Chris Rose in a detailed report highlights how the plastics industry have side tracked this issue and why we now have problem on this scale. THE most thoughtful report on the plastics pollution problem to date.
Why We Suddenly Have A Plastics Crisis
The UN has acknowledged that we have a ‘plastics crisis’ and on December 6th 2017, adopted a (non-binding) resolution calling for an end to plastic entering the sea.
Many see plastic pollution as comparable in scale, threat and challenge to Climate Change. Yet if it seems to have crept up on us ‘as if from nowhere’, that’s not for lack of earlier warning signs, dating back to the 1960s.
We’ve had knowledge about the key elements for a very long time but that knowledge has not been accessed or acted upon. Why not? In large part, it’s because for decades, ‘plastic’ as pollution has been a ‘Track Two’ issue (see my previous blog for an explanation), confined to the slow-moving domain of analysis and in this case, mainly rather obscure science. It was, as my American friends might say, ‘lost in the weeds’.
Plastic enjoyed a ‘near miss’ in terms of becoming a Track One mainstream issue back in 1970 when explorer Thor Heyerdahl got the world’s attention with his discover of ‘a sewer’ of pollution in the deep mid Atlantic but it then sank below the surface of ‘general public’ awareness until the chance discovery of ‘Plastic Soup’ in a Pacific Ocean gyre by sailor Charles Moore (see below). This gave plastic pollution its second signal ‘moment’ on Track One at the turn of the century.