The world is having another go at agreeing on a plastics treaty.
Negotiators from 180 countries have gathered in Geneva to try to decide what to do. Most of the news media use the language of crisis: France24 talks of a ‘global crisis’ of ‘life-threatening waste’, the BBC and ITV both use the word crisis in their main headlines, and the widely-respected Professor Richard Thompson is reported by the Guardian to have called on ‘delegates to act decisively to “look next generation in the eye”’.
There is undoubtedly a serious need for action at the global regulatory, political and industrial scales. I hope (perhaps somewhat forlornly) that we will soon have something to celebrate.
In the meantime, I continue to learn of more ways in which we casually, unthinkingly pollute our environment and ourselves with plastics. This morning, listening to Farming Today, I accidentally discovered another – polymer-based seed coatings sprayed onto crops such as oil seed rape to minimise losses caused by pods cracking open prior to or during harvesting, spilling the seed on the ground and so rendering it uncollectable (except by birds and other wildlife). Granted, not all the commercially available sprays used to do this are microplastic-based, but a lot are. Indeed, Langlet and co-authors published an article in the journal Polymers last year articulating the urgent need to transition to microplastic-free seed coatings, and suggesting some possible solutions. I’m sure none of the scientists who developed the seed coatings had actually planned to do harm, but it is another example of how efforts to solve perceived problems (nature’s inefficiencies and stubborn refusals to lend itself to maximal monetisation, for example) can have unintended and potentially dreadful consequences.
But we’re also capable of simply not thinking things through, even when it isn’t complicated science and technological development. In previous pieces on this blog, we’ve written about foiletti and balloons – two ways we literally throw plastic into the air and don’t care where it lands. And Stirling Council have recently highlighted another. Having decided to date the founding of the Royal Burgh to 1124 and King David I’s accession to the throne of Scotland, the Council organised 900th anniversary celebrations throughout 2024, and decked out the city centre with string upon string of plastic bunting.
I’ve been watching this growing ever tattier, ripping and shredding in the wind.
Yesterday’s unseasonal Storm Floris only accelerated the bunting’s demise, sending scraps of purple and white plastic swirling amongst the leaves and down the drains.
Can we really not make more sensible choices?
