Anti-plastic Activism

Posted by admin On March - 10 - 2009 Esta entrada está también disponible en: Spanish, Galician

I’ve already written a couple of posts about bloguers boycotting plastic, not purchasing items made with it. Anti-plastic bloguers are a good source of information if you are looking for trends in the way the general public perceives plastic. The economic downturn suggests that austerity will define many markets, forcing down demand for non-essentials items that are particularly hated by anti-plastic bloggers. It is up to you to decide the importance that the blogging community may have, but like many other activist movements that inspire them, they are now profitting from social networks. I’d like to discuss which methods they are currently using and how they are ideas are being incorporated into society.

Anti-plastic bloggers are similar to other activists in their effective use of new technologies to spread their message. For example, A month without plastic had a reporting format that is becoming common nowadays – the 30 days experience. Morgan Spurlock made Super Size Me, documentary that followed him for a month, while he ate only food from McDonalds. He has also created 30 Days, “a TV show that examines social issues in America by immersing individuals in a life completely different to their own. Anti-plastic blogs share with Morgan Spurlock their capacity to illustrate a problem through first person narration and the everyday life of an individual. A few years back I would have told you that the impact of a web based campaign would never be similar to those using TV, but I’ve completely changed my mind about that.

Some of the blogs involved here have already been active for a couple of years. There are now a significant number of bloggers and people following them, so the next step is to actually form groups on social networks. I’ve chosen a few anti-plastic groups from facebook, but there are many more:

No to plastic search results on facebook groups

Oi, stupid! Stop using plastic bags!

Ten thousand plastic bottles hanging on the shore

Did you know about the GIGANTIC Plastic Soup in our Oceans?

For example, No to plastics!? was created by a University group in Lancaster and it encourages people to quit plastic during lent. Aware of the challenges posed by not buying plastic for such a period, they propose people two levels compromise:

Level 1: No to plastic bags, plastic bottles and take-away plastic
Level 2: No to all new plastic (except life-saving medicines, etc!!)

While researching for this post, I created a poll in Linkedin, a professional social network. You can see below my question and the results. For those of you using Linkedin, you can see the results and comments following this link.

Looking at these results and also considering that readers of anti-plastic blogs are not actually following a strict plastic diet, is easy to understand why No to plastics!? has two different challenges. It seems that the idea of cuting down on plastic is attractive to many people, but they don’t consider it realistic or feasible. To help the general public, the anti-plastic community offers advice, workshops, recommendations and even listings of plastic free products, like the one you can find in Leave Only Footprints:

http://plasticisrubbish.wordpress.com/a-z-plastic-free

However, not everybody agrees with boycotting all plastic. The plastic industry differentiates clearly between the different materials covered by the very general term of “plastics”. There is a clear line between disposable and durable plastics, even in the way business is conducted. For this reason the indiscriminate boycot towards all types of plastics is not shared or even understood by those producing, transforming or selling plastics. Alex Treharne, President at Tupperware Japan, gives the following arguments against boycotting all plastic:

Every year billions of dollars of food is wasted because it has not been properly stored in the home. in Japan alone, nearly 10% of all food is wasted in the home. The effective use of quality plastic containers keep food longer, saving money and reducing food waste
Using quality plastic containers omits the need for plastic wrap and aluminum foil for storage purposes, as well as the packaging used for these products
Quality plastic containers can last a lifetime – they may cost more than cheap plastic containers, but ultimately, they generate less waste and save money
If we reorient our lifestyles to more home prepared meals, using quality plastic containers to store leftovers safely and freshly, we will cut down on the consumption of prepackaged foods, which use lots of plastic packaging that is thrown away, usually along with some of the food

Alex also explains that the difference is in how we use things, using bottled water as an example:

In Japan, less than 20% of all PET bottles are actually recycled. I myself have not purchased a PET bottle of water for several months – I use a high quality plastic tumbler with a flip top lid and refill this with water. I estimate that I save the environment roughly 25 PET bottles a month, and that is just counting the ones that don’t get recycled. Recyling itselt takes a toll on the environment and so does the actual production of PET bottled water. I have read that it takes 5 liters of water to produce on liter of bottled water!?

Tupperware comercialises plastic containers to preserve food since 1946 and its founder, Earl S Tupper, was crucial in the introduction of plastic in our daily lives. Its early succes was probably due to the invention of both the container and an hermetic lid, also manufactured with a polymer. Tupperware has been negatively mentioned by the anti-plastic bloggers, maybe because it is one of the few recognisable brands. For example, Beth Terry, from My plastic-free life explained in this post how she replaced her tupperware for stainless steel containers.

I personally used a wheeled shopping tote and cotton bags to do my errands, I don’t buy bottled water and I can remember every time I’ve been forced to drink a coffee from a disposable cup. I try to reduce my consumption in general, not focusing in plastic, a material I actually like. I try to use less paper, less waterm waste less food and in general need less material things. But today I have to position myself, if only a bit. Plastic has allowed us to reduce the energy we need to manufacture cars, containers, phones, planes and computers. Thanks to it we will be able to have cheap solar energy, electric cars and things we do not even foresee yet. To compare it with fuel just because it is mainly sourced from oil is not a definite argument, since it is certainly not plastic the one creating the problems, but our energy consumption. Anti-plastic bloggers are right in criticising the masive and disproportionate use, the waste management problems it creates and in particular how it would all be much easier if consumption was lower. But the guilty one here is not plastic, clearly, but us.