Planetary Health News | Climate Change | Health of People and Planet
Plastics are a planetary health crisis – can you do anything about it?
Finally, last week, global leaders decided to take collective action on plastic waste. A resolution, agreed at the UN’s Environment Assembly, calls for a plastics treaty to be negotiated over the next two years.
Plastic is a planetary health crisis. Seven billion of the estimated 9.2 billion tonnes of plastics produced between 1950 and 2017 are now waste. About 75 percent of that waste is either deposited in landfills or accumulating on land and in the sea.
There’s a gigantic island of trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, measuring 600,000 square miles and weighing in at 80,000 tons. That’s an area four times the size of Malaysia. It holds over 1.8 trillion plastic waste pieces.
And yet, despite this horrific and freely available data and information we remain utterly hooked on plastic. Our groceries are wrapped in it and then unthinkingly put into a plastic bag when we buy them. Our online orders come packed in huge quantities of bubble wrap and tape. Our household appliances, cars, computers, furniture, clothes, coffee cups, “paper” plates and eating utensils are made of it.
In some ways, because of its versatility, it is the most amazing invention. The fact that it is all around us as consumers is testament to its success. But not only is it around us, it is inside us, through what we eat, through the toxic plastic fume laden air that many of us breathe, through the microplastics floating in our rivers and oceans.
Read more here.
Plastic is a planetary health crisis. Seven billion of the estimated 9.2 billion tonnes of plastics produced between 1950 and 2017 are now waste. About 75 percent of that waste is either deposited in landfills or accumulating on land and in the sea.
There’s a gigantic island of trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, measuring 600,000 square miles and weighing in at 80,000 tons. That’s an area four times the size of Malaysia. It holds over 1.8 trillion plastic waste pieces.
And yet, despite this horrific and freely available data and information we remain utterly hooked on plastic. Our groceries are wrapped in it and then unthinkingly put into a plastic bag when we buy them. Our online orders come packed in huge quantities of bubble wrap and tape. Our household appliances, cars, computers, furniture, clothes, coffee cups, “paper” plates and eating utensils are made of it.
In some ways, because of its versatility, it is the most amazing invention. The fact that it is all around us as consumers is testament to its success. But not only is it around us, it is inside us, through what we eat, through the toxic plastic fume laden air that many of us breathe, through the microplastics floating in our rivers and oceans.
Read more here.
