Do you want Fish or Plastic

This has been a serious concern lately, and it is no wonder, since it is known that by 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish. That is no news. We have known this since ages. By now, we have garbage patches in the ocean known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage patch, collectively known as the Great Pacific Garbage aka GGP.

We have took the time to give them a name, but we haven't spent even that much effort to get rid of them. These patches are floating between California and Japan in a circle riding on the backs of the currents, poisoning the Ocean's natural habitats. 

 

We strife that we are the most advanced species that have ever walked this Earth. We are the first to walk the moon, the first to explore molecular biology, expand the world of medicine to the point where very few things can come out fatally. For us. 

But not for our surroundings. 44% of all seabird species, 22% of cetaceans, all of the turtle species and a great number of fish species were found with plastic waste within or around their bodies. While we fought for a greater future we forgot to protect what we already had and polluted our waters so much... The future we fought so hard for is might be even non-existent. It is not just the fish that are affected by this man made poison. We poison ourselves too: Plastic break downs to microplastics that are smaller than a grain of sand, and are present in the meat of the fish we eat. And obviously plastic takes a long time to degrade. Just to give you an idea: A plastic cup is the fastest to degrade, it takes it 50 years. That is more than half of a human's lifespan. Meanwhile a fishing line can take up to 600 years to degrade which would take about roughly 20 generations to disappear. But that is not even complete decomposition. It just breaks down to smaller and smaller particles. Every plastic ever made is still out there, somewhere, floating around... or in a landfill. But it is around and will be around long after we are all gone. 

So I have had this question in my mind: how are we letting this happen? At first I thought that maybe there were no alternatives to plastic. We just simply cannot use anything that has the same characteristics. That is however cannot be further away from the truth. So why exactly are we still using petroleum based plastics when there are countless other possibilities to this deathly material? And we use it a lot: about 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed each year world wide. That is 1 million plastic bags a minute. AND THOSE ARE JUST THE BAGS. But we package everything in plastic: little ziplock bags in the freezer, our processed foods package, plastic fresh foil to keep our leftovers fresh in the fridge... There were some minor steps to discourage people from using at least single use plastic bags, but if you ask me, 15 cents for a plastic bag won't stop anyone from buying one.

I believe it is important that people are educated about this matter. I think most people still use plastic bags because they are not aware of the consequences. In one plastic bag, there is enough petroleum to drive a car 11 metres. That doesn't seem much, but if we think about that 1 million are used per minute, it quickly adds up. 11000 km-s... that is how much we could go per minute with all those plastics... and what is even more disturbing is that an average plastic bag is usually used for no longer than 12 minutes. Seems like an awfully short time to then float around for another 1000 years....

But what about plastic bottles? We use 1 million bottles a minute. Coca Cola alone produces 1 billion bottles a year. The data from several researches show that this number can increase by 20% by 2021. And it takes 450 years for a bottle to break down to smaller particles. If you are recycling that is a big help but still not good enough: only 7% of recycled bottles are part of the production of new bottles. Mainly because companies seem to think that using 100% recycled bottles would put us off from purchasing their products because the bottles are not crystal clear. We are back to the consumer problems aren't we... Personally I would much rather purchase a cloudy bottle if I know that thanks to this the environment stayed clear of new plastic waste.

But there is also one small problem: Plastic can only be recycled 7-9 times before its fibres are so short it is no longer recyclable... paper can be recycled about 4-6 times before facing the same problem, but at least it is biodegradable. Aluminium, Steel and Glass however can be recycled endlessly therefore making a way better tribute to a cleaner environment than plastic ever could. 

So here still lies the question: why haven't we switched from petroleum based plastics when we have so many other options. No matter how much research I have done on the matter, most articles even if mention this question, at the end - will never answer. There are some theories but no concrete answers. 

My personal theory is that we walk around as mindless consumers. We buy anything without really researching it. 

Lately a No-Waste lifestyle has came to popularity, and every person who tried it realised that we would have to give up processed foods to live like that. And in a modern human's life, that is part of everyday life. As an European, it has not affected me as it has the Americans, since I can just buy things without bags: like veggies and fruits... but the butcher still puts the meat I buy in DOUBLE plastic bags, so it won't leak... and I still pick up after the dog with a plastic bag. But here is the catch: the bags that we pick up dog shit with are more likely be made from recycled plastic or bio-degradeable plastic than anything else. Same goes for garbage bags. 

And that brings us to another matter: we like things bagged because we are afraid of germs. We like to keep things clean and when something comes in a sealed plastic wrapper we fool ourselves into thinking it is clean and has never been touched. Which is obviously untrue, and sometimes factories are more disgusting that we would like to imagine. And you know what else is surprising? Rwanda has banned any non-bio-degradeable plastics in the early 2010s. Which lead to a black market of plastic bags, which honestly disappoints me.

Change won't come easily. But if from now on none of us would go grocery shopping without a fabric bag to carry it home, the world would take a huge leap forward. Even if you still buy that pre-packaged cheese, that pre-packaged yogurt, or that pre-packaged bag of crackers. But maybe we can take it a step forward if we stop using extra straws at Starbucks,  or just say no when the cashier offers you to put your items in a bag at H&M. You are going to take them out of the bag as soon as you have the chance anyways. One person cannot change the world, and we can't all live the no-waste lifestyle, since it is very extreme - at least not yet, not with our current habits - but if we just made a little effort : 7 billion little efforts would affect the planet so much it would be visually noticeable. There are so many of us, we could do so many great things?

So why are we still circling downward into this sad future? Why do we plan to fix when we can focus on prevention?