Reducing plastic waste is Earth Day’s urgent theme
This week marks the start of a United Nations conference on plastics. Representatives from 180 nations are meeting in Ottawa, Canada, to devise a global agreement on stemming plastic waste.
ALBANY — “Just one word … plastics,” was the advice a family friend gave to Dustin Hoffman’s character in the 1967 film “The Graduate.”
Hoffman played newly minted college graduate Benjamin Braddock and the friend advises him that “there’s a great future in plastics.”
If they only knew that 57 years later, our planet would be awash in plastics, especially the singleuse disposable kind that includes trash bags, toothpaste tubes, soda can linings, menstrual products, bottle caps, fast-fashion clothing, tires and countless other items.
There’s so much plastic out there that reducing it is the theme of this year’s Earth Day on April 22.
It’s the 54th anniversary of the day back in 1970 when, fueled largely by the enthusiasm of high school and college students, the nation’s environmental movement went into high gear.
April 22 was chosen since it falls between spring break and finals weeks for schools across the country.
Youth remain at the forefront of the environmental movement, with high school and college students leading the climate strike movement that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg launched in 2018 at age 15, catapulting her to the global stage.
The inaugural Earth Day also led to the creation of EarthDay.org, the organization that each year chooses and tries to promote a theme centering on a particular segment of the environmental movement. Last
year’s theme was sustainable business practices. This year’s focus is plastic.
“The theme is really important because we’re trying to focus peoples’ minds on things that need attention,” remarked Sarah Davies, director of media and communications for the Washington, D.C.-based EarthDay.org.
The global load of plastic and trash in general is well known. Phenomena like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or the swirling vortex of nondegradable plastic refuse that spans much of the Pacific Ocean, have highlighted the extent of waste that is disposed of daily around the world.
Several countries and U.S. states including New York, have cracked down on items like single-use shopping bags which were historically a prime source of litter as well as pollution.
But the problem goes far beyond that, Davies explained, as researchers are finding that almost any kind of plastic, which is a petroleum product, tends to shed tiny microscopic fragments, where it can be inhaled by people or unknowingly ingested.
It’s akin to a form of manmade petrochemical dust, said Davies. Since examining the issue, she has started vacuuming her home with greater frequency. And her next washing machine, she added, will have a microplastic filter.
This year’s Earth Day focus on plastic is welcome news to Judith Enck, a former regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator from Rensselaer County who is the founder of Beyond Plastics, one of the organizations trying to shed light on the problem.
“We love the theme,” Enck said. She, like Davies, noted that this week marks the start of a United Nations conference on plastics. Representatives from 180 nations are meeting in Ottawa, Canada, to devise a global agreement on reducing plastic waste.
Closer to home, Enck is pushing for state legislation that aims to reduce the amount of plastic packaging in our day-to-day commerce.
The proposed Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would mandate a 50 percent reduction in plastic packaging waste over 12 years. It would also require businesses to pay for managing and recycling the plastic packaging waste they create.
Business and industry have pushed back, saying the plan isn’t realistic and that there aren’t good substitutes for some plastic items.
On the state and national level, the plastics industry has also called for more robust recycling of its products.
“A positive step forward is modernizing our recycling infrastructure through advanced recycling technologies,” Craig Cookson, senior director of plastics sustainability at the American Chemistry Council wrote in a Times Union commentary last June. Industry plastics experts envision new systems of recycling plastics on the molecular level allowing them to be reused as products or turned into fuel feedstock. But plastic critics like Davies contend that recycling has failed to solve the problem because so much plastic isn’t recycled properly.
“We can’t recycle our way out of the problem,” she said.
As of last week, the recycling bill, sponsored by Debora Glick and Peter Harckham, the Democrat chairs of the Assembly and Senate environmental committees, wasn’t scheduled for a vote in either chamber.
Enck said they hope to move the measure forward after the state’s 2024-25 budget is finalized.
As that budget neared completion, environmental groups in the state capitol were pushing hard for legislation aimed at reducing the use of natural gas in home heating.
It appeared, as of press time, that those measures wouldn’t be included in the state budget, though, leaving them for debate later in the legislative session.
Either way, the focus on home heating and the push to reduce gas consumption speaks to the overriding environmental issue of the past few years: climate change and efforts to reduce greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuel use.
New York and other states have begun mandating the building of solar and windpower electric generation rather than gas or oil plants. Even as that occurs, this past winter saw the highest temperatures on record globally in January and February. And North America had the warmest February on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
All the while, the use of plastics, made from petrochemicals, continues.
One of Enck’s newest targets centers on “nips,” or those 1.7-ounce bottles of alcohol. Historically, the containers for these oneservings of alcohol often seen on airlines or hotel mini-bars have been made of glass but they are also coming in plastic. As such, they are contributing to the trash and refuse deposits that can spring up on vacant lots or in gutters.
Several communities in New England and the state of Connecticut this year have considered banning or restricting the sale of these small containers. It’s a good bet this will become an issue in New York as well.
Enck believes that such laws can move the push to control plastics forward.
“Festivals (for Earth Day) are nice but when it comes to plastic we need new laws,” she said.