraction of the coal, oil, and gas that are its main feedstocks through to ultimate disposal into the environment. The extent of these harms not been systematically assessed, their magnitude not fully quantified, and their economic costs not comprehensively counted.

On top of this plastic manufacture has grown at an alarming rate and only a small proportion of plastic is recycled after use. Further on the report states: 

Plastics and plastic-associated chemicals are responsible for widespread pollution. They contaminate aquatic (marine and freshwater), terrestrial, and atmospheric environments globally. The ocean is the ultimate destination for much plastic, and plastics are found throughout the ocean, including coastal regions, the sea surface, the deep sea, and polar sea ice. Many plastics appear to resist breakdown in the ocean and could persist in the global environment for decades. 

Marine plastic pollution endangers the ocean ecosystems upon which all humanity depends for food, oxygen, livelihood, and well-being. 

Human Health Findings: Coal miners, oil workers and gas field workers who extract fossil carbon feedstocks for plastic production suffer increased mortality . . . 

During use and also in disposal, plastics release toxic chemicals including additives and residual monomers into the environment and into people . . .   . . . Infants in the womb and young children are two populations at particularly high risk of plastic-related health effects. 

Conclusions: It is now clear that current patterns of plastic production, use, and disposal are not sustainable and are responsible for significant harms to human health, the environment, and the economy as well as for deep societal injustices. The main driver of these worsening harms is an almost exponential and still accelerating increase in global plastic production. Plastics’ harms are further magnified by low rates of recovery and recycling and by the long persistence of plastic waste in the environment.

The Commission "supports urgent adoption by the world’s nations of a strong and comprehensive Global Plastics Treaty . . .

International measures such as a Global Plastics Treaty are needed to curb plastic production and pollution, because the harms to human health and the environment caused by plastics, plastic-associated chemicals and plastic waste transcend national boundaries, are planetary in their scale, and have disproportionate impacts on the health and well-being of people in the world’s poorest nations.

The above are brief extracts from the report. If you would like to know more I recommend reading it. It's easy to understand, but I don't want to make this post longer than necessary.

Steps to Freedom from Plastic

So you might be wondering what you can do while we wait for a global plastics treaty to be adopted.

 First of all, please don't feel you need to purge your life of all plastic. If you own useful plastic items throwing them away is probably the worst thing you could do for the environment. Swamping charity shops with unwanted plastic is probably not a great idea either. 

Cut Back Where Possible

The most important thing to do is to cut down on as much unnecessary, single use plastic as possible. Disposable single use plastic is the biggest problem. While it would be good to find sustainable alternatives to blister packs for tablets and medical syringes, they are currently necessary for health and hygiene purposes. What ordinary individuals need to work if on, if possible, is cutting down on water and other drinks in disposable plastic bottles, likewise single use bottles for toiletries and cleaning products. 

First steps to cutting single use plastic from our lives could include:

Refusing single use plastic bags and take your own reusable bag instead.

Choosing drinks in glass bottles or metal cans and buying at least some milk in glass bottles from your milkman. Milk and More now sell plant milks in glass bottles too, if that's your preference. If you have a local, independent dairy near you they might do so as well.

Finding a local refill shop where you can refill our existing plastic bottles with toiletries and cleaning fluids. If you don't have one near to you consider buying 5 litre containers of products from companies such as Suma, Faith in Nature and Bio D, which are also environmentally friendly. I used to visit a refill store regularly when I lived in Godalming, but I haven't found one near me in the Hamble Valley yet, so I buy in bulk from Ethical Superstore. Although my house is fairly small there is room for the large containers in my garage. It would be harder to do without suitable storage space. If I take the 5 litre containers back to the refill store in Godalming they will give them back to be reused. They're also useful for storing excess water from my water but when it's raining.

If you like to take a bottle of water out and about then more than once in a blue moon it's better to take it in a reusable water bottle. BPA free plastic is safer than some plastics and is more lightweight than a stainless steel bottle. That sort of bottle is fine for occasional use, but if you use one on a regular basis then there could be health benefits to choosing one made from stainless steel. Reusable, portable coffee cups are also available.

I'll go into more detail about some of these suggestions in later posts.

The Future is in Our Hands

Wind farm on Kefalonia
(Author's own photo)

So how do we stop pumping out greenhouse gases? How can we try to keep the global climate habitable so that Earth continues to be a place where human beings and most of the existing wildlife can live and thrive?

Renewable Energy is the Future

We have to switch from fossil fuels and transition to clean, renewable energy. We've started to do that in the UK and many other countries are doing so too.

Most of us here in the UK have lifestyles which depend on fossil fuels, so if they suddenly became scarce or unaffordable most of us would struggle. 

Speeding up renewable energy production could happen quickly if the government didn't restrict new onshore wind farms and solar energy.  If ageing wind farms are modernised they can produce much more energy more efficiently. As I write Scottish Power has started to dismantle 26 wind turbines which have been in place since 1995 and plan to replace them with 14 larger, more modern wind turbines which are expected to produce five times as much energy by 2025.

Governments must do more and faster

We need a government which will encourage the construction of the cheapest forms of renewable energy which it is possible to put into place as quickly as possible. The batteries to store renewable energy when the wind stops blowing or the sun doesn't shine now exist, and they will improve as research and development progress.  If we still need nuclear energy as back up then that could continue, but nuclear plants takes much more time and money to build and there are more safety aspects to consider and put into place.

Voters and Consumers have Influence

As voters we can elect candidates for positions in local and national government who are committed to a renewable future, a healthy environment and keeping global temperatures as comfortable as possible. These aspirations aren't compatible with a Neo Capitalist economic policy. We need business leaders to care more about the people they affect and the environment those people live in rather than believing that making as much profit as possible is the only thing that matters.

As consumers we can choose the most sustainable options we can afford whether we're shopping for food or clothes, or deciding which energy supplier to use, where to go on holiday or which car to buy.

A New Way of Thinking is Needed

It's not all about renewable energy. We need sustainable farming practices too. We also need to let mature trees live unless they are a real danger, leave the grass in part of our gardens and wider community to grow long, avoid using peat and generally take care of local wildlife. Losing so many of our wild flowers, insects. wild birds and other animals isn't just a shame, it's not helping us to tackle climate change either. Nature is our ally and we need to find out how to work with it instead of against it.

Last but not least we need to consider how much of anything we really need. Excess consumption is a serious problem not only responsible for large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, but also for the destruction of nature. Even buying more cheap things than we really need creates unnecessary harm, but the richer someone is, the easier it might be for them to buy more than they need. There's a lot to be said for learning to be satisfied with enough and not succumbing to the allure of clever marketing or peer pressure. 

Our Carbon Handprints Matter

Every small change we can make to reduce our GHG emissions will make a difference. These little things add up and become what is being called our Carbon Handprint. Carbon Handprint is an idea to help people realise that no contribution is too small. Anybody can make a difference to the environment, and the world will be a better place if we all try to do our bit.

We're Better Together

Whatever we do, most of us are likely to find it better to belong to a group of likeminded people who can encourage and inspire us, and whom we can encourage and inspire in return. Find out what's happening near you and if you can't find anything perhaps you can find a few people who want to start a group with you. Groups of local people will find it easier to influence what happens in their community too.

Global Warming in a Nutshell

An illustration of how greenhouse gases warm the Earth
(source unknown)

Some basic facts about Global Warming, the phenomenon causing Climate Change:

Global Warming has come about  because human beings have been pumping more and more Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. People burning fossil fuels like gas, coal, oil, diesel and petrol have been responsible for the increase in GHGs, which scientists tell us has been happening since the Industrial Revolution.

The Purpose of Greenhouse Gases

The temperature of the planet we live on is determined by the balance between the energy from the Sun and how much of that energy is lost into Space. The remaining energy is absorbed by both the land and ocean.

This process warms up both the land and the seas, which then radiate their acquired warmth as long-wave infrared or ‘heat’ radiation. This effect has been measured in the atmosphere and can be reproduced time and time again in the laboratory. We need this greenhouse effect because without it, the Earth would be at least 35 ° Celsius colder, making the average temperature in the tropics about -10 ° C. 

So, in a nutshell, without greenhouse gases the Earth would be too cold for very much to live on, polar bears would live in the tropics and the rest of the planet would be largely uninhabitable. However, you can have too much of a good thing.

Too Much Carbon in the Atmosphere

As snow falls, it is light and fluffy and contains a lot of air. When this snow is slowly compacted to form ice, some of this air is trapped. By extracting these air bubbles trapped in the ancient ice, scientists can measure the percentage of GHGs that were present in the past atmosphere.

Scientists have drilled over two miles down into both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which has enabled them to reconstruct the amount of GHGs that have been generated in the atmosphere over the last half a million years. Tests on these ice cores reveal that levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they have been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures have stayed fairly constant over that time as well, until recently.

What Is Causing Global Warming?

Global Warming has come about because human beings have been pumping more and more Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. People burning fossil fuels like gas, coal, oil, diesel and petrol have been responsible for the increase in GHGs, which scientists tell us has been happening since the Industrial Revolution

Gases in the Earth's atmosphere such as water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide are known as greenhouse gases (GHGs) because they warm the Earth's atmosphere by absorbing some of the long-wave radiation from the sun. 

One of the ways in which we know that atmospheric CO2 is important in controlling global climate is through the study of what the Earth's climate has been like in the past. Evidence for past variations in greenhouse gases and temperatures come from ice cores drilled in both Antarctica and Greenland.

For more than 200 years, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution people in Europe have been burning fossil fuels like oil, coal which were deposited hundreds of millions years ago. Burning these  releases the carbon back into the atmosphere as CO2 and methane (CH4), increasing the ‘greenhouse effect’ and raising the the Earth's temperature.

In effect we are burning fossilised sunlight and this has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). This human activity is increasing the greenhouse effect and warming the Earth more than is desirable. So too much carbon in our atmosphere is causing the overall temperature of our planet to rise. If this keeps happening we could end up as toast! 

In the last century industrialisation has grown all over the world so that more and more fossil fuels are being burned to keep up with the demand for production. Trees and plants absorb some of the CO2 in the atmosphere, so the clearing of land for agriculture, industry, house building and other human activities has also increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.

If you want to learn more about Global Warming and Climate Change the NASA website explains it well here.