Single-Use Plastics Must be Banned to Help Save The Environment
Plastic has many beneficial uses that help make life better, healthier, and safer. However, it is time to move beyond single-use plastic.
The world, a vast oasis filled with beauty and wonder, captivated yet nearly shattered by humans. Nature teaches us as individuals that you are not perfect, and that is beautiful. Nature displays incredible diversity, from the rocks on the ground to the tallest trees. We never go into nature and describe a tree as fat, we describe it as beautiful and strong. Nature reminds everyone to appreciate the life they are given. Life is short, and as you walk through a forest and step over a fallen tree or a dead plant, you realize that you value your life more, value the present moment, and experience joy to be alive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He believed in the essential unity of all creation. The unity between man and the world. One of Emerson’s most insightful quotes is one so simple yet at the same time deeply describes the meaning of beauty.
“the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves.”
We as humans ignore and key factor to the beauty of nature, and that is what the environment does for us. We are too quick to just base beauty on the observations of an unfolding flower or the vast sea. Nature is alive, it grows, moves, reproduces. It is truly beautiful and gives us so many daily necessities and pleasures, but without recognition of the harmful impacts we will no longer have a place to stand, close our eyes, breathe, and truly be at peace.
The Crying Indian was a public service advertisement for the anti-litter organization, Keep America Beautiful. This was an advertisement of a Native American man devastated to see the destruction of the earth’s natural beauty caused by pollution and litter. Iron Eyes Cody, the actor who played the Native American, paddles a canoe down a very peaceful and tranquil river. The advertisement begins to take a turn for the worse as the river begins to increasingly become more and more polluted. As he observes the polluted land, a passenger in a vehicle throws a bag of garbage at his feet. The camera then pans up to his face as a single tear descends down. Their mission is to increase the responsibility all citizens must take toward improving the environment. This campaign was the front runner toward shifting the responsibility from the companies to the consumers.
This shift focuses on what the consumers are doing wrong with the products they purchase. What companies are finding through the “Supplier Sustainability Assessments” is that the main environmental impact comes from the disposal of plastics rather than the production and distribution.
The banning of single-use plastics has already been adopted by many cities around the world, but this ban needs to be put in place in every city with a plan for the mismanaged waste disposal. Single-use plastics include plastic bags, straws, coffee stirrers, bottles and most food packaging. The worlds manufacturers produce close to 300 million tons of plastic every year, most of which is unable to be recycled. Petroleum based plastic is unable to decompose into a natural substance. It instead breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces and as time goes by, these pieces find their way into the ocean and eventually into one of our most predominant food sources.
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself.”
— Rachel Carson, Marine Biologist
Due to the enormous amount of plastic finding its way to the ocean, it is projected that in a few years, there will be a pound of plastic for every three pounds of fish in the sea.
Plastic is the most abundant component of trash in the ocean, with single-use plastic products as one of the most troublesome sources of this ocean garbage.
The individuals and organisations against the banning of plastics are in no way against saving the environment. However, they are against the amount covered in legislative bans particularly with the widespread ban of disposable plastic straws. In order to have bans in place, legislation must include clauses that mandate keeping a certain amount of plastic straws in the facility to accommodate for those with disabilities. In contrast to this viewpoint, I believe all straws should be banned and alternative solutions must be implemented to help those who have disabilities and rely on straws.
The long-term solution to reducing the amount of plastic in the ocean and environment is transforming the role plastic plays in the world. By banning single use plastics, we transform the role and simultaneously join the global shift of halting the use of materials destroying out planet. There are many steps that must first be implemented before banning plastics. Governments must finance more development and research of alternative materials, as well as raise awareness among consumers. Once these are completed the world will be one step closer to returning to the true beauty it was born with.
Matt Wilkins, a postdoctoral researcher at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Science Outreach, beautifully describes three specific ways to reducing the amount of plastic and increasing the responsible use of plastic. The first step he informs his audience of is to reject the lie that the problem is wasteful consumers. The real problem is single-use plastics, the very idea of producing plastics that we only use for a short duration of time.
The next step is to think bigger. Switch from reducing the use and waste of plastic in small increments to zero waste, ensuring that nearly everything is reused, recycled or composted. Non-recyclable single-use plastics hinder us from implementing zero waste, making the bans on these plastics ever so important.
This leads into his third step of communicating the problem with your friends, family, and government officials. It is imperative to call or write to federal representatives to support bans and billings as well as give feedback and solutions. Clean oceans, rivers, and cities are in our future if everyone does their part and contributes to something bigger than we can imagine.
