Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Plastic is a beautifully written, intricate mosaic that weaves memoir, poetry, cultural and scientific history, chemistry, biography, etymology, journalistic reportage and self-reflection into a penetrating rumination on humanity’s relationship with plastic.
As Judith Enck and others have explained, business as usual is like skydiving and not pulling the parachute. The longer we take to pull the chute and start seriously addressing plastics in the environment, the harder our landing is going to be.
Plastics are a scourge we all know too well. After more than 150 years of plastic production, this material has invaded every living corner of the Earth.
80° North is part sailing adventure, part beautifully photographed travelogue and part eyewitness account of the environmental threats faced by the Arctic.
Yesterday, an unusually broad coalition of environmental groups, numbering more than 550, called on the incoming Biden-Harris administration to address plastic pollution alongside fossil fuels.
A lobby group representing oil and chemical companies, including Shell, Exxon, Total, DuPont and Dow, has been pushing the Trump administration during the pandemic to use a US-Kenya trade deal to expand the plastic and chemical industry across Africa.
As a result of unremitting media coverage, the discharge of plastic waste into the environment, particularly the oceans, is now generally accepted to be a serious global problem, as was superlatively emphasised in the final episode of the Blue Planet II series on BBC television, narrated by Sir David Attenborough…
But facts, as the saying goes, are stubborn things. And the world we live in today has already changed significantly from the world that existed in 1989, when messaging around plastics, even if untrue, was enough to affect reality for the oil industry.
Of all the documentaries that have been made about the dangers of plastic, the one that has stuck with me the most is Plastic Planet. It’s my favorite for numerous reasons, the first of which is the breadth of its scope.
Petrochemicals are the 800-pound gorilla that many fail to account for in their climate defense plans. Termed a blind spot of the global energy system by the International Energy Agency (IEA) petrochemicals are a driving force behind the increasing demand for fossil fuels.
When we discard a plastic bag, an electronic device encased in plastic, a plastic pen emptied of its ink or any of the myriad plastic objects which populate our lives, we usually say we are throwing the object “away.”
I put “away” in quotes because if there were ever any piece of evidence to convince us that there is no “away,” it is the discovery of tiny particles of plastic in the Arctic ice, deep oceans and high mountains.
A sweeping “circular economy” bill in the California legislature aims to drastically reduce plastic waste and boost domestic recycling.
