Brueck, H. (2018, October 22). The real reason why so many cities and businesses are banning plastic straws has nothing to do with straws at all. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/plastic-straw-ban-why-are-there-so-many-2018-7
Abstract: Plastic use in America has become a habit. Many companies, cities, and states are now looking at straws as a “gateway issue” to start bringing more awareness to the plastic crisis. A huge contributor of plastic is plasticware wasted by people when going out to eat. Simply throwing all our plastic in the recycling does not solve these problems caused by plastic when only 9% of plastic actually gets recycled. Progress can be seen in our country’s past surrounding other issues like pollution. For example, the passing of the EPA contributed to a lot of progress. However, many still believe that although many people believe we are doing enough, we are not even close.
Opinion: I think this is a very realistic article. It brings to light the fact that people believe we are doing much more than we believe we are doing. The idea that 79% of plastic ends up in landfills/the natural world, 12% is burned in incinerators, leaving only 9% of plastic to actually be recycled, is pretty insane. Those statistics right there can show how our perspective is very skewed on how we think we are currently helping the plastic crisis. This applies to many other environmental issues as well. We need to be making sustainable decisions that have larger impacts or our impact on the environment will not be changed.
Great article highlighting some misconceptions… most of us think we are actually recycling plastic, which is not true. So what do you think is the pathway forward… improving technology on plastic recovery… bans on plastic? There really isn’t a big market for recycled plastic which is a big part of the issue (unlike aluminum and glass). I can imagine you have an opinion on this.
Moving forward I definitely think we should be taking larger steps to combat the problem. I think opening up the market for recycled plastic is one way that would be very accessible to the masses. I think most importantly we should be focusing on not adding to the issues through bans and replacement products. I think improving recovery technology comes in after this because the issue will keep growing rapidly if we don’t combat the sources.