As Earth Day nears, let’s talk plastic pollution
Picture this — your bottle of body wash, discarded and forgotten, now sits floating in the Pacific Ocean, mingling with millions of others in a toxic soup of waste. Like you, I toss containers into the trash without thinking twice.
A few weeks ago, I threw away a bottle of Axe body wash, but just before I did, I glanced at the ingredients. As my eyes scanned the long list, they caught on something at the bottom. In small-branded print, it said, “Unilever.” What’s Unilever? Perplexed, I looked at another item, a bottle of Dove shampoo. It said the same thing — Unilever.
After a quick search, I discovered Unilever is one of the most lucrative brands in the world, and one of the largest producers of single-use plastics. The company also owns Ben & Jerry’s, Degree, Suave, Popsicle and others — raking in billions of dollars in annual revenue and pumping thousands of tons of plastics into our environment. I go through about three large containers of body wash, shampoo, and conditioner per year in shower products alone, and I’m only one person in a world of eight billion.
Plastics now reach every corner of the Earth. According to an article published by the Geneva Environment Network, plastics have been found on Mount Everest, in the Mariana Trench and in the Arctic. Plastics are now ubiquitous with the natural environment.
How did we get to this point? The answer is complex, and although consumers play a role, it begins and ends with the companies that make plastic our only option. Plastic in some form has been around since the early 1900s but became widely popular in the 1960s as a sanitary, versatile and cheap alternative to materials like wood and glass. From cars to fast food packaging to clothing, people couldn’t get enough of it. It wasn’t until the 1980s, however, when scientists discovered that plastics never fully decompose, but instead, break down into ever-smaller pieces, known as microplastics. As consumers became increasingly aware of plastics’ harm, conscientiousness increased.
Companies profiting from plastics were listening and came up with a “solution” to ease consumer worries. Enter recycling. Recycling was initiated in the 1980s and plastic companies have been pushing it on consumers ever since. In an effort to continue growing profits, companies who make plastics such as ExxonMobil promote recycling as a way to combat the waste they create, even though they know that recycling will never fix such a gargantuan problem. The fact of the matter is, recycling is expensive and not a feasible alternative to producing new plastics, which is less expensive. The issue is purely economical. Instead of finding true solutions, companies are redirecting it onto consumers so they can continue to profit. Today, 90% of consumer products contain plastics, and less than 10% of it is recycled.
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Companies want a complacent consumer, so they make us think recycling is a much larger production than it actually is. Through manipulative marketing, we assume we’re doing good by tossing our items in the recycling bin, but really it’s all a strategic tactic to keep us buying.
We are voraciously consuming these products — bottles, bags, straws, soap containers — and polluting our world, while conglomerates like Unilever and ExxonMobil line their pockets with the destruction they’ve wrought.
Our beaches are dirtier, our lakes less clear and the air more polluted. It’s time regulations were put in place for these companies so that progress can be made. We must become vigilant in creating a cleaner world for future generations.
Whether we like it or not, this is our reality. A major part of the blame has to be placed on greedy corporations, but that doesn’t mean we as consumers are innocent. We are the ones using plastic products every day. We all have a responsibility in restoring our planet. Picking up bottles and cans on the sidewalk or using reusable grocery bags are small ways to help but won’t lead to seismic change. To really move the needle, we need to look at what's worked before.
In 2022, the Philippines signed into effect The Philippines’ Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) law that fines companies nearly $200,000 for failing to manufacture plastic that isn’t sent directly to recycling facilities. The first year, companies were required to divert 40% to recycling, increasing by 10% each year. By the fifth year, 80% will be turned into recycling facilities. India, South Korea, Japan, Chile and the European Union implemented similar policies. In the Philippines that year, plastics dumped into the ocean fell by 80%, and it cut plastic-produced greenhouse gas emissions by 25%. This policy implements a system that places the responsibility of recycling on the company, not the consumer.
Given the current political climate in the U.S., it will be an arduous task to replicate a policy similar to what is in place in the Philippines. Many opinion articles detail why plastic companies should pay for their harm but neglect how to initiate change. To get legislation in place, consumers have a role to play. Call your congressperson, join a protest, share information with everyone you know, donate to research. Most importantly, become more intentional with the items you’re consuming. It starts with us, the ones who consume plastic products and keep plastic companies afloat.
If we continue on this road of indifference, the coming years will only compound the destruction we’ve caused. We’re quickly moving toward a world that looks very different from the one we’ve enjoyed for eons. The truth is that companies don’t care about you and they don’t appear to care about the environment. Their priority is the bottom line. If we don’t change the system, we can’t change the outcome. With impetus from consumers, governments will hopefully enact laws that restrict the use of plastics. These laws will force companies to change their wasteful ways, helping us build a cleaner future.
(Brooks Barbee is a Haywood County native and a sophomore at Christ School in Asheville. The original version of this op-ed was written as an assignment for his AP Language and Composition course taught by Mr. William Gordon. Earth Day is April 22, but awareness of human consumption should be a concern every day.)
