Editorial: Plastic self-destruction

People who deny that humans are wreaking havoc on the planet’s life-support systems astound me. When confronted with the obvious damage we’re doing to the biosphere — from climate change to water and air pollution to swirling plastic patches in the oceans — some dismiss the reality or employ logical fallacies to discredit the messengers.

It’s one thing to argue over solutions, but to reject the need for them is suicidal. And to claim people can’t talk about fossil fuels and climate change because they use fossil fuel–derived products, such as plastic keyboards, is nonsensical.

There’s no denying that oil, coal and gas are tremendously useful. They hold super-concentrated energy from the sun and are used to make a variety of products, from medicines to lubricants to plastics. The problems aren’t the resources but our profligate use of them. Using them more wisely is a start. In many cases, we also have alternatives.

Burning oil, coal and gas to propel inefficient automobiles illustrates the problem. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, about 14 to 30 per cent of a gasoline-powered car’s fuel is used to propel the vehicle. That energy is mostly moving a tonne of car, which often holds one 80-kilogram person. That’s a lot of fuel and energy to transport one or two people.

Most plastics are also made from oil — which presents another set of problems. Manufacturers create far more plastic products than necessary. Many items don’t serve much purpose beyond making money. Sometimes the packaging is worth more than the contents.

It’s so bad that researchers from Australia’s University of Tasmania and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds recently found 18 tonnes of plastic garbage — 239 items per square metre — scattered across a small South Pacific island 5,000 kilometres from the nearest human occupation. Scientists have also found massive, swirling patches of plastic in the North and South Pacific oceans, each holding around 400,000 plastic particles per square kilometre.

As with fossil fuels, the first step to addressing the problem is to substantially reduce plastics usage. There are also alternatives. To begin, we should recycle everything already produced. Plastics can also be made from renewable resources, such as hemp, or any fast-growing plant that contains cellulose. In fact, plastics were once commonly made from animal products such as horn and tusks, but when those became expensive, people started using plants, switching to oil products when that became more profitable.

We can and must cut down on fossil fuels and plastics. We also have alternatives, and ways to prevent plastics from ending up in the oceans. Those who look away and pretend we don’t have a problem are only slowing solutions and accelerating our self-destruction.

David Suzuki