Plastic pollution in Pennsylvania? Yes, and it’s affecting all of us. Did you know microplastics have been found in every river, lake and stream in Pennsylvania, including our drinking water? But it’s not just a problem in our state. Plastic pollution is now a worldwide crisis.
Plastic pollution is even making climate crisis worse. An international group of researchers reported that plastics pollution is destabilizing all nine planetary boundaries that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth. That means everyone on Earth is at risk.
The report documents serious impacts all along the plastics fossil fuel supply chain —extraction, production, use and disposal. The researchers are urging immediate action to regulate plastic production and disposal.
Plastics produced from fracked gas are already responsible for 12% of total oil demand. Plastic production could account for half of global oil consumption by 2050.
We are living in a sea of toxic plastics. We are eating, drinking and breathing microplastics. Plastic has been found everywhere on Earth — from deepest oceans to highest mountains, in clouds, and all around the globe. Scientists now see plastics as a global human health crisis. Microplastics have been found everywhere scientists looked for them in the human body, causing significant health risks to humans.
Thousands of chemicals that leach from plastics enter our bodies via food wrappers, storage containers, and cooking utensils. Some of those chemicals can cause all kinds of health problems, including immune suppression, endocrine disruption, Alzheimer’s, stroke, obesity, decrease in fertility, lung disease, and cancer.
Microplastics are also a threat to biodiversity, because they harm all wildlife. Microplastics have been found in insects, birds, mammals, and plants. By 2050, every seabird species on the planet will be eating plastic and there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
What you can do
- Refuse single use plastic
- Never accept a plastic straw and say why
- Never ever accept a plastic water bottle and say why
- Use a stainless steel water bottle
- Consume less.
- Use a Berkey water filter
- Go to Beatthemicrobead.org to find out what personal care products contain microbead plastic
- Stop buying fast fashion
- Buy cotton, hemp, linen or wool clothing instead of polyester, acrylic, lycra, spandex, fleece or nylon
- Use cloth shopping bags. (you don’t use plastic bags, do you?)
- Repair clothes and other items instead of trashing them
- Use Mason freezer jars to store food in the freezer
- Use cloth diapers
- Use glass or steel food containers for leftovers
- Buy food at a local Farmers Market
- Use cloth napkins
- Compost food waste instead of using a plastic trash bag
- Help cleanup efforts at beaches, lakes, or rivers
- Write a letter to a company or manufacturer using excessive plastic packaging. If you get no response, post it on social media.
- Educate your family, friends and neighbors
- Contact your legislators and demand action
- Your ideas…
- Please share this information!
We need to understand that plastic contaminants and their toxins stay in the environment and accumulate in our bodies. Treating plastics as pollutants rather than just litter helps people realize the need for immediate and systemic change.
Can we count on you to reduce plastic in your life?
Great article! Plastics are a problem from extraction to disposal. However, due to the way crude oil refining works, they will never account for 50% of oil use. When you refine a barrel of oil, you get a certain proportion of plastic feedstock, jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, ship and heating oil, lubricants, and tar (for asbestos) just because they were blended in the crude in that proportion. This means that in order to reduce drilling, we need to simultaneously reduce plastic, gasoline, diesel, and all the rest, in concert.
Here are some other ways to reduce your consumption of plastic:
1. Buy cotton muslin or mesh produce bags. Some of them now come with tags with the “tare” printed on them, so the weight of the bag can be subtracted when computing the price of your produce or bulk items.
2. Buy bulk instead of pre-packaged, and put it directly into your cotton muslin bag, not the plastic bags the store supplies. Don’t take the twist-tie – note the PLU # on your phone or on a little notepad.
3. For things that you can’t get without plastic packaging, buy the largest quantity that makes sense. The volume of the food increases as the cube of the average dimension of the package, but the surface – where the packaging is – only increases as the square. So you get more food per square inch of plastic.
4. Make more stuff from scratch. Did you know that cardboard cartons are coated with synthetic wax, which is a form of plastic? It’s seeping right into that organic oat milk. It turns out that you can make your own oat milk. I make a concentrate that I keep in a jar, and just blend it in water each time I want some. Also, now that all the peanut butter comes in plastic jars, I grind my own peanut butter and put it in glass.
5. Grow food. Produce from your garden is not only healthier for you, it also never has to touch plastic, ever, unless you so choose.