Opinion | Real Solutions to Reduce Plastics Pollution – The New York Times

Source: Opinion | Real Solutions to Reduce Plastics Pollution – The New York Times

Re “To Keep Plastic Out of Oceans, Start With Rivers,” by Boyan Slat (Opinion guest essay, May 28):

When your bathtub is overflowing, what is the first thing you do? Find a mop or turn off the faucet?

Unfortunately, Mr. Slat’s projects for in-the-water plastic collection are mops. Big, expensive, technical mops, but still mops.

Meanwhile, the plastic pollution tap remains wide open. Plastic production is estimated to triple in the next three decades.

Only 9 percent of all the plastic waste ever produced since the start of this industry has been recycled. Also, a large portion of ocean plastic sinks and is out of the reach of surface mops. So the mop strategy has been tried. It has failed.

….

Plastics warm the climate. They pollute during extraction and refining of their fossil fuel ingredients, and during their manufacturing, transportation, storage, use and disposal. Plastics’ pollution disproportionately harms low-income and rural neighborhoods, as well as Black, Indigenous and other people of color communities.

An effective global plastics treaty will recognize plastic’s full costs, drastically reduce industries’ plastic production, and implement the plastic-free reuse, refill, repair and share systems we need to eliminate wastefulness — rather than enabling the problem to grow worse by distracting us with false solutions like cleanups and recycling.

Erica Cirino
Washington
The writer is communications manager for Plastic Pollution Coalition and the author of “Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis.”