Plastic Crisis – 10 Visions
/A lot of work now to reduce plastics is ‘baby steps’ because we must start somewhere. We need some successes to encourage more people to care about the impact of plastics on ourselves and all living things on our planet – to get the ball rolling to push back on the laissez-faire approach toward the plastic producers that seems to be the status quo around the world. We know that it is an uphill effort and will take a lot more people becoming alarmed/getting involved.
I’ve been thinking recently about what I would like to see beyond ‘baby steps’…and have picked 10 ‘visions’ to share in this week’s Plastic Crisis post.
Plastic-Free labeling on food/cosmetic packaging is common – and plastic-free products are widely available. Remaining plastic packaging is required to be free of toxic chemicals particularly endocrine disrupting chemicals.
Tea bags, cans, and snack wrappers don’t contain plastic and there are no single-use plastic shopping bags.
Plastic bottles for food and cosmetics are phased out…replaced with glass or distributed in dry form and packaged in paper/cardboard.
Biodegradable tires have been developed – created without toxic biproducts and recycled at the end of life into new tires. Fragments from tire wear biodegrade in the environment.
Plastic producers are paying for plastic waste disposal (using less toxic methods than available in 2025…i.e. not releasing toxic chemicals into the air, water, soil…so no landfill or burning, etc.)
Mining of landfill material from high plastic times is beginning to reduce the ‘time bomb’ toxicity of the plastic era.
Synthetic carpets and plastic/vinyl flooring are replaced with biodegradable materials.
Water treatment plants filter out most microplastics …and technology is being developed to reduce nano-plastic particles as well.
The perception of plastic is ‘toxic’ rather than ‘clean/sterile’ as it was historically.
Chemicals are considered toxic to humans until proven safe. There will be no more ‘forever’ chemicals that are new and heavily used….and then discovered to be toxic.
