Plastics Industry Getting Concerned About Your Concern About Plastics, But Fighting Any Real Action
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he plastics industry has been confronted by a robust "anti-plastics campaign," lamented Patty Long, the interim president and chief executive officer of the Plastics Industry Association, the conferences' other co-host. To illustrate the industry's challenge, she showed a 2018 National Geographic magazine cover of a plastic bag iceberg in the ocean, an image that showed up in other presentations, as well. "If I am going to be honest, I must say it's been pretty uncomfortable these last six months to a year as we have watched images of plastic strewn over beaches and pictures of sea animals with ingested plastic," Long said. "We see it over and over and over again."
Ed. - Aww! Poor baby!!
At the same time, the industry has been fighting state legislation that seeks to curb plastics pollution, including pushing back on more than 400 bills in dozens of states. "Unfortunately, a lot of those are going to pass," she said. Fighting legislation is just one front in its battle. Long also described the industry's publicity push to get people to love plastics instead of only worrying about their impact.
She said the industry was lobbying state lawmakers, working to get pro-plastics presentations into schools and developing a website to carry the industry's message and give its workers something positive to say about plastics when they are confronted about their employment.
It's a problem, she said, when "a 27-year-old might not want to come work" in the plastics industry. In fact, three Millennial generation workers in the plastics industry who spoke at one session confirmed that some people out of college are shunning the industry because of environmental concerns.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06072019/plastic-waste-ocean-global-summit-industry-solutions-recycling-climate-change
= new reply since forum marked as read
I've been teaching this for about 5 years in my writing classes ("Proposing a Solution" ) starting in 2015 with Elizabeth Kolbert’s book Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change. There are several organizations attempting to get the plastic out of our oceans and our fish, but I donate to 4Ocean which sends you bracelets made from the plastic they've extracted in your name! I Hope this doesn't break DU posting rules, but this seems like one worthy charity facing off with a very serious problem, part of what is perhaps the worst danger facing humanity.
As for the plastics "industry," they got nothing good to say about it...
