Plastic Is The Problem

I am officially on a mission now: plastic has to go. No more plastic in my life unless it can be used multiple times and has some kind of recyclable option.

Plastic is an oil derivative.

Putting an end to plastic will help alleviate our reliance on oil and therefore help reduce our greenhouse gas contributions.

I know … it’s a simplistic summary to a VERY complicated situation we’ve created for ourselves.

That said, I have come to appreciate that plastics will be the most heinous and hideous reminder of our existence in the 20th and 21st century.

The abundance of plastics is resulting in the suffocation of our oceans, lakes and other water ways.

Too many plastics are clogging our landfills.

It’s time we acknowledge that most plastics – especially single-use products like cutlery, bottles and so on – are going to bring about our demise.

Therefore, I recommend we as a species decide that in order to adequately preserve our future, we need to take the following steps:

• Ban or strongly discourage the creation and availability of single-use plastic products;
• Implement regulations that will limit the carcinogenic inputs with plastics;
• Enable and permit industrial-scale incineration of plastics, with extremely tight guidelines for emissions and treatment of byproducts;
• Begin a ‘waterway preservation’ program, designed to encourage cleaning and clearing of any waterway of plastics (and other refuse);
• Tax single-use plastic products to the tune of something like $1 per plastic item in a ‘package’. If a case of bottled water consists of 24 bottles, the tax would be $25 per case (24 bottles + 1 plastic wrap cover). All funds generated would go towards a combination of cleaning, incineration and support for industries that convert packaging from plastic to something more sustainable;
• Create a refund program that will discourage disposal of plastics and encourage ‘plastic drives’; and
• Invest in sustainable packaging materials.

Of course, it’s impossible and improbable that we’d be able to see everything happen at once, but we have to start trying.

If we don’t we will destroy this planet as a result of non-degradable refuse as opposed to changes in temperature.