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Plastic -- Strike for the Planet week 105 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-14  

You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference!

This is the letter for week 105 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile…

STRIKE FOR THE PLANET

“I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening?”1

This week’s topic is: Plastic

(with solutions at the end, and pictures and diagrams throughout)

“Come on. We know plastic is a problem.”

Based on your actions, and lack of actions, you obviously don’t. For instance:

For the pandemic, you banned reusable bags in favor of plastic bags despite the science. 2, 3

You’ve put nothing in place for recycling or reducing the massive amounts of plastic being used during the pandemic. 4, 5, 6

You’ve supported installing artificial turf (made of plastic, rubber, heavy metals, carcinogens, and various unknown compounds) all over SF despite its non-recyclability, lack of permeability, non bio-degradability, short life span, and end-of-life toxic waste status.7, 8

“Yeah, but it is convenient.”

Plastic freed us from the limits of the natural world — we thought. Turns out that idea springs from wishful thinking and advertising by oil companies.9

Today, Americans produce an average of 250 pounds of plastic waste per year.10 50 years ago you’d be hard-pressed to find more plastic than a comb in most American homes.11 The majority of all plastic ever manufactured has been made in the last 17 years.12

Plastic is not being recycled and is not recyclable.13, 14 The ubiquitous plastic recyclable arrow symbol is a greenwashing lie.15, 16

From Wild Sustainability

40% of the plastic produced every year is used once, often for a few minutes. This plastic takes 10s to 100s of years to break down to micro and nanosizes17 which then infiltrate the biosphere in a plastic cycle.

From WWF

The Plastic Cycle

You know from school that there are things that circulate through numerous states in planetary cycles, right? There’s the water cycle:

Ehud Tal, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The carbon cycle:

NASA

The nitrogen cycle:

Cicle_del_nitrogen_de.svg: *Cicle_del_nitrogen_ca.svg: Johann Dréo (User:Nojhan), traduction de Joanjoc d'après Image:Cycle azote fr.svg.derivative work: Burkhard (talk)Nitrogen_Cycle.jpg: Environmental Protection Agencyderivative work: Raeky, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

And many more. This is a natural process that explains how everything but energy is reused in our closed planetary system. Obviously, then, plastic had to start circulating, too. There is now a plastic cycle. It’s bad. This first diagram is a general overview of what we know about how plastic moves between ecosystems and species:

And these are some of the ways we know it gets into living organisms:

There is plastic on Mt. Everest.18 There is plastic in the clouds and fog and rain and snow.19 There is plastic in your salt20 and in your water21 and in the air you breathe.22 You are pooping plastic.23 You are eating plastic.24

So we’re eating some plastic, you say. That’s not that big a deal. I mean we eat a lot of stuff we can’t digest and some things that are pretty gross. So what’s a little plastic gonna do?

Endrocrine disruption, bioaccumulation, and adsorption, oh my!

It’s not a little plastic. The spoonful of plastic you eat every week comes out to a half a bowl of rice-worth a month, or 5 lbs of plastic every 10 years — the equivalent of a standard life buoy.25

If plastic was inert, like sand, that would be a problem, but not inherently dangerous. But, aside from cutting us up internally26, plastic is also chemically active.

Plastics are, and carry, endocrine disruptors. These chemicals leach from plastic into our food, water, and bodies. They disrupt our hormonal regulatory system and can cause cancer, diabetes, reproductive disorders, and neurological impairment of developing fetuses and children. You’ve probably heard of some of these chems, like bisphenol-A and PFAS. Because they are in plastic, and therefore in microplastics, they are also in our bodies.27

Bioaccumulation is best shown by diagrams. This first shows how contamination levels increase as you go up trophic levels:

This second one shows a simple pathway for how these bioaccumulated plastics get into you:

City of Woburn

But wait, it gets worse! Plastic microlitter adsorbs (provides a surface to latch onto) other pollutants and toxins from the environment.28 So it’s not just plastic; we’re eating a plastic toxic stew.

There are solutions to plastic pollution!

Producer Pays, or EPR laws work. Instead of providing a subsidy to the producer of the pollution by shifting the price of clean up onto citizens, it puts the responsibility on the makers of the pollution at the start. 29 SB 54, which partially addresses this in packaging, is working its way through Sacramento. 30 Why isn't SF working on implementing EPR locally?

SB 54, which partially addresses this in packaging, is working its way through Sacramento. Why isn't SF working on implementing EPR locally? Sue oil companies for causing the problem through knowingly false advertising, fake recycling programs, and elimination of alternatives. Join the Earth Island Institute lawsuit. 31 After all, SF fines contractors who dump their waste in the parks. Except in scale, how is plastic dumping any different?

After all, SF fines contractors who dump their waste in the parks. Except in scale, how is plastic dumping any different? Refuse to use (buy) plastics. Replace plastics in use. There are loads of organizations and individuals who can help with this, from bloggers to entire nations. 32

Provide legislative and statutory supports to everyone trying to eliminate plastic in SF. This means acting on and enforcing SF’s Precautionary Principle.33

Because environmental action “delayed” is environmental action denied.

Diamonds aren’t forever but plastic is and the situation is getting worse daily; you have to ACT — now!

SF’s chances for survival are borderline at best and any chance for survival requires immediate action.34 You’ve taken oaths to act for the good of SF. You say you are bound by the Precautionary Principle. So act already.

The costs of environmental degredation and climate change are huge.35, 36, 37, 38, 39 Damage is already being done and it’s only going to get worse.40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 You have to fight for the people of SF now while it’s still possible to accomplish anything! Act!

FOOTNOTES

1. The Graduate. Screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, based on The Graduate by Charles Webb. Embassy Pictures. 20 December 1967. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaCHH5D74Fs .

2. Kaelan Deese. “San Francisco bans reusable bags in coronavirus fight”. The Hill. 2 April 2020. https://thehill.com/homenews/news/490835-san-francisco-bans-reusable-bags-in-coronavirus-fight .

3. Neeltje van Doremalen, Trenton Bushmaker, Dylan Morris, Myndi Holbrook, Amandine Gamble, Brandi Williamson, Azaibi Tamin, Jennifer Harcourt, Natalie Thornburg, Susan Gerber, James Lloyd-Smith, Emmie de Wit, and Vincent Munster. “Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1”. The New England Journal of Medicine. 17 March 2020. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973?query=featured_home .

4. “Latex and rubber gloves”. SF Recycles. Accessed 28 April 2021. https://www.sfrecycles.org/items?words=Latex%20and%20rubber%20gloves%20%20 .

5. “Disposable masks”. SF Recycles. Accessed 28 April 2021. https://www.sfrecycles.org/items?words=PPE&address=all .

6. Veronica Penney. “Americans May Add Five Times More Plastic to the Oceans Than Thought” The New York Times. 30 October 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/climate/plastic-pollution-oceans.html .

7. Justin Berton. “S.F. debating artificial turf on playgrounds”. SFGate. 9 February 2012. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-debating-artificial-turf-on-playgrounds-3209862.php .

8. Marjie Lundstron and Eli Wolfe. “Fields of Waste: Artificial Turf, Touted as Recycling Fix for Millions of Scrap Tires, Becomes Mounting Disposal Mess”. FairWarning. 19 December 2019. https://www.fairwarning.org/2019/12/fields-of-waste-artificial-turf-mess/ .

9. Tim Dickinson. “Planet Plastic”. RollingStone. 3 March 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/plastic-problem-recycling-myth-big-oil-950957/ .

10. Rebecca Davis and Christopher Joyce. “Plastic: What’s recyclable, what becomes trash — and why”. NPR. 21 August 2019. https://apps.npr.org/plastics-recycling/ .

11. In fact, I vividly remember the first plastics coming into our home that were not combs. I was born in 1962.

12. Sarah Zhang. “Half of All Plastic That Has Ever Existed Was Made in the Past 13 Years”. The Atlantic. 19 July 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/07/plastic-age/533955/ .

13. Laura Sullivan. “How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled”. NPR. 11 September 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled .

14. Laura Parker. “A whopping 91% of plastic isn’t recycled”. National Geographic. 20 December 2018. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment .

15. “Greenpeace USA: Recycling Symbols On Plastic Packaging Are Misleading”. Plastic Soup Foundation. 7 April 2020. https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/en/2020/04/greenpeace-usa-recycling-symbols-on-plastic-packaging-are-misleading/ .

16. Emily Petsko. “Recycling Myth of the Month: Those numbered symbols on single-use plastics do not mean ‘you can recycle me’”. Oceana. 11 March 2020. https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-those-numbered-symbols-single-use-plastics-do-not-mean-you-can-recycle-me .

17. Laura Parker. “The world’s plastic pollution crisis explained”. National Geographic. 7 June 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-pollution .

18. Damian Carrington. “Microplastic pollution found near summit of Mount Everest”. The Guardian. 20 November 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/20/microplastic-pollution-found-near-summit-of-mount-everest .

19. Maanvi Singh. “It’s raining plastic: microscopic fibers fall from the sky in Rocky Mountains”. The Guardian. 13 August 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/12/raining-plastic-colorado-usgs-microplastics .

20. Jessica Glenza. “Sea salt around the world is contaminated by plastic, studies show”. The Guardian. 8 September 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/08/sea-salt-around-world-contaminated-by-plastic-studies .

21. James Ayre. “You’re drinking plastic. Microfibers are in 94% of your water:. Red Green and Blue. 12 September 2017. http://redgreenandblue.org/2017/09/12/youre-drinking-plastic-microfibers-94-water/ .

22. Girogia Lupi, Talia Cotton, and Phil Cox. “Plastic In The Air”. Artsexperiments. Accessed 28 April 2021. https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/plasticair/ .

23. Jill Neimark. “Microplastics Are Turning Up Everywhere, Even In Human Excrement”. NPR. 22 October 2018. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/22/659568662/microplastics-are-turning-up-everywhere-even-in-human-excrement .

24. JSTOR Daily. “We Consume a Spoonful of Plastic a Week”. Earth dot Org. 8 September 2020. https://earth.org/eating-plastic/ .

25. JSTOR Daily. “We Consume a Spoonful of Plastic a Week”. Earth dot Org. 8 September 2020. https://earth.org/eating-plastic/ .

26. Royal Society Te Apãrangi. “How harmful are microplastics?” Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao. Accessed 28 April 2021. https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2809-how-harmful-are-microplastics .

27. “Plastics pose threat to human health”. Endocrine Society. 15 December 2020. https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2020/plastics-pose-threat-to-human-health .

28. Julia Whitty. “Plastics Suck Up Other Toxins: Double Whammy for Marine Life, Gross for Seafood”. Mother Jones. 18 January 2013. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/plastics-and-chemicals-they-absorb-pose-double-threat-marine-life/ .

29. “The Producer Pays”. Knowledge@Wharton. 4 August 2017. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-producer-pays/ .

30. Megan Quinn. “2021 could be year for packaging EPR, nearly a dozen state bills in play”. WasteDive. 12 February 2021. https://www.wastedive.com/news/2021-state-extended-producer-responsibility-recycling/594873/ .

31. Peter Fimrite. “Bay Area group sues Coke, Pepsi, other giants over plastic pollution ‘poisoning everything’”. San Francisco Chronicle. 26 February 2020. https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Earth-Island-Institute-sues-10-big-companies-to-15086247.php .

32. Nick Visser. “Vanuatu Has One Of The World’s Strictest Plastic Bans. It’s about To Get Tougher.” Huffpost. 23 February 2019. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vanuatu-plastic-ban-law-ocean-pollution_n_5c6ee757e4b0f40774cd355d .

33. Jose Felix Pinto-Bazurco. “The Precautionary Principle”. International Institute for Sustainable Development. 23 October 2020. https://www.iisd.org/articles/precautionary-principle .

34. Richard Procter. “San Francisco Knows How to Stop Global Warming — Will It?” SF Weekly. 11 September 2019. https://www.sfweekly.com/news/san-francisco-climate-change-emissions/ .

35. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/ .

36. Harper’s Index. March 2021. https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/ .

37. Dana Nuccitelli. “New report finds costs of climate change impacts often underestimated”. Yale Climate Connections. 18 November 2019. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/11/new-report-finds-costs-of-climate-change-impacts-often-underestimated/ .

38. Rebecca Hersher and Nathan Rott. “What Are The Costs Of Climate Change?” NPR. 16 September 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913693655/what-are-the-costs-of-climate-change .

39. Samantha Fields. “Insurance increasingly unaffordable as climate change brings more disasters”. Marketplace. 31 August 2020. https://www.marketplace.org/2020/08/31/insurance-increasingly-unaffordable-as-climate-change-brings-more-disasters/ .

40. Matt McGrath. “Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months”. BBC News. 24 July 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736 .

41. Heather Smith. “Climate Change: Even Worse Than We Thought”. Sierra. 8 October 2018. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/climate-change-even-worse-we-thought-ipcc-report .

42. Michael Grose and Julie Arblaster. “Just how hot will it get this century? It’s worse than we thought”. Phys Org. 18 May 2020. https://phys.org/news/2020-05-hot-century-worse-thought.html .

43. Amelia Urry. “The scientist who first warned of climate change says it’s much worse than we thought”. Grist. 22 March 2016. https://grist.org/science/the-scientist-who-first-warned-of-climate-change-says-its-much-worse-than-we-thought/ .

44. Rafi Letzter. “Today’s Climate Change Is Worse Than Anything Earth Has Experienced in the Past 2,000 Years”. Live Science. 25 July 2019. https://www.livescience.com/66027-climate-change-different.html .

45. John D. Sutter. “Vanishing”. CNN. Accessed 30 June 2020. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/12/specials/vanishing/ .

46. Peter Castagno. “Biodiversity Loss Worst in Human History — 1 Million Animal Species Risk Extinction”. Citizen Truth. 6 May 2019. https://citizentruth.org/biodiversity-loss-worst-in-human-history-1-million-animal-species-risk-extinction/ .

47. Kristen Callihan. “Earth’s Currently Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Is Worse Than We Thought”. OutwardOn. 7 August 2017. https://www.outwardon.com/article/earths-currently-ongoing-sixth-mass-extinction-event-is-worse-than-we-thought/ .

48. Lauren Frayer. “Scores Are Feared Dead In India After Himalayan Glacier Breaks Away”. NPR. 7 February 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/07/965046888/scores-are-feared-dead-in-india-after-himalayan-glacier-breaks-away . It’s now looking like it was a landslide which makes the situation worse.

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