Last Monday it was World Oceans Day . The motto is: wonder sustaining what sustains us.
In earlier blogs the oceans are discussed as our great sustaining element. Still we see that acidification reduces the number of plankton and other sorts, so the capability to convert CO2 in Carbon and Oxigen is reduced. One of the indirect causes of acidification is the plastification. We, especially the Western countries, throw away some billions of kilos of plastic into the sea, mainly single use plastic. Every year it is more. Last 5 years it is as much as the production of the 50 years before that.
Already from the 1980’s we are aware of the problem, especially of the single use plastics. Expect something from the companies making it? No. they just compete and use everything in every combination as long it is not forbidden. Our governments, who have the function to create the level playing field for competition, did not do a serious thing to it. Haven’t done a serious thing to it. Still don’t do a serious thing to it. Sometimes they do some funny detail arrangements. Generally they don’t prevent, but they try to intervene later in the chain, when the problem is there. Like the waste treatment, like recycling. Which are the most expensive and less sustainable actions in the chain. For example, in 2023 in Holland a law was developed for a part of the garbage problem of the tin cans. The tin can companies should set up the infrastructure to get them recycled. But, just before the law was taken into effect, the lobbies managed to take the teeth out of this law. There is not written that these companies are finally responsible and take the costs if it fails. So the infrastructure is insufficient. So now we have an overflow on aluminum tin cans. And, just as every ‘end-of-the-chain-‘ action, also this one has unforeseen side effects. In this case, the homeless people turn around garbage cans to find these cans, to get perhaps a dime for it. So now and then it is a mess in the cities. It is the taxpayer who takes care for the cleaning up.
And our government also read papers and even if they know that we are eating, drinking and breathing plastics , still no law passes to stop the single use plastic.
I mentioned ‘the 1980’s. Did you know that it was the time that India suffered its last starvation crisis. We just changed the category name of India from the insulting ‘underdeveloped country’ to the less insulting ‘developing country’.
Right now, 40 years later, India experiences a growing problem of single use plastic. The president of India has just declared a law will be made that simply bans all single used plastics. No lobbies, just a straight and honest level playing field. Easy does it.
