The Set-Up

Good deeds take some incentive and autopilot. Between felt obligations and lamblike beliefs that I can change anything, I compile nonprofit newsletters I don’t have time to read and donate to food banks when the algorithms find me. Curious about homelessness and needing work experience, I took an internship on Skid Row without realizing how the position was isolated from the participants. To fill a pet fix, I nursed motherless kittens, routinely rubbing tiny hinies, so they can defecate. Pissed at capitalism and having a pup in the fight, I picket weekly with the Writers Guild. I blink bemused when their members thank me for showing up. Butts need to poop, right?

Earlier this year, I worked with the glorious Studio SAKA to create a video for a nonprofit that has the miniature goal of saving the planet (watch our video on their homepage). I researched carbon sinks, deforestation, agriculture, and extinction, but what’s preoccupied me since has been plastic.

Plastic shouldn’t be my problem.

Amid all the fuss about reusable bags and paper straws, I’ve shrugged and chugged my Capri Sun. I have a full-time job, personal challenges, and, as shared above, I’m doing the work. And I recycle: frozen steamers, bubble wrap, OJ cartons. I live within 10 mi. of six recycling plants, so people get paid to take care of it.

Yet only 5% of used plastic gets recycled, that out of over 40 million tons produced by the US every year. John Oliver’s exposé on plastic has ruined my life, so I invite you to ruin yours.

Conservation is self-preservation. I can adjust to kick wealthy ass.

Origin Story

So let’s back up—who does plastic think it is? Most plastic is made of crude oil and natural gas, materials that do not regenerate at the same rate they are used. Once extracted from the earth, oil and gas get refined, broken down, then polymerized, meaning molecules bond into long chains called polymers. This process, which emits over 232 million tons of gas annually, is what makes plastic strong, so strong, it doesn’t decompose for hundreds of years. Sliced and diced then for shipping worldwide, polymer pellets called nurdles are the original microplastics.

Pebbly, sprinkly, microplastics are that credit card in your stomach. When trash isn’t splintering into the water, nurdles from fallen shipments gather across seas. One such convention is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, larger than France plus Spain plus Germany.

Resembling food, microplastics get ingested by seabirds and fish, but being not food, it does not get digested. Animals feel full, but without actual nutrition, they starve, or simply get eaten in the food chain that leads to humans. So for those who don’t like sushi, you’re in luck: by 2050, the ocean will have more plastic than fish.

WHYYYYYYYY

Well Timmy, we live in a bad, bad world, a world ran by opportunist oligarchies, sensationalized scarcity, and generational greed. Plastic drifts, not because fishermen love littering, but because of yacht rock, the embarrassing soundtrack to income inequality.

There is too much plastic because too much plastic gets made. The plastics industry markets false fixes, so they can sell us more plastic.

Money

The plastics industry, mainly the oil and gas companies who source the materials, boomed during WWII by making helmets and machinery. To keep it going, the post-war industry switched clientele and entered consumer goods and packaging. The 20th century gave us plexiglass, lighter pipes and planes, computers: innovations that stand the test of time. They are durable, meaning one and done, so to grow financially, a key direction was expanded. The industry redirected to single-use products, disposables that comprise half of production today.

When the smog curdled and the milkman disappeared, folks of the 60s knew what was up. So the industry got smarter, and seeing such responsive sympathy, they softly put the responsibility on the people.

Blame is a beautiful thing. Campaigns to recycle and not litter are led by Keep America Beautiful, an alliance of plastics beneficiaries, producers and consumer goods. Don’t throw your Legos in the street, but why would Coca-Cola and Formaldehyde band together to spend tens of millions of dollars if profits from these campaigns weren’t greater? If Hollywood paved an 80-film career for an Italian playing an “Indian,” why not hire and cry with him over trash?

People are sentimental globs. We like being nice and don’t like it when we’re mean. So as the junk pools despite our refusal to litter, we place more faith in recycling.

Recycling: Garbage

Recycling is the idea that what has been used can be remade; wishcycling is the hope that anything can happen. Have you ever stood in front of your trash can and recycling bin and thought my bowling ball just might be recyclable? You and all of New York.

It’s the coping mechanism that keeps us intact, that everything we unwrap still has value. In practice, recycling plants sort plastic into three piles: recycling they can afford; trash that prices their machinery and labor out; and garbage that Asia takes. China bought our plastic and paper for decades as they have the resources to reproduce these “raw materials” for cheap. But as packaging lowered in quality and grew more complicated to sort, China industrialized their own waste to source; it leaks into their water and soil like how ours does. When China ended our deal, America and the West struck bargains with India, Southeast Asia and Africa. These places did not have the infrastructures to convert landfills they were not forewarned of. They still don’t, so as illegal dumping persists, these nations pile and burn.

—But you don’t toss plastic blindly! You check the packaging; you follow the rules; you don’t even bowl. But what if, again, like the campaigns and the bargains, the industry is behind the labels?

If you’re not a homeowner, have you received a guide on what these numbers mean or what the letters stand for? Fliers are not sustainable, but there’s email, ad campaigns. If one doesn’t have a smartphone or the time then, couldn’t the explanations just be clear on the products?

For an industry so determined to get you to recycle, there’s a hell of a lot less details on how you’ll do that. Only two out of these seven symbols are widely recyclable while a third is only sometimes (#1-2 and #5 respectively). The majority then merely tell you they’re plastic, which doy—that’s why you were checking for chasing arrows.

So why are the same arrows, shape, and color used across what’s recyclable and what isn’t? The plastics industry has lobbied to put these symbols on every product they make, yet has lobbied against all improvements on what those symbols could look like. It’s been drilled into people that we can trust chasing arrows and any product we buy that has them. More precise accuracy, to the observant public, might suggest that there is something we should not trust.

As clean energy picks up, Big Oil is doubling down on their back-up plan in plastic. All plastic can be recycled, but it’s about who can as NPR’s Laura Sullivan puts it: “Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than once or twice. On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It's made from oil and gas, and it's almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh.”

Over half of all plastics ever made has been produced in the last 18 years. Years of garbage in the water and money in the banks of ExxonMobil and Nestlé Waters within a 609 billion-dollar industry. So what’s in your wallet: their hands on our world and your body?

Here’s What You Can Do

You can take a nap.

That was either a lot of info or a lot of horrifying info. Civilization is exhausting. Fall asleep to a silly video.

When you wake up, drink water and do something small you desire. Sometime after, forward this newsletter to someone who likes to read or watch John Oliver.

Plastic shouldn’t be my problem, but I’m making it mine because it’s a problem we got. I’ll be back next week with game plans. I wouldn’t leave you hanging—what am I, poop?

Nicole