Brandon Pettenati

Ms. Boyle

ENG 160

October 26, 2021

The Plasticized and the Victimized

A society consumed by plastic and disposables. You go to the store and nearly every product you can buy is made of plastic; cheap plastic that will ultimately end up in a landfill. Even products that are meant to be non-disposable are built to be disposable. The expensive computer you buy, made to be thrown away after a singular component fails. The even more expensive smartphone you buy, built so small that even a certified repair store cannot fix it. This is the modern age. An age full of cheap and disposable plastic products and no other options. We need to change our ways and we need to start here in New Paltz. Having Ted Talk and political speaker Van Jones come to SUNY New Paltz is a great way to educate people on the increasing issue of plastic in our society.

In the early 1970’s plastic bottles would begin to rise in popularity. To this day nearly every beverage is sold in a plastic bottle. Within the past 20 years, plastic has become an increasingly concerning issue amongst the entire world. The US produces far too much to self-recycle that it must be outsourced to another country. Plastic along with other garbage used to be shipped to China until they outlawed it a few years ago. It now goes to other developing countries that lack proper recycling capabilities. These third world countries that are receiving these large sums of plastic will typically burn it as they have no other way to get rid of it. Doing so leads very toxic chemicals to be being released into the atmosphere. It then subsequently harms the people that live and work in those areas.

Van Jones is a political activist who is dedicated to helping reduce plastic and waste altogether. SUNY New Paltz has done a good job of reducing plastic on campus, however there are still many students and families in the surrounding town that use disposable plastic daily. Jones is not only an activist for the environmental effects of plastic, but also the effects it is having on low-income people. It is important that we choose Jones to represent this issue as he is the most qualified to do so.

One of the biggest problems of plastic stems from that people will not recycle. They cannot be blamed either; there is no incentive to do so because the consumer receives virtually nothing in return. With plastic bottles and aluminum cans, you’re supposed to use a bottle deposit to make sure they’re properly recycled. When PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottle deposits became a thing in the early 1970’s, these bottle deposits would give back $0.05 per bottle (in the United States). The problem is that these bottle deposits still only give back $0.05 per bottle nearly 50 years later. Author Dorothy Broom states,

“Less harmful plastics and ‘bioplastics’ aren’t the solution. They don’t break down in the composter if they do, it is glacially slow. Hang around the environmental movement for a while and you learn the four Rs—refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle— in that order. Given best estimates that only 15% of plastic is actually recycled, those first three Rs become all the more urgent. It’s pointless trying to stop a flood with a sponge at the door. We need to act upstream to stop it at the source. I hope for the sake of our children and grandchildren that we are willing to make the change” (64).

Broom has her mind set on what the solution is; stop using plastic so heavily. If a dam was broken and water was flooding a town, the logical thing to do would be to fix the dam, rather than pile up sandbags around the buildings and live like that. Broom is completely right with what she believes, the best way to reduce the amount of plastic pollution is to stop using it altogether. Plastic has been in steady use since the 1970’s and we still do not have good methods to recycle it. After 50 years of use, it is clear that recycling will not solve the issue.

The next issue with plastic and “recycling” is the human rights violations. It is no secret that many countries, the US in particular, like to dump their trash elsewhere. Adeola states,

“Annually, more than 50 percent of the officially acknowledged volume of exported hazardous waste is channeled to less developed nations. The number of countries involved in export and import schemes, volume of trade, and properties of materials involved are often difficult to establish due to covert and criminal nature of the transactions (USGAO 1993)” (45).

Not only plastic, but a plethora of garbage, toxic wastes and other harmful undesirables are dumped to many different developing countries. The problem is that the people that live in these countries are being negatively impacted and cannot do anything about it. For example, Abogbloshie is a district in Africa home to the largest E-waste dump in the world. This is a clear example of environmental injustice. Places like Abogbloshie have so much E-waste that their society and economy is entirely based on scrapping parts from old computers and such. The people that live in places like these are often poor, non-white people that have no say over the issue. This leads to several serious health problems in the people that live in these areas.

I believe that Van Jones is the best candidate to represent the issue. Jones describes three issues with plastic in his Ted Talk, the production, use, and disposal and how it negatively effects specific groups of people. To start off with, production; places such as cancer alley in in Louisiana are known for the Petrochemical plants used to process oil into plastic. This area of Louisiana is unsafe for inhabitance, it is also predominantly poor non-white citizens. The next part of the issue is that poor people often only have the option to buy products containing extremely cheap and harmful plastics. The final part is where these plastics are disposed of. Many of these plastics are then shipped out to developing third world countries where they are burned, then releasing toxic chemicals and taking the lives of the poor people that live in these areas. Jones is extremely knowledgeable on this subject as he previously was President Obama’s special advisor for green jobs in 2009. It is important that we stand up for these people and minimize our use of plastic. Jones is the best choice as he is a political speaker, he knows and understands how to convey current issues in a manner that will help persuade others.

Many people will try to argue that plastic is essential to our society and economy, however there was a time when it was not. There are two possible courses of action that can be taken. One, we stop using it altogether and find a new resource that is similar enough to take its place; or two, we change how it is produced and recycled. Either way, something needs to be done. There is no ignoring this issue at this point.

The US has a major problem with plastic. Not only is it bad for our environment but it’s also bad for people. Van Jones is the exact person we need to come to New Paltz. Not only does he convey critical information, but he does so in an informing and entertaining manor. Having an activist speak for this issue is the best way to get people to acknowledge the issue. Everyone knows that plastic is bad, but not everyone knows that our way of life is harming less fortunate people all around the world.

 

 

Works Cited

Adeola, Francis O. “Environmental Injustice and Human Rights Abuse: The States, MNCs, and Repression of Minority Groups in the World System.” Human Ecology Review, vol. 8, no. 1, Society for Human Ecology, 2001, pp. 39–59, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24707236.

 

Broom, Dorothy. “Peak Plastic: The Proliferation of Plastic.” ReNew: Technology for a Sustainable Future, no. 133, Alternative Technology Association, 2015, pp. 62–67, https://www.jstor.org/stable/renetechsustfutu.133.62.

 

Jones, Van. “The Economic Injustice of Plastic” TED, Nov. 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/van_jones_the_economic_injustice_of_plastic?referrer=playlist-why_climate_change_is_a_human#t-743291.

 

Kantai, Tallash. Confronting the Plastic Pollution Pandemic. International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), 2020, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep29273.