THE FINGER OF BLAME FOR ALL THIS PLASTIC WASTE
It’s all talk, talk, talk
Recent debates get hot, very hot about all the plastic waste – ‘whose fault is it’, you might well ask? Well, get ready for the answer.
Plastic Waste - It’s everywhere; it’s on the side of our roads; on the beaches; in the oceans; in our food and now we discover, even in our blood.
There is even plastic in places where humans have never lived, in the Arctic, in the Antarctic, at the bottom of Oceans, in the deepest jungles- how did it get there? How is this possible? Apparently, plastic objects, particles and fibers are: moving on the wind; in the rivers; and throughout the ocean currents - so now nowhere on earth is pristine anymore and someone must be responsible for that. Who is it?
Plastic pollution knows no borders, it’s not confined to developed countries or underdeveloped countries, so it’s everyone’s problem, but who caused it? Some accuse the producers who made the products; some accuse the consumers who used the product and mishandled the disposal process; and some accuse Governments who are to blame for all of our ills.
There is no agreement on the answer to this question so in this edition 4 of WIZARDWORDS I’m looking into the situation trying to figure out what are the dynamics of the problem and how can it be untangled so that we can start on a solution.
But do you agree Horatio?
Most of us agree that Plastic pollution exists and that there should be some sort of response. There is little or no agreement on what this response should be and who needs to be changing their game. There is no consensus on who should be held accountable (unsurprisingly), who should change what and who should pay, to whom and how much.
There are guilty parties – which one is it?
We’ll look at three categories of actors in the debate (out of the many involved), which are: Producers; Legislators; 
and Consumers. All three are eager to point the finger at the others and will protest that they are benign actors with no other choice but to continue as is. So, let's sort out: who takes the blame; who is innocent; and who must fix the problem.
You made it so You fix it.
First, there are Producers, comprising big corporations who produce the polymers and there are food producers who require advanced packaging solutions to bring their products to market. There are also packaging designers making design decisions to find the optimum balance between protecting the product and the ease of use by consumers. There are the retailers who stock and sell these products to consumers and the logistics companies who transport products over 1000’s of kilometers to distribute products as widely as possible across the world.
These actors are all part of a value chain that has evolved to be ever more efficient and pervasive to distribute packaged products throughout every corner of the globe. This is our achievement as a society - that everyone can get everything, everywhere, at all times. Regional production; seasonal productions; and scarcity of goods have been retired as old-fashioned.
If the global production of plastic is something like 400 million tonnes then about 180 million tonnes of plastic material is in this packaging chain. Single-use plastic (SUV) comprised about 70% of pollution from plastic packaging (135 million tonnes globally). It’s a lot and there is currently no way to collect or reprocess this volume of material ‘economically’ (it’s a cost - see WIZARDWORDS Ed3)
The prime motivation of all of these Actors is commercial; they operate solely for profit. All of their decisions are based on the pursuit of profit, It defines and confines them all. So, when they are asked to make different choices to reduce plastic pollution, there is only one framework possible for this group which is; “will it make me more money?”– answer “No, it could cost you money”, it’s hardly surprising then they’re unwilling to act against their interest.
No amount of shaming and finger-pointing will change their nature; their decision framework or their interests. That should be well understood in any dealings with Producers. Recent attempts to apportion responsibility with EPR schemes and the like have been greeted with tokenism at best. These decision-makers are operating at the whim of their shareholders who care only about dividends rather than any notion of social responsibility. As such it's 
complete nonsense to expect that Producers will have an epiphany and make changes where there is no clear profit advantage even if they might publically pronounce their agreement with the cause for the change.
Given these dynamics, are producers to blame for the problem of plastic pollution. They say NO, they bear no responsibility for mishandling the disposal of the packaging they produce. It’s reminiscent of how gun manufacturers claim that ‘guns don’t kill people, it’s the wrong people with guns that kill people’- which is, of course, gaslighting in the extreme.
It's conclusive that YES, Producers are responsible for the plastic pollution they create. This conclusion is damning as there is ample evidence that taking steps to engage in the collection and reprocessing of the waste they created is actually ‘good’ for business but they can’t and will not see that. If Producers don’t want the Finger of blame, then they should begin to lead the conversation on how to collect and reprocess what they produce and invest in the whole process to a significant level. Only then can they be seriously considered as solution seekers and not only blamed for causing the problem.
You said you would but you didn’t do it.
The next Group is Legislators who are sure that they are not to blame for the mess we are in. On the contrary, YES they are the target of the Finger of blame. It’s been more than 70 years now that plastic waste has been a prevalent or even critical problem and only recently has there been any sort of legislation to address it. The recent ban on single-use packaging introduced in Europe in 2020 is really, too little, too late by all accounts. There are already more than 9 billion tonnes or more of plastic introduced into the environment in those 70 years and it's already too expensive to do much about it. So there is no way to dodge this one, Legislators own it (or is that share it).
Legislators are reactive to voters who put them into power, so normally they concentrate on the activities which will get them elected again, that is their nature and prime motivation. Hopefully, Voters ask more of politicians than just to give us back policy addressing the obsessions of the loudest voices. Governing is about seeing what needs to be done and balancing work plans and resources on the most consequential issues. It's their job to decide what those issues should be.
For all this time then, Plastic pollution has not been on the positive side of the balance and even now, it’s not really a serious issue deserving of significant budget allocations - ‘you say it is but where is the money?’. Politicians like Edouard Philippe PM of France 2017 said in his inaugural address that “all plastic will be recycled by 2025”, and even now 5 years later there is no money allocation in the French budget and no plan to spend it (maybe in the next 3 years). It seems that Politicians and governments like to talk about plastic pollution and the need to fix it, but they don’t like to divert money to do anything about it. Maybe there are actually no votes in it - fulfilling promises is not necessary it seems.
Clearly, creating policies and laws (like the plastic tax 2021) which forces Producers across the value chain to make changes in their behavior, but it is a blunt instrument. It punishes producers who are making an effort to the same degree as those who are not. There are no incentives built in to transition to a better model and to make solutions appear and grow. It’s merely another form of revenue gathering along with window-dressing to show that something is being done – but nothing is being done except talk and so plastic pollution continues to rise.
Recently, Legislators offered Grants in the search for innovative solutions to these problems. They said explicitly that they wanted to find innovative solutions. It turns out that the money is allocated to more and more research rather than actual innovations which could have a chance to make some impact. It might have been in the early 90s that it was said that: “governments should not be in the business of picking winners”, these Grants claimed to be for finding winners and yet, it seems not – more research is not innovation.
Governments, national and regional have failed comprehensively over the past decades to recognize and act on this problem whilst it was still (somewhat) manageable. It’s now out of control and has become a global crisis, affecting everyone. The price for the fix is now beyond the means of any organization, any country, or indeed any region, numbering in the Trillions of Euros. As each year passes by with still no plan in place to even mitigate the growth of pollution from plastic packaging, it becomes increasingly difficult to see where Legislators can contribute anything impactful at all. It’s a fail and a big one at that.
You bought it so you own it
The Third group is consumers who most say are the innocents of this crisis but who always fail to take responsibility for their actions when disposing of plastic waste. In their defense, consumers don’t know what to do differently as they rely on Producers and Legislators to tell them where and how to dispose of waste. In some parts of the world, there is no guidance and no facilities and so waste goes into the river and goes away. So how can they be blamed when they know no better?
Even in developed countries where sophisticated and expensive collection systems are offered, not all consumers make the effort to adhere to the best practices. Those that do often wear the badge of honor as a ‘responsible recycler’, only to find out that most of what they offer goes to incineration or landfill anyway. Before the Basel Amendment (2022) was passed, Countries could export their rubbish so that relocates the problem to someone else – problem solved?. Now, it must be dealt with by each country and therein lies the realization that some new system is needed because in most cases, the existing systems cannot cope with the volume of waste or the complexity of the reprocessing.
Recycling rates are going down, volumes of waste are going up, populations are increasing and so are the global effects of pollution. Are these problems really for consumers to solve? Yes, they are because along with the act of purchasing a product comes the responsibility to dispose of the bits you don’t want. This concept isn’t new, it has always applied but it seems that somehow consumers have a blind spot for Packaging (and cigarette butts). Garbage night or Recycling night in developed countries was all about the process of bundling waste into a bag or a bin and leaving it out for the Commune to collect. That was supposed to be enough, but in the Last edition (WIZARDWORDS ed3.0) it was explained that this process is vastly too expensive to collect and process for reuse of any of these materials. Their value to the chain was many times less than the cost of collection. So, the problem grows.
YES, Consumers are to blame for buying the goods with packages around them. The plastic which makes up this pollution wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t bought by consumers in the first place - so Consumers create the plastic by the act of buying it. However, modern packaging performs a very important function to protect the food from contamination and to prolong shelf life. It should follow then that if a solution should be found to this crisis, the first imperative should be to persuade consumers to reject the products which are offered with complex packaging in favor of those brands which do not. There must also be some other solution to protect the food developed.
Who needs to change what and by when
Before Supermarkets existed, most products were sold from bulk stores and local producers, they were carried home in use-again baskets and decanted into storage vessels at the home. Modern versions of this model are on the rise in most countries and should become the new norm. It’s up to Consumers to recognize that they hold the key to the crisis either continuing or declining by the choices they make in their daily/weekly shop.
Will the guilty party(ies) please stand up
So now, to add up to totals, to apportion shame and ridicule, there are:
- Producers are to blame for making packaging and products with no thought and no investment into dealing with the waste.
- Legislators are to blame for ignoring the problem for so many decades and even now paying lip service to deal with its consequences.
- Consumers are to blame for accepting products that cannot be reprocessed locally and end up in the environment as either toxic smoke from incineration, toxic particles in groundwater, or poisoning the oceans forever.
In short, everyone is to blame for this mess, and everyone should work to find what they can do to reverse it before it becomes an impossible task for our children to deal with. Otherwise, the Movie “WALL-E” becomes a prescient documentary instead of a cautionary fantasy, look at it again and see the future we must accept if nothing changes.
Finding out who caused the problem is always the first step to prevention and remediation.
The finger has been pointed – and now.
Everyone has a part to play and there are changes to be made across the whole value chain for any possible solution to be impactful.
There is no more time left: we’ve already studied and researched the hell out of this problem. What’s required now is a plan; a blueprint; an innovation; a brave new approach; a seismic shift in the way things are, to make it all go in the right direction.
Then we have to act together on this plan and make it happen so that our home can return to the sort of place that we would want to live in.
Anyone who tells you that this is not a crisis and it isn’t happening already is either lying to make money or unable to see beyond their own self-interest. Today, there is no plan, there is no effective action, there is no global solution, and we desperately need one, Urgently.
The Next edition will look into some possible solutions and find out if there are any promising signs.
Posted on 2022-05-24 10:30
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