Plastic pandemic
As Plastic-free July enters its 10th year, there’s a new problem plaguing our beaches, writes Amber-leigh Woolf.
Anyone out for awalk recentlymay have noticed there’s a new type of plastic littering our environment – masks from the pandemic.
Demand for disposable wipes, cleaning agents, hand sanitiser, disposable gloves and masks is at a record high – but they are also being thrown out in unprecedented volumes.
Additionally, tonnes of medical waste are being generated – a necessary measure adding to the tide of virus-related plastic waste.
So, with the coronavirus becoming the most important issue in the world, have the perils of climate change and plastic pollution been cast to one side for 2020?
Every July, thousands of people around the world give up plastic for the month, but the pandemicmight make that more unrealistic. Plastic bans are being reversed in multiple places to increase hygiene.
Plastic Free July is in its 10th year. The movement, which originated in Australia, had more than 250 million participants in 2019.
Petone’s Michelle StronachMarsh runs and collects rubbish on the foreshore , and sees daily the harm of plastic in our environment.
But during the lockdown, Stronach-marsh saw masks, gloves and other PPE littered around Wellington coastlines – and not much else.
‘‘It was PPE that I saw . . . that was pretty much the only thing that I saw, because takeaways were all closed, and people were not able to go for a drive to the beach,’’ she says.
’’During lockdown it was incredible, it was phenomenal.’’
But now that stores are open again, and people are back at the beaches, plastic is back too.
‘‘Litter is back to normal in New Zealand.’’
Stronach-marsh says she is collecting too many straws around Petone beach. ‘‘Straws are increasing again, straws from fast-food takeaways . . . and single-use coffee cups are a thing that concerns me greatly.’’
People have a choice when it comes to takeaway cups and single-use straws, and can avoid them – cafes no longer shun reusable coffee mugs due to the virus.
‘‘There’s also a lot more dumping now, and that’s a real concerning thing.’’
Plastic is hard to escape entirely – just take a look at any supermarket.
Despite producing so much plastic, New Zealand lacks the infrastructure to deal with it all.
Most of it can’t be recycled in New Zealand, and it has to be shipped overseas to developing countries.
As those countries’ markets became inundated, councils all around the country are shunning the hard-to-recycle plastic types 3, 4, 6 and 7 in kerbside recycling collections – sending them to the landfill instead.
New Zealanders are quick to point out unnecessary packaging on fruit and vegetables, orwhen it’s littered on beaches, but not many are reducing their personal use of plastic.
Sustainable Coastlines cofounder Camdenhowitt says the lockdown was a good time for people to think about ways to live more sustainably.
‘‘We were not able to get takeaways, a lot of people did a lotmore home cooking . . . that slowing down and taking a step back from convenience culture, which can result in a lot of use of single-use plastics.
‘‘It’s never been more important a time. Thinking about our connection to the environment and our use of these plastics, and reducing that, is a big way we can reduce our impact on the environment.’’
Howitt says 70 per cent of the litter found around New Zealand beaches is plastic.
But not all of that is food packaging – plastic pervades our lives in ways people don’t even know of.
Shoes, clothes, tea bags, parking tickets, packaging from online shopping – even in some cosmetics – plastic is everywhere.
Wellington flatmates Steve Gates, Rosie Morrison, Hannah Checkley and Rene Davies, who go by the name Plastic Free Flatties, say they will be doing their best to get back to living with nearly no plastic in their lives this month.
During the lockdown, they were not able to bulk buy their food at places like Bin Inn.
‘‘Lockdown has not been good for us. What we’re aiming to do thismonth is to get to our prelockdown levels.’’
The Plastic Free Flatties team are far from perfect, and they still use plastic here and there.
Gates says it’s important to remember that perfection isn’t realistic for everyone.
‘‘It can be a really overwhelming and daunting task to start on a plastic-free journey. It’s very hard to do perfectly, and because of that, some people might not even start.
‘‘Even reducing your waste by 10 per cent is amazing. Part of our ethos is doing the best you can while being kind to yourself.’’
As individuals, the flatmates use three to four items of plastic eachweek.
‘‘As a group, the big things and the main way you bring plastic in to your lives are the things you eat every day,’’ Gates says. She emphasises it’s important to note that a ‘‘zerowaste lifestyle’’ is not easy for everyone.
The privilege of a zero-waste lifestyle could also be considered an elitist movement, not accessible to all.
‘‘All the faces you see here and internationally are white. It is generally a privilege to be able to go on a low-waste journey.’’
Compared to conventional supermarket shopping, where items are wrapped in plastic to cut some costs, buying in bulk sometimes meant paying more money upfront.
Not everybody can afford that, says Gates, who first became interested in plastic pollution during her first year of university.
‘‘The combination of studying geography and geology and being a poor student led me to find new ways to look after the
planet, without breaking the bank.’’
The zero waste movement can seem an expensive investment for someone who doesn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on ecofriendly alternatives – milk in glass bottles is much more expensive than milk in plastic, for instance.
But Gates says that, contrary to popular belief, living without plastic can actually be cheaper.
‘‘We definitely save money because there’s a lot of different things you realise aren’t necessary once you start looking for alternatives.
‘‘You can kind of stick it to the man a bit when you realise you’ve been socialised and trained you need these things, and then you realise you don’t.’’
Zero waste lifestyle advocate Liam Prince, of The Rubbish Trip, says that, when it comes to post-covid plastic, it is a tricky problem: plastic is essential to the medical world.
But in the business world, many hospitality businesses have used lockdown as an opportunity. ‘‘With level 3 being only takeaways, people said it was a really good time to set hospitality up with reusable systems.’’
But not everyone made that effort. ‘‘When lockdown was over, we saw lots of bins overflowing with takeout litter.’’
Evidence showed that reusable coffee cups, containers and bags were safe during the pandemic, he says.
Giving up plastic for the month of July might be low on people’s priorities during so much uncertainty, but he doesn’t see it as being that way long term.
Others will be taking up the challenge and the lockdown has been an opportunity for change.
‘‘Some people really took this as the call to make a shift away from single-use. It feels like there’s a renewed momentum in some places.’’
Interest in reducing plastic is high, and two new businesses providing plastic-free alternatives have opened – despite the challenges of the lockdown.
In Northland, plastic-free wholefoods store Forward Whanga¯rei, owned by Laura Welsby, opened one week before lockdown, and TVNZ producer Jessica Roden’s The Naked Pantry opened in Wellington during alert level 3.
Keep New Zealand Beautiful marketing manager Anna Parkin says that, in the shadow of the coronavirus, some plastic products are necessary to keep people healthy and safe.
‘‘However, littered masks and gloves are not only detrimental to the environment and our ecosystem, these potentially contaminated items put others in the community at risk.’’
The pandemic may hinder people’s willingness to avoid plastic or single-use items, but she encourages people to make changes if they can.
‘‘Collectively as a nation, when we work together, we can make a huge difference.’’