Plastic Education
A few weeks back I made a public statement about removing my “green badge” because I am tired of fighting the unwinnable battle to save our planet from plastic when the plastic industry isn’t doing its fair share to limit its ill-effects on our environment. But the situation is worse than I thought.
On the one hand, we have some state legislatures creating a void in public school lessons by banning books, obliterating African American history, forbidding discussions on race relations and LGBTQ issues, and generally scaring teachers (and librarians) into silence on many topics kids are earnestly curious about. On the other hand, we have the plastic industry oozing plastic evangelism to fill in the gaps—although the ooze isn’t limited to red states.
According to The Washington Post, organizations like The Society of Plastics Engineers Foundation—groups that get funding from companies involved in fossil fuel production—are taking their pro-plastics show on the road to schools around the nation. Students are encouraged to not feel guilty about using so much plastic because, they are told, plastics actually help the environment. (Sound familiar? Recall the recent red state revelation: We can’t teach the reality of slavery in America because it will make students feel guilty, and besides, slaves learned some marketable skills.)
According to the United Nations website, “On average, the world is producing 430 million tonnes of plastic per year – two thirds of which are only used for a short period of time. Wrappers for our chocolate bars, packets for our crisps and plastic utensils for our lunch. … every day, the equivalent of over 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into our oceans, rivers and lakes.”
The Post tells me “…only 9 percent of plastics is successfully recycled, and 40 percent of material collected in recycling bins ends up in the trash.” Even though recycling programs have been fully operative for the last two decades, global plastic waste has doubled. Recycling simply is not the cure-all for the amount—and types— of plastic being produced.
But rather than own up to the problem, the plastics industry sends its Orwellian scouts into schools to drum up some high school doublethink—and calls it a public service. They preach that plastics aren’t the problem—people are. And if people would just dispose of their plastics responsibly, all would be well.
These are the folks that created all those little recycle triangles with numbers in them that we find on the bottoms of plastic things—so we’ll think that all these things are, in fact, recyclable, if only we could figure out where to recycle them. But the reality is that while the numbers range from 1 to 7, generally only #1 and #2 plastics can be recycled. This basically means single-use water bottles, milk jugs, and laundry detergent containers. All the other plastics tossed into the recycling bin muck up the works, and in some cases causes everything in the bin to wind up in the ocean.
While it seems counterintuitive, if you’re not certain something can be recycled, it’s probably better if you toss it in the trash. Here’s the mantra: “When in doubt, throw it out.”
If only schools would use this philosophy when considering guest speakers. But when billionaire industries come bearing riches, I guess it’s hard for money-strapped schools to look the gift horse in the mouth.