Is Our Reliance On Plastic Getting Drastic? Beauty Needn’t Cost the Earth!

Plastics are everywhere. Literally everywhere. Unless you live in the kind of rustic rural area where a passing bus is an event that the whole family comes out to see, you’re unlikely to walk twenty yards or so without seeing plastics at work. You might see them in the buildings around you, in the cars that drive past you, in … or drifting forlornly in the wind, candy bar wrappers, soda bottles and sandwich wrappers. They’re all items that have only ever been used once, yet will be around forever.

Of course plastics have been invaluable to us as a species and a society, allowing us to achieve many an innovation in consumer products and technical wizardry. But while plastics have helped us herald many a breakthrough, they’re also poisoning our waters, damaging our lands and endangering the health of people all over the world in ways that most of us are completely oblivious to. Here we’ll look at some of the ways in which plastics are seriously damaging our planet and how you can live a perfectly happy life without them, without it coming at the expense of your lifestyle or beauty regimen.

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Plastics have a great rep, maintained through decades of great PR. Ever since the 1950s western culture has been enamored with what plastics can do. It’s not hard to see why. They’re versatile, they’re easy to manufacture and above all… they’re cheap to make. Not only are they ubiquitous and widely used by a huge variety of people for a huge variety of purposes, the potentially damaging effects of plastic are rarely publicized. Yet the fact remains that plastics are proving increasingly ruinous for our ecosystem and our health while our increasing over reliance on them is exacerbating the problem at an alarming rate. In the US alone, 50 billion plastic bottles were used last year. Of those only 24% were recycled. That’s 38 billion plastic bottles a year getting thrown into landfill waste or just discarded on the street, on the road or in the ocean. By 2020 it is estimated that half a trillion plastic bottles will go into circulation. Something desperately needs to change in light of the fact that…

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Plastics NEVER go away

We may as well admit it. We all have a tendency to think that our trash just goes away; that it’s transported to another dimension where it can bother us no more. Out of sight, out of mind. The truth is that it goes into landfills with a garbage truck’s worth of trash going into our oceans every single minute.

Unlike other packaging like wood, paper and cardboard are biodegradable and will gradually be broken down over time, plastics retain their composition, even if they lose their form and shape. Every plastic product ever made is still around today in some shape or form. That toothbrush you had when you were 6? It’s still out there somewhere. The bottle you first drank Pepsi out of, it’s out there!

Even plastics that are disposed of in the sea remain somewhat intact. Though the movements of the water, the heat from the sun and the salt may break down the shape of the object, it will still remain in the water as small, jagged pieces of marine debris called microplastics which can be ruinous for the environment (more on that later).

The impact on marine life

If we don’t change our habits, marine biologists predict that there will be more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050. Not only could plastics outnumber fish, they represent an increasingly insidious threat to marine life. Fish, seabirds and sea mammals do not understand that plastics do not behave in the same way as natural compositions like fish shells and stone. Thus, they often eat microplastics thinking them to be fish eggs or other sources of nutrition. As a result they can find themselves consuming vast quantities of plastics that their digestive systems are unable to process. Thus they carry them around until they die a slow and painful death. The microplastics and plastics do not erode smoothly and form jagged edges which damage sea creatures’ insides. The superb documentary A Plastic Ocean by Australian journalist Craig Leeson, the filmmaker shows these effects in unflinching detail. The films shows an albatross that was found to have 234 pieces of plastic in its stomach. That wasn’t even the highest plastic count that the team had found for that species. They had found 276 pieces in the stomach of a 90 day old chick accounting for 15% of its total body mass. In human terms that would be the equivalent of you or I walking around with 6-8kg of plastic in our stomachs. That’s roughly the weight of 12 pizzas!

The oceanic damage caused by plastics doesn’t just extend to fish and birds. Even large creatures like dolphins and mighty whales have been killed by eating plastics. The worst offender is the humble plastic shopping bag. These are the epitome of waste. Approximately 500 billion of these are used every year and each has a “working life” of just 15 minutes. These go into landfill waste by the billion where they inevitably find themselves drifting through the ocean where they are often mistaken for jellyfish by underwater predators like whales. They become entangled in their innards, preventing them from being able to digest food and they die slowly of starvation.

Our oceans cover over 70% of the world’s surface but they are finite. They are a vital part of our ecosystem. If they die, we die!

The impact on communities

A fifth of the world’s population relies on the ocean for their main source of protein. Communities that are entirely reliant on seafood face severe health risks when eating fish that have ingested microplastics. Fish often mistake microplastics from plankton but when humans eat the flesh of a fish that has consumed them they also consume the toxins that are present within the plastic. Needless to say, this poses a huge range of health risks. It can cause developmental problems in children and teenagers, as well as interfering with reproductive capability, metabolism, kidney and liver function.

This is particularly harmful for communities like Smokey Mountain in the Philippines, a community built atop a landfill where harmful plastics lurk beneath a layer of soil, contaminating the food that is grown, the fish that are eaten and the water that is drunk.

As hard as it may be to believe; if you eat and drink out of plastic containers regularly, you probably have plastic in your bloodstream or your fatty tissue, especially if you consume hot food and drinks out of plastic containers. Plastic packaging and containers release estrogen mimicking compounds that can lead to a wide range of health issues. While BPA is the main offender, it is by far the only offender, so avoid using plastic containers and bottles whether they proclaim to be BPA free or not.

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Your beauty needn’t cost the Earth

Helping to combat this epidemic needn’t mean making profound life choices, merely a matter of making some small but meaningful changes. You might think that this means living a hermetic existence, letting your hair become long, dry and frizzy or your skin become oily or dry, but nothing could be further from the truth. These days, you can even go green in your shower thanks to things like plastic free loofahs helping you stay clean while not contributing to more plastic in the environment. 

You can stop using cosmetic products like toothpastes and exfoliants that contain harmful microbeads as these are a severe health threat to marine life. Many governments have outlawed these tiny yet dangerous substances. Make sure that yours is one of them. If not write to your congressman or member of parliament to voice your opposition to their use. Besides, there’s nothing toothpaste can do that a combination of coconut oil, bicarbonate of soda and peppermint essence won’t.

There is literally never a synthetic cosmetic product that doesn’t have a natural biodegradable alternative. Use naturally and sustainably sourced cosmetics using natural fruit, cocoa and nut butters. If you can get these from a company that uses sustainably sourced materials, so much the better! It will likely save you a fortune, too! Your skin has very specific or special needs? Not a problem. While most of your skin care needs can  be solved using natural products, even special products for decolletage skin care can be made with materials that won’t harm the environment. Sio products, for example, use medical grade silicone which is far more inert and less likely to leach harmfully into the environment like most plastics.  

But of course, health is a huge component of beauty, and a healthy diet is the surest way to a healthy body. Packaging is by far the worst offender when it comes to non recyclable wasteful plastics, and cutting back on pre packaged products will mean that you eat far less processed food and more nutritious whole foods.  Sure, abstaining from plastic packaging as you walk through the aisles of the supermarket can be a daunting prospect with so many products encased in plastic or wrapped in cellophane, but it can be done.

Buy your fruit and vegetables loose and ask bakery departments for a  loaf fresh out of the oven that has not been packaged. These can be kept in reusable ziplock bags or canvas pouches which you take with you. Better yet, but your produce locally from a nearby vendor as these are more likely to be sourced nearby so the foods will have a smaller carbon footprint.  

If you must use plastic bags, reuse them as much as possible as these cannot be recycled.

When getting take out, politely request that your food be given to you in a paper or cardboard container (even between two paper plates is fine) and don’t be shy about refusing them a sale if they do not have an alternative to plastics or polystyrene foam. The more consumers demand an alternative to these harmful packaging materials, the more likely the food industry is to capitulate to the demand.

Recycle where you can and reuse where you can’t and follow blogs like Going Zero Waste for tips on reducing your landfill waste.

It’s not all doom and gloom!

The future is potentially bright. If we curtail our plastic use and recycle plastics when we absolutely need to use them, we can go some way to help mitigate the damage currently done to our oceans and our health. There are even ways to convert non recyclable plastics into sustainable fuel. Imagine that! With so much plastic going to waste, finding a portable and cost efficient way in which to convert all of this unused and unwanted plastic into fuel could potentially end our reliance on fossil fuels for power.