The real costs of plastics

It’s quite a number, wherever within the range your take falls.

From our coffee cups and cutting boards to toys and synthetic clothing, plastic may feel convenient—even cheap. But a new report from Duke University reveals that the true cost of plastic is staggering.

The report entitled “The Social Cost of Plastic to the United States” estimates that Americans face $436 billion to $1.1 trillion in annual social costs associated with plastics. This is the most comprehensive analysis to date, examining the full lifecycle of plastics—from fossil fuel extraction and production to use, disposal, and mismanagement. To put the scale of this cost into perspective, you would need to spend $33.8 million every single day for 81 years to reach $1 trillion! - Surfrider

Put responsibility for plastics pollution where it belongs

The misinformation, and outright propaganda, fomented by the greedheads on this issue is ubiquitous.

In the midst of a mounting plastic crisis, the biggest plastic polluters keep pushing better consumer recycling behaviors as the solution. The plastic waste problem is not going to be solved by doubling down on our efforts to educate the public to recycle better. It can be solved by policies that prevent hard-to-recycle items from ever being created and requiring producers to take responsibility for the waste their products become...

These companies have been shifting responsibility for their waste onto consumers since the 1970s by publicly blaming litterbugs and emphasizing personal responsibility to recycle while quietly squashing legislation that could actually help reduce waste, like bottle bills that would require companies to collect, reuse, or otherwise process the containers they sold. Public outcry over waste in public spaces is also not new. The mounting accumulation of packaging and disposable goods prompted more than 1,000 legislative attempts to ban, tax, or incentivize the return of disposable items in the 1970s. The beverage and packaging industry successfully spent millions of dollars fighting these regulatory efforts, saddling us with the problem of dealing with the waste their products inevitably become. If this sounds familiar, it’s because these companies have simply taken a line out of Big Tobacco and Big Oil’s playbook: addict, deny, obfuscate. - Earther