Communications and strategy challenges of the plastics Issue – Chris Rose

Any campaigns taking on the plastic crisis face some significant communications and strategy challenges.  These include getting rid of the L-word, the visual ‘less is more’ problem (debris > microplastic), the communications legacy effect and potential motivational dead-ends of beach clean-ups, and the inability of increased ‘recycling’ to deliver a solution.  Advocates also need to persuade politicians to take an entirely new approach to plastic based on a production phase-out, temporary essential use exemptions, imposing responsibility ‘bonds’ or similar measures on allowed uses, and substitution rather than continued reliance on ‘recycling’.

Campaigners, scientists and politicians need first to signal that plastic is an inherently dangerous substance.  The plastics industry can be expected to fight, and starts with the advantage that it has already colonized ‘recycling’ and many ‘community’ activities, most notably on beach-cleans.

(Long blog: download as a pdf here)