2. Plastics and Pollution

Ben Addelman and Ziya Tong’s Plastic People is an exposé of the disastrous consequences of plastic pollution.

The development of plastic allowed an unprecedented level of material abundance, health and cleanliness alongside unlimited capitalist consumption (Susan Freinkel). Plastic, created from “molecules never before seen under the sun,” now pollutes the sea, causing the Great Garbage Patch, filling bird carcasses and infiltrating our bloodstream. 

With over 1.5 billion plastic bottles bought around the planet daily and 2 million plastic bags used every minute (Rick Smith, Slow Death by Rubber Duck), plastic pollution has reached a scale never seen before.

400 million tonnes of plastics are created each year, almost half of which goes into single-use items. As oil demand reduces over the next few decades, petroleum companies are looking to triple plastic use and production, inevitably increasing pollution.

Plastic production contributes to global warming and creates toxic exposure problems. Crucially, “virtually every molecule of plastic ever created still exists on earth… in some stage of degradation” (Smith). Plastic, once created, doesn’t go away.

Plastic particles have been found in the clouds, in snow and rain. Particles can shed from cereal bags into your breakfast bowl, from carpet and other surfaces into dust and air, and contaminate many consumer products. 

In its infancy, plastic was broadcast through effective communication tools as a necessity to save time and money. We were led to think that recycling worked and was carried out effectively, despite evidence to the contrary. 

Fuelled by corporate, profit-driven greed, the plastic industry and chemical plants have no concern for environmental concerns. Plastic pollution has reached a point of no return, and we must act now.

Read our next blog to find out more about Microplastics…