Following the trail of plastic

Hey everyone!

In honour of Earth Day on the 22nd of April, I thought I would pin the spotlight on sustainability. This is quite a different article to my previous ones as it is a bit more research-based. I thought a good way to introduce my passion for sustainability is to start with a bit of background on plastic - the enemy of the low impact movement. I had never really thought about how plastic first came about, let alone when the low impact movement developed.

When plastic was first produced, it was celebrated, quite a contrast to popular opinions today. Well, how did this unbelievable change of opinion occur?

The first synthetic plastic ever produced was called Bakelite and it was made in 1907. It was commonly found in knobs, dials, costume jewellery, toys and in the electrical systems of cars. It became rather popular during the First World War as it was used in military equipment but soon afterwards, plastic's domestic durability was discovered.

While plastic infiltrated many industries, no one thought of the environmental repercussions until the 1970s. The detrimental effect plastic had on human health was discovered but little was done to remedy it. Some people started to reduce their use of plastic slowly but it was still a cheap and easily accessible alternative that was found almost everywhere!

In 1975, the first disposable drinks bottle was created and this was a major win for the soft drink companies, however, people started to see these disposable plastic bottles piling up everywhere and were not happy about it. Luckily at this time, recycling became more popular and it enabled ordinary citizens to dispose of their plastic waste responsibly.

Now that people were aware of the toxicity of plastics in the earth's biosphere, more campaigns began to try and stop the production of plastic.

Unfortunately, plastic is still made of petroleum-based products but scientists are trying to make more plastics widely recyclable and trying to reduce waste during the production process. A more recent and exciting development is bioplastic! It is a plastic-like material that is made of plant crops and it is completely biodegradable.

Even though we still have a long way to go to reduce our reliance on plastic, there have been some major improvements in the world lately that are very comforting.

Canada and the EU have aimed to ban single-use plastics by 2021 to reduce the amount of unrecyclable goods being produced. It is very heart-warming that the EU has signed this bill because so many countries are part of this union and now more people will be aware of the dangers of plastic.

San Diego has restricted the use of all Styrofoam food and drink containers.

The UK has banned the manufacturing and use of microbeads, these are especially dangerous as they are extremely small and can infiltrate many remote places. In 2018, there was a microbead spill off the coast of Durban and I was still picking up tonnes of them on a beach in Cape Town late last year.

China, Kenya and Morocco have implemented a ban on thin plastic bags in supermarkets.

India will eliminate all single-use plastic in the country by 2022, with an immediate ban in urban Delhi. This is fantastic news because of India's large population.

Morocco has banned plastic bags and seized 421 tonnes of them in one year and has virtually replaced all plastic bags with fabric.

Hopefully, those new laws and policies cheered you up but there is still a long way to go so why not join in and make a difference?  I will have a follow-up post regarding easy environmentally friendly swaps to make and other habits that you can implement, so stay tuned!