By Green Councillor Kevin Pressland.
Green Councillor Kevin Pressland is a passionate campaigner for nature and the natural environment. Here he highlights the threat to nature posed by our society's love affair with single use plastic.
This article originally appeared in The Isle of Thanet News
We have only recycled 10% of 7 billion tons of plastic
Thanet is gifted with a wonderful coastline and prime agricultural land but do we really value it?
Do national and international governments throughout the world care as they continue to resist legislation to thwart the production of single use plastics?
As quoted by the United Nations world society has, ‘only recycled about 10% of the 7 billion tons of plastic we have created since its invention and things are likely to only get worse’. Simon Reeves Plastic in the Med | Mediterranean with Simon Reeve | The Mediterranean has a serious plastic problem. | By BBC Two | Facebook shows implications.
Society claims to be concerned about the generation to come yet it is willing to sacrifice this for supposedly convenient packaging that has damaging consequences for soils, seas, food systems, biodiversity and yes, our health. We are quick to fly the flag of the NHS and rightly so, but do we not have the responsibility to prevent illness in the first place as government, local authorities and as individuals and businesses?
Government ban
This is another example of lack of full systems thinking. Nature does not produce waste like we do. It has effective recycling systems keyed into its very functioning. If we are to live on a healthy diverse planet and by the way, diversity is now diminishing and this is why the new geological age is here – the Anthropocene 7th mass extinction caused by us humans. The diversity of the planet is being diminished and single use plastics are playing a massive part in this decline.
We need governments to completely ban single use plastics and enable local authorities to have the financial resources to set up commercial composting facilities that would adequately compost truly biodegradable compostable packaging. The government needs to enable the creation of networks from product manufacture to product sale to consumer waste and then commercial composting a merry go round of efficient use, a cyclical system. As a bonus these systems could produce energy to houses and council facilities etc. Our current systems of production to waste are inadequate to create these cyclical approaches.
young people lead the fight back
Young inspirational people like Ella and Amy Meek @kidsagainstplastic, Myra Rose Craig, Vanessa Nakate, Daniel Koto Dagnon @DanielKotoDAGNON, Greta Thunberg, Nyombi Morris, Lesein Mutunkei, Luisa Neubauer, Autumn Peltier and Malala Yousafzai are leading thinkers who see the harm our present systems are wreaking.
Don’t the young, other creatures, the biodiverse habitats we share the world with, that supply us with water, food and air to breathe, deserve better? It is in all our interest to address this issue, not keep kicking the can down the road.
If we look at just a monetary perspective, it will cost more if we do not act, money will not protect what is being lost and will be lost.
We need to act now!
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