Once, it must have been in the 1950’s, there was some marketing man (or woman) who had the ingenious idea to use plastic mainly for throw away consumption. Ingenious, because for throw away use, your plastic industry business runs for ever.
Does anybody know who he or she was? Because today, 40% of this wonderful durable material is to throw away, or ‘single use’ as it is called objectively.
Our consumption of goods and foods has grown about 10 fold. Since the 1950’s, our plastic use has grown till more than two hunderd fold. Estimated for 2050, it will double again; it will be near one billion ton. To give you an idea: Boyan Slat’s internationally reknown Ocean Cleanup programme caught half a ton in one year. So that is 0,00000005 percent. Just as always at the end of the line in environmental issues, we will not solve it this way.
Cooperate in creating garbage?
Just as many problems, best is to prevent them. Don’t be part of the process. Don’t buy it, don’t work for it. Don’t participate in creating garbage.
Let’s work out a simple thing as tea. The teabag. Check the movie:
Not when you buy tea from brand. Then they make a big fuzz of it. Japanese people have a complete ritual for making a pot of tea, and here, the A brand offers you this rituall by creating garbage:
- You take off the cellofane, and throw it away. Garbage.
- You take the box and throw away that box. Garbage.
- You open the plastified paper around the teabag and throw it away. Garbage.
- You take off the plastified label from the teabag and trhow it away. Garbage
- When you finish your tea, you throw away the teabag, that constists of plastics (polyester and more). Garbage.
This is just an example. Think of cookies, candies, coffee machine capsules, and all kind of devices, from coffee machines to tools. It can be plastic-in-plastic-in-plastic, but often it is a mixture of plastified paper or cartboard.
Refuse, and save time, save money, save the environment
Already for 40 years the packing industry made covenants all over the world to reduce the plastic sorts to only two or three, to make at least the recycling possible. But it is the same wild west like in the 1950’s. So, don’t count on the industry.
For you, he alternative is extremely simple: Refuse to cooperate creating garbage. For tea: put some tea in a tea ‘egg’. That is all.