Cheap and plentiful coal fueled the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom. As coal usage increased, the skies darkened and cities blackened. Sunlight was so poor, rickets became a significant problem. While coal pollution was an obvious problem even in the mid-19th Century, clean air laws were ineffective. Brits enjoyed an open hearth. A law requiring a closed stove would have had a huge beneficial impact on their health, but Brits insisted on having the “freedom to enjoy” a blazing hearth. From 1840-1900, up to 1.4 million people died from that freedom. In 1952 the London Fog became a killer fog claiming 12,000 lives, ultimately leading to the Clean Air Act of 1956 and Clean Air Act of 1968 in the UK.
During a five-day period in 1948, twenty people were killed and thousands sickened by a cloud of air pollution from a local factory that formed over the town of Donora, Pennsylvania. This set in motion efforts to clean up the air in the US. The dense, visible smog in many of the nation’s cities and industrial centers finally prompted the US to pass the 1970 Clean Act.
What about the threat from plastics pollution? You could see coal dust and smog, but understanding the threat from plastics pollution is a little different. Sure, you see plastic bags in trees or in the bushes, but how does that equate to a health risk? Once they fall apart or get into the watershed, how can we see what effect they have? Unless you’re performing necropsies on animals, how would you know eating plastic kills unwitting creatures? And, finally, who can see microplastics with the naked eye?
But, of course, what you don’t see can hurt you. The chemical components of those plastic particles in our filtering organs and our blood are already known to disrupt hormonal activity. No doubt there’ll more news about plastics lurking in our bodies.
Most of us live in a sort of bubble, minding our own business. We consume, we discard, a truck takes it away, the town cleans our streets and parks. The plastic accumulating all around us is easy to miss. But you don’t have to go far to see it.
Members of Plastic-Free Easton went to work at two sites at last spring’s stream cleanup–the stream adjacent to the Weis parking lot and the Bay Street ponds and stream. The volunteers collected 23 bags of litter, each bag weighing about 25 pounds in a two-hour period. According to Mary Yancey, who organized the PFE cleanup, about 80 percent of the trash was plastic. “We also found a complete truck floor mat, a large plastic tarp, and a perfectly good limb lopper.”
“After we finished, we did a little nature survey with Kristen Lycett from Phillips Wharf Environmental Center leading the count,” said Yancey. “We saw tadpoles in the creek, raccoon footprints, red-winged blackbirds, and nice native plants including elderberry and cedar.” The next day she went back and saw “two groundhogs happily munching away in the grass right next to the (Weis) site.”
Beneath all that trash is still our natural world. The creatures no doubt enjoyed a small respite from all that litter. It’s no different for us. It’s just a matter of scale. It’s raining plastic all over the world. It’s found in the Arctic snow, at the lowest depths of our oceans, in the stomachs of so many creatures who mistaken plastic for food, in our air, food, and landscapes—even in our blood. No wonder so many countries–like Canada’s recent ban on single-use plastics–are legislating restrictions on plastic bags and single-use plastics. All the plastic ever made is still in the world with us. The US– #1 producer of plastics in the world—has no national strategy, leaving individual states and even individual communities to do something about it. Until our country’s leaders see that plastics pollution is equal to pollution crises of the past, we can only do what’s in our reach, one plastic bag law at a time.
Plastic-Free Easton is a citizen-led effort to reduce plastics pollution in Easton. Contact us at [email protected].
Marion O Arnold
Plastic-Free Easton
Chris Roberts says
That’s terrible that all this happened i remember hearing about this but we still have plastic .we used to get milk in glass bottles
.we need plastic gone.
Jim Harris says
Your assertions are obviously based on conjecture rather than fact. Moreover you fail to mention the multitude of benefits that plastics have made possible. Examples include life saving medical devices, operating room garb and equipment that are easily and effectively sterilized, light weighting of automobiles and trucks thus improving fuel efficiency, and improved food storage and delivery helping improve nutrition in the world. You also ignore the growth in cardboard use caused by dependence on Amazon and other mail order businesses.
No doubt effective recycling is critical for the future and a quick look at the Plastics Industry would reveal efforts to turn recycled plastics into their feedstock. Of course personal responsibility rather than government mandate is needed to prevent waste and and unsightly trash. You should adopt another state’s mantra: “Don’t Mess with Maryland” to encourage personal responsibility to choose reusable bottles and shopping bags and put trash where it belongs.
Steve Lingeman says
To the Editor:
It’s obvious from this letter that the plastics problem is way more than single use bags (SUBs). There is no doubt that single use bags present a problem. However, I stood in ACME and did an informal time test. Checking out using customer supplied bags requires about twice as long for store staff as it does for single use bags. So resistance from store management will be stiff. I do not believe that just eliminating single use bags only in Easton solves the problem either. It is a county wide problem. Eliminating SUBs should come with some assistance from the county in the form of a training or education program for retailers.
Maybe going cold turkey is the way to go? ALDI does not offer any bags of any type. Should we just eliminate SUBs and let the chips fall where they may? Like Al Silverstein, I believe it’s a county wide problem and should be addressed there. At the very least, a comprehensive study needs to be generated that explains the issues in detail. Like Lakeside in Trappe, the plastics problem is a bird that will come back to roost with very expensive solutions if not addressed early.
Mary Yancey says
A few things come to my mind reading this article and the comments. One, I a plastic bag floating in the water column looks like food to some kind of marine life through every stage of it’s degradation. Full-size bags look like jellyfish which are food for sea turtles; mid-sized pieces of plastic floating in the water column look like kelp, and tiny microplastic bits look and act like algae or fish eggs to smaller fry and filter feeders.
Personal responsibility hasn’t worked so far, even by those of us who care very much about the environment. Try going a week without purchasing any plastic packaging. Let me know how you do. The plastics industry (read: fossil fuel industry) has a business plan to force more and more single-use plastic on us consumers as we turn away from dirty coal, oil and natural gas toward cleaner energy sources. They initiated a false PR campaign in the 1970’s when people began worrying about plastic pollution, promoting the idea of recyclable plastic and personal responsibility while knowing that it is not a viable solution. That misinformation and feel-good campaign continues to this day, while the small fraction of our plastic waste that does get recycled (Less then 10% in the US ever, now down to about 5%) is actually just shipped to poor countries where it accumulates in toxic piles and much of it is incinerated. This is OUR waste, rendering massive harm on the environment and on the poorest most vulnerable communities in the world for many generations to come. The solution is not in each person taking “personal responsibility” for their waste. The solution is for us to join together to tell the plastics industry that their toxic, forever products are no longer welcome in our community. This involves legislation, as they never make these changes voluntarily.