May 27, 2025
If you are old enough, you may remember the first time you touched a plastic bag or miraculously discovered that the shampoo bottle could bounce off the floor and not cause a mess by breaking like a glass one would. When I was a child, the reason why plastic shopping bags caught my interest was that their texture was so different from the familiar paper ones. Little did I realize that plastic would take over food packaging, and then take over the ocean, rivers and our bodies, including our brains. Plastics are indestructible, and our babies are being born pre-polluted. Microplastic bioaccumulation in the human placenta has been linked to premature births. “Plastic is an essential piece of the unravelling of our human existence,” says professor of paediatrics Leo Trasande in The Plastic Crisis: A Health and Environmental Emergency, a podcast conversation with three highly knowledgeable people who know what plastics are doing to our world. https://tinyurl.com/plastics-conversation An alarming statement, and the unravelling includes climate/biodiversity careening towards chaos because of the chemicals and fossil fuels that go into plastics. Consider that fewer than 20% of these chemicals have been investigated to understand their health implications. During The Big Plastic Count (https://thebigplasticcount.com), an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of plastic were thrown away in the UK in one week in March 2024. The most widely discarded were soft plastic from snacks and from fresh fruit and vegetables. Canada’s not doing any better. Want to give up single-use plastics in your life for a month? An interesting and frustrating story emerges. Here is what happened to one journalist who tried it: https://tinyurl.com/cut-out-plastics In many cases there appears to be currently no easy alternative. A partial solution is for governments to tax plastics and put into legislation the tools to steer an addicted public away from buying plastic-shrouded goods. Almost two decades ago a small island in the Caribbean was forced to give up glass bottles for plastic ones if they were to continue to drink a favourite beverage. People on the island were upset and tried get the government to refuse to accept the plastic bottles; the glass ones, which could be returned and a deposit refunded, could be used countless times—and most importantly they didn’t contribute to waste, which as you can imagine is a problem on an island. These local citizens didn’t succeed, in part because the government did not encourage public discussion. It was determined that it was a financially unacceptable burden on the beverage industry to clean and refill the glass bottles. Profit is everything, and who cares where the plastic bottles end up? Most plastic is made from oil, and the oil industry has little incentive to clean up after itself. To placate the public’s sense of outrage, a virtually symbolic paltry fine is imposed by governments hell bent on not disturbing the oil companies’ lobbying machinery, which ultimately funds political campaigns. Plastic waste ranging from toothpaste tubes to deodorant containers is exported to Java, Indonesia, to name just one country, where bakeries and street
May 8, 2025
“Oh human misery, how many things you must serve for money.” —Leonardo da Vinci It is an incredible sketch that Leonardo da Vinci drew between 1506 and 1512: bottles, rakes, lanterns, bagpipes, shears as well as other discarded goods have rained down on the Earth. He called it A cloudburst of material possessions. https://tinyurl.com/vinci-consumption Perhaps it is the first artistic rendering of wasteful consumption. Of course, overconsumption has vastly accelerated since the 16th century, and now oil-derived plastics are found in our bodies and in the ocean. Plastics in the ocean will soon outweigh all the fish. The first thing that can be accomplished to put an end to this carnage is to find and prosecute the largest petrochemical companies responsible for the enormous destruction they have negligently inflicted upon the world. Later this month an entire article will be dedicated to the bane of plastics, but for now let’s meet some of the people and organizations that are making a difference around the world, often in small towns or in the countryside. Many individuals have been hugely successful in tenaciously confronting local corruption in corporations and governments large and small. Issues pertaining to wildlife, climate breakdown and energy, mining pollution and disenfranchisement of local populations, ocean and freshwater zones as well as environmental justice have long been focal points for campaigns. Of course people like naturalist David Attenborough https://tinyurl.com/naturalist-attenborough Ecologist and Indigenous rights campaigner from India, S. Faizi https://tinyurl.com/ecologist-Faiziand Canada’s David Suzuki have long inspired actions that go on to galvanize whole communities to successfully demand legislation or litigation to protect ecologically pristine areas and support communities’ pollution-free rights against rampant greed. A classic example of how the public finds the courage to act was epitomized in the film Erin Brockovich. The film portrays a woman who stops a gas and electric company from continuing to flout regulations that were meant to stop groundwater contamination in Hinkley, California 30-plus years ago. The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1989 by Richard and Rhoda Goldman, who felt the strong need to give a public voice to and thus multiply the viability for “ordinary” people to take action to confront groups that desecrate Nature. “The Prize recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk. The Goldman Prize views ‘grassroots’ leaders as those involved in local efforts, where positive change is created through community or citizen participation. Through recognizing these individual leaders, the Prize seeks to inspire other ordinary people to take extraordinary actions to protect the natural world.” https://www.goldmanprize.org/ The 2025 prizes were awarded this Earth Week to winners from six corners of the planet. These remarkable people through years of painstaking work defied the largest companies in order to achieve justice. Laurene Allen from New Hampshire spearheaded the closure of the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant that had caused “20 years of rampant air, soil, and water pollution.” Besjana Guri and Olsi Nika of Albania received the prize for stopping the building of a hydroelectric dam on one
