Plastics ban will spur innovation
A proposed federal ban on harmful single use plastics is a great example of how consumers can inspire action through policy change.
Plastics have been on the minds of conscientious consumers, especially since seeing images of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and turtles with straws stuck up their noses.
Almost everything we buy is in plastic packaging. We look around the grocery store for plastic-free options – Do I choose the shrink wrapped cucumber grown in Canada, or the waxed cucumber grown in Mexico? We bring our own bags to the grocery store and we cart around resusable water bottles and coffee cups but it isn’t enough. And plastic doesn’t just pose a risk to ocean wildlife it is also bad for humans. It was a recent ban on Bisphenol A (BPA) in baby bottles that made many aware of the risks of certain plastics. Then, we became aware of microplastics. A new study says we could be ingesting five grams of microscopic plastic particles each week, equivalent to the weight of a credit card.
As consumers we have power to influence the marketplace to a certain extent but it is high level policy that forces industry to take action. In order for swift and widespread change to occur at the manufacturing level, government intervention is necessary. Left to their own devices, companies rarely make changes (although it has been known to happen).
The possibility for innovation is the truly exciting thing here. By forcing the hand of manufacturers to find alternatives to plastic, they won’t simply stop packaging a product and give up on retail, they will look for alternatives. Manufacturers have been putting out more and more plastics without having to pay for the burden of recycling. That cost is borne by municipalities and its taxpayers, being us. We are shipping is off to be recycled elsewhere (and now famously sending mislabeled household and toxic trash off, too).
There is a huge opportunity here to shift our thinking and create new, green jobs. By taking a large portion of the plastics out of the marketplace – replacing them with alternatives like paper or bamboo – we could end up with a much more manageable amount of plastic waste and perhaps come up with creative solutions to deal with it properly. We just have to make sure that the new product doesn’t create a new problem.
Of course, there is always that first R in the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra that gets overlooked. We must make an attempt to be super smart consumers and buy only what we need, make good decisions about products, support innovation and buy local.
