Reducing Single Use Plastic Pollution: Fighting a nightmare

Five thousand years ago, this period marked the rise of iron used in weaponry and daily life. During this time, in Egypt, tensions between several tribes were rising too; fortunately or unfortunately (depending on what you consider), few of them harnessed the power of iron in the form of spears, swords, and other creative ways to kill their brother and sisters. Eventually, those few tribes led the formation of one of the most sophisticated civilizations, the Egyptian Civilization, and introduction to the new system, including slavery and all. Their fellow brothers and sisters knew about the existence of iron weapons, but they were all ignorant about that until they were beheaded, and those who survived remained the hostage of the inventions their fellows created.

And now, we have another invention, collectively called plastic or synthetic petroleum polymer if you prefer, and again we are ignorant about it. Plastic has some extraordinary properties: they are lightweight, durable, and moldable. Not requiring time-consuming manual work, plastic can be easily mass-produced, and its raw materials are abundant and incredibly cheap, so the golden era of plastic began almost one hundred years ago. Today, almost everything has a component or two, from phones to planes, which is plastic. So, plastic seems to be a revolutionary discovery, which it is, until the times come to dispose of it. 

Coffee cups, plastic bags, fruits carrier, and other million things where single-use plastic is preferred. We never think about it a lot, do we? We give them to the trash collector and think that plastic is gone, and if we were right, which we aren’t, then there won’t be any problem. However, contrary to our belief system, plastic is synthetic and is so durable that it takes a million years to decay – but somehow, we collectively decided to use this super tough material for things meant to be thrown away – which leads to plastic pollution. 40% of plastic is used for packaging (which is also referred to as single-use plastic), out of which 9% is recycled, 12% is burnt, and 79% is still there, uncountable, and a lot ends up in the ocean, around 8 million tons every year. From the point of perspective, if this disposal rate continues, the mass of plastic will outweigh the mass of all aquatic life by the year 2050. Having chills, aren’t you?

But, then, why do we care about it? We are not fish. Quite a fair question, I guess, if humans are using photosynthesis for energy intake, but I am afraid that we don’t; hence, we are incredibly dependent on nature for our survival. Due to the heavy presence of plastic in the ocean, aquatic animals feed on it directly or indirectly; those animals reach the stomach of apex predators of the food chain, i.e., us, homo sapiens. Adding one more trembling fact to this nightmare, researchers have shown a strong correlation between plastic and an increase in cancer cases. Whether you remember those days when everyone ignored those scientists who proclaimed back then about the relation between death sticks and lung cancers, it won’t change the fact that 13 out of every 100 persons are dying due to smoking in the US alone, we realized that we couldn’t stop these deaths. Anyway, I won’t give a lecture that we can stop the plastic disaster because we can’t, because it’s too late now, and a dark future with millions of deaths is awaiting us.

So, is there nothing we can do? Well, I didn’t say that. We can still spit on the face of it and scold it to sit down, just like we did for every other crisis we faced in history. There were times when Malaria was used to clean the whole city, to stain it with human corpses. We survived through it. We stayed through wars and other million things (at some expense) which might have ended humanity long ago. But we are standing taller and more robust than our ancestors ever did. Now, we, the youth of the 21st century, have this responsibility to counter plastic pollution for our good. Single-use plastic is beneficial in preserving things, and let’s accept that companies won’t leave plastic because it is so cheap; that’s why youth need to come forward and fight with these corporations to reduce their greed for our future. Individual actions, such as not preferring plastic carry bags or plastic-free products, are helpful but not so impactful unless we all perform them in solidarity. We have to come forward to use our votes to select a wise person who can impose heavy restrictions on plastic use. Also, we can aim to stymie the progress of such plastic by investing in research that is working hard to find alternatives. I am not saying to renege into the stone age, but remiss about single-use plastic will cost not only us or nature, our futures too.