We all know the images. They’re haunting and they’re real and they’re horrifying: acres of plastic waste floating in our majestic oceans, plastic straws, spoons, Starbucks cups, soda bottles, packaging and other detritus overwhelming landfills, littering beaches, poisoning our environment and being so ubiquitous that researchers are now finding plastic particles in our water, our Earth’s crust and in our own bodies. The plasticization of our daily lives is posing grave threats to our planet, our health and our future – and it’s completely unnecessary.
“It was a hard sell to the American people,” said Megan Wolff of Beyond Plastics, a not-for-profit group that is working tirelessly to end America’s production and consumption of plastic. “It ran against our ethos. The plastic companies had a very difficult time convincing people that they should spend their money on things like plastic silverware and plates and cups that they would throw out after one use. Why would they spend money on something to throw it away?”
Wolff, who has her PhD in Public Health from Columbia University and has worked in the field for decades, saw how the plastic companies began to target women: “All women, but particularly educated women who were trying to have a career and raise kids and were being pitched this idea that single-use or ‘disposable’ was convenient for their busy lives.” This took on a life of its own, with plastic companies profiting and the world and oceans and bodies of all humans and animals ingesting toxic plastic particles and the Earth being littered with its “disposable” refuse. “We’re in a plastic crisis. Everyone knows this. There are no pollution deniers.”
With the population ripe for fear of transmission of COVID-19, the plastic companies saw an excellent opportunity. “We knew within a few months that COVID-19 was aerosolized and did not live long on surfaces. It actually lived longer on plastic surfaces. But this fits right along with the historical toxicological profile. There were massive health campaigns launched for lead paint and asbestos and cigarettes and pesticides. They would argue that not only are these ‘healthy,’ but they had great health benefits!”
Wolff, who recently started a local chapter in New Paltz of Beyond Plastics, noted that the pandemic created a perfect opportunity for the industrial plastic corporations and lobbyists to move in and claim that they would help make people “safe,” by promoting single-use plastic takeout containers, plastic gloves and face shields, plastic coverings, wrappings, containers and even hanging plastic barriers. Suddenly, plastic became synonymous with clean and sterile when it was neither.
Like many people, Wolff could see that the plasticization of daily life was spinning out of control and decided to take a course to learn about the detritus effects, how it all came to be and what tools were out there to turn the plastic tornado around. This was a seven-week course online founded by Judith Enck of Bennington College. “I loved the class and the people that attended it, and it jibed so well with my public health background,” she said. “It went through the history of the plastic revolution and the toxicology aspect, the greenwashing being conducted by corporations and what we can do about it.” Soon this course and its alumni began to work together create a nationwide Beyond Plastics organization, whose local chapters, including the new one in New Paltz, team up with other environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, 350.org and Riverkeeper to take care of the plastic angle of their platforms.
What Wolff said right out of the gate is that “Recycling is not the answer. Only 10 percent of the plastic that is put into recycling is actually reused. It gets put into landfills, thrown into the ocean or shipped to poorer countries.” The alternative Beyond Plastics proposes is a combined ground-up and top-down approach. “The number-one thing you can do is to vote for candidates who support a reusable culture and who aren’t afraid to make policy that prohibits single-use plastic. It has to be policy-driven.”
Other actions besides voting include the daily actions you take to avoid single-use plastic and to let businesses know that you’d be happier to support them if they too moved away from plastic. There are sample letters on the websites to write to Amazon (which, along with Coke and Nestlé, is one of the three largest plastic proliferators in the world) or to your local supermarket letting them know that you do not want to support them until they stop using single-use plastics as part of their packaging.
There are recommended local policies, one of which Ulster County has adopted: “Skip the Stuff.” It asks that restaurants who sell takeout ask the consumer if they’d like the plastic utensils and napkins and packets of sauces. If they don’t, then they can skip that stuff. “At first some people misunderstood that as being anti-business, when really it’s pro-business, because it costs a lot of money to purchase all of that material that just ends up being thrown away.”
Another local ordinance that could be countywide or statewide or even federal is to stop allowing schools, public institutions, large or small commercial venues to prohibit people from bringing their own reusable water bottles, instead requiring them to purchase whatever that facility offers, which is always a plastic water bottle, soda or drink. This happened with Bethel Woods locally when one woman was upset that she was prohibited from bringing in her own water bottle, forced to purchase a plastic bottle of water at the venue and then had no option to recycle it.
There are also aluminum containers called tiffins that are being promoted to help with the takeout and leftover conundrum of disposable containers. “Restaurants can agree to work with these, and they fill your tiffin up with the food ordered or your leftovers.” Participating businesses are then added to a map and promoted on social media as caring about their footprint and their customers’ desire to move beyond plastic.
According to Wolff, it’s time to turn this ship around before it dumps any more plastic into our already-toxified oceans and lands. “Half of all of the plastic that has been manufactured has been done so in just the last 15 years. Our goal is to cut that down by 50 percent in ten years until we get to 100 percent,” she said. Bottle bills and pesticide regulations, asbestos abatement and cigarette warnings were all hard-fought, but hard-won as well. Like asbestos, lead paint, cigarettes and DDT, plastics are poisoning our Earth and ourselves; and like the previously mentioned public health and environmental scourges, with some education, organization and action at all levels, it can be stopped if everyone gets on board in whatever way they can.
“You know what corporations respond to? Not science or public health concerns or the very real pollution crisis we’re experiencing, but they respond to bad publicity,” Wolff noted. “You know what you can do? If you see a plastic Coke bottle floating in a wetland or a pond, snap a picture and tweet it to Coke. ‘Why is your plastic bottle littering our wetlands?’”
For more information about Beyond Plastics, go to www.beyondplastics.org/about. To learn about or join the New Paltz group, e-mail Wolff at beyondplasticsnewpaltz@gmail.com.
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