Finally we have a report that we’ve all been waiting for! GreenPeace recently released a high-profile report that demonstrates how recycling in the US is not working. Many of you who are familiar with recycling and its issues might be tempted to say “we’ve know this, there’s nothing new here.” And there is. GreenPeace for the first time is casting light on what happens to items we all think is recyclable. Bottomline is in the US the only plastics that are even likely to get recycled are number 1 and number 2 types. The ones that say #3 on them, or the ones that are 5s (yogurt containers) or the 6s (polystyrene) and 7s (mixed plastic types — the black take-out food containers) are not recyclable nor recycled in the US. …

Surely the 2020 Super Bowl gave us something to cheer about: A true win against plastic pollution and reducing the generation of single-use plastic waste! Vendors were finally able to drastically reduce plastic waste from single-use plastic cups for beer and other drinks. That’s keeping tons of plastic waste out of the waste stream thus from potentially reaching the environment or Ocean.

Before we start celebrating: Can we pause and ask whether replacing single-use plastic with single-use aluminum is truly a “solution”?

Top 6reasons to avoid bottled water are global in nature. Especially in the developed world — US and European Countries — there are many alternatives, mostly even better than bottled water. Choosing to be part of the solution to resolve plastic pollution and reduce carbon emissions while increasing access to drinkable water is a simple objective. It all comes to our choices.

Among the top reasons to avoid bottled water:

1–1 million bottles a minute and counting

No matter how you look at this — it’s not sustainable. 60 million bottles per hour… 1.4billion a day!

Only 9% of these “highly recyclable bottles” have been recycled. They are mostly not even REcycled, but DOWNcycled. …

You should be asking questions.

Greta is a 16 year old girl who deeply cares about her environment and the planet. Her extreme measures to take action on saving the planet became reason to describe her with her “diagnosis” of being on the spectrum, rather than just a caring 16 year old. Too much caring and sincerely believing that solutions already exist, setting a high bar for humanity to do the right thing — is not something adults in the room could handle without a label.

Greta is the girl who turned the tables in a single 3 minute speech. She made a room full of white male decision makers who don’t handle discomfort well, very uncomfortable. She challenged the people who are used to hiding behind the rules of their own game, to another game. She went very public, she went full force, and she took no BS from anybody. She couldn’t be intimidated, bullied, nor stopped. Most of us were in awe breathless, applauding — and many others were, well, just plain bothered by her, and her words. …

Based on an estimate from the Earth Policy Institute the world uses 2 million plastic bags per minute. Bags are used an average of 12 minutes before being tossed into a bin where they might end up in the environment, or best case, in a landfill going through a 100 year degradation process. …

(This is part of the series for 7 Main Areas of Focus to Transform the Plastic Crisis)

Measuring is a category of it’s own. It applies to everything across the board. What you can measure you can change.

While working on the UN Report on effectiveness of Voluntary Commitments — there were over 580 commitments that we looked into and almost all of them had one thing in common: there were no public announcements or metrics available to see if there had been any progress with any of the efforts. As a result, after all the UN, and independent, commitments made — we’re all still creating more plastic waste than we can handle and much of it is still ending up in the ocean. …

(This is part of the series for 7 Main Areas of Focus to Transform the Plastic Crisis)

Whether on land, near shore, open ocean or seabed the world has a LOT of plastic waste that it needs to deal with that is already here. Given this situation, there is much room to develop technologies to capture them to turn them into a resource while cleaning up the environment. From mining landfills to beach-cleanups and investing in nearshore solutions to picking up the waste at the depths all of it is required. …

(This is part of the series for 7 Main Areas of Focus to Transform the Plastic Crisis)

This is a difficult topic to discuss as it doesn’t win any popularity contests on any side of the plastics view. And yet the more the plastic pollution issue is discussed the more these technologies are developed and become part of the discussion.

First, the premise is that every plastic product that exists today, and those that will be created in the next few years until a feasible, viable, and sustainable alternative is found will have an “end-of-life” eventually. Whether it is in 1 year, 5 years or 10, there will be an end of it’s usefulness. …