Addicted to Plastic
How to get clean
It’s 2024 and we live in a plastic world. We buy plastic clothes in plastic bags. Our food comes wrapped in plastic, then we place it in more plastic to store it. Our kids play with plastic and so do our pets. Even our cars have plastic parts all over them. Nearly every product known to consumers has seen its manufacturing cost reduced by plastics. So, for good reason, businesses and individuals alike have become hooked on the stuff.
In 1869, John Wesley Hyatt was awarded $10,000 for inventing the first plastic as a substitute for ivory. A few decades passed and some advancements were made in the development of new plastics for different applications, without tremendous adoption. It wasn’t until World War II that plastic manufacturing really set in. During World War II plastic production in the United States increased by 300% and continued to surge post-war.
It wasn’t until late in the 20th century, when people had already been convinced of the many virtues of plastic, that concerns began to mount about the lifecycle of the material. In the 60s, it was first noted that plastic debris had made its way into the Oceans. The word plastic began to take on the connotation of something fake, cheap and brittle. In the decades that followed, as public perception of plastics declined, plastics manufacturers took on a new approach to drive public approval, but before I tell you about that, please allow me a brief digression.
Some unforeseeable setbacks unfortunately cut into my writing time this week and I had to push back the release of this and subsequent Earth Week articles. This is in part because I have a day job that takes up the majority of my time. My Substack is supported by a small, growing number of readers and I’m very grateful for those dedicated readers who regularly get all the way through my articles. I’m even more grateful to those who have subscribed to my premium content, of which I have plans to release much more. If I continue to see the number of subscribers increase, then maybe someday I may be able to afford to pour even more of my time and effort into this endeavour!
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Now, where was I? Ah yes, I was about to introduce one of the greatest cons perpetrated by corporate America, that is plastic recycling. By the 80s, it was apparent to consumers that plastic products broke down quite quickly, but that the material lasted forever in the environment. There were already recycling programs in place across much of the developed world for metals, glass bottles and paper products. Piggybacking on these initiatives, the plastics manufacturers began the largest lobbying campaign that America had yet to see, backed by the big oil companies whose byproducts were used to create the chemical compounds known as plastic.
The plastic manufacturers at first began to research whether remanufacturing their materials into new products was viable. They found that for the most part it was not even possible, though some exceptions existed. The translucent plastic used in milk jugs and the like could be melted down and reused. Quickly, they began to lobby for plastic recycling to be carried out in cities across the United States, backed by a $50-million-a-year ad campaign. Early on in the effort, the research proved that the process was not economically viable, but by then the campaign was working. The public image of plastics had swayed and people grew a newfound affinity for the space age material. So, even though only about 1% of the planned recycling plants ever opened and many of them lasted only a few years before they lost government funding, the chemical companies doubled down on their advertising. The reputation of plastics had been saved for another two decades before people really started to take notice.
In the past 30 years or so, the varieties of plastics have increased, which has made the sorting and recycling process even more challenging. Even today, it remains cheaper for companies to make new products from oil than recycled plastic waste.
Another factor that has hardly been discussed until the last decade is the health impacts of plastics. In the 90s it was discovered that chemical additives, BPA in particular, could leach out of plastics and cause health issues for people. Recently it has been discovered that micro-plastic particles are permeating our water systems. Humans and animals alike are ingesting plastics into our bodies and the full ramifications of this have still yet to be fully understood; however early studies have found links between these toxic chemicals and various health risks. So it’s time that humanity rethinks the true cost of plastic.
A thought of mine is that an economic instrument could be a part of the solution. If the cost of environmental remediation caused by plastic waste is charged to the manufacturers that produce it through taxes, this would disincentivize its use. It would also help to pay for said remediation work and incentivise the recycling process by leveling the playing field in terms of cost to manufacture recycled plastics. Manufacturers may even return to using organic materials for certain products where they are more effective than recycled plastics. The concern I have with this approach is that the increased cost of manufacturing will get passed along to the consumer and that consumer goods would see significant inflation as a result.
One of the most aggressive and most discussed methods called for by environmental NGOs, to reduce plastic waste, is to ban all single use plastics by 2030. The thought here is that these products are literally designed to go straight to the landfill after one use such as in packaging, so eliminate them. As long as the stand-in is an improvement, then this could represent a drastic reduction of new plastic waste making its way to the far reaches of our planet.
Another avenue that is being discussed is to run a massive public awareness campaign, informing people of the environmental and health impacts of plastics. This would effectively counter the disinformation campaign that plastic manufacturers ran decades ago to again tarnish the public perception of plastic.
Yet another means to the same end is to discourage consumer and commercial practices that are wasteful by design. The two biggest culprits here are planned obsolescence and fast fashion, whose effects cause vast amounts of waste. By putting in place another advertisement campaign that sheds light on these types of practices and implementing policy that limits manufacturers from using such tactics to sell products, there could be another great impact on our environment.
In all, I think I’ve just skimmed the surface of this topic, as have environmental remediation efforts only begun to skim the surface of our oceans for plastic waste. If you enjoyed this experience please leave a like. I’d personally like to know your thoughts on the efforts discussed in this article, and what you’re doing to help reduce plastic consumption, so leave a comment too.
Signing off,
André DeBattista
I agree that plastic is causing irreparable harm to our world, and taxing the production of plastic is likely the most efficient way to reduce production. I also share your concern of the tax being passed on to consumers. However, my biggest concern is that a production tax could just cause production to shift even more into developing nations with harmful labour and emissions standards. Sure, we can tax the importers of plastics - but corporations have always been able to find ways around import taxes in the name of capitalism.