Marc De Verteuil
Published:
Sunday, November 20, 2016
There is such drama in this headline. It is intentional. The word “kills” grabs your attention. It is a play on your negativity bias. Our brain is more influenced by danger than pleasure. Studies show that there is more electrical activity in our brain when we see a picture of a gruesome chainsaw murder scene (negative feeling, danger) than an ice cream (positive feeling, pleasure). It is simple evolution. You wouldn’t be here today if your ancestors ice-cream-eating-dopamine release had won out over the fight-or- flight adrenaline rush triggered by the sight of a chainsaw murderer, while eating said ice cream. In evolutionary terms that chainsaw murderer would have been a sabre-toothed tiger or something similarly terrifying.
If I had titled this column “Good news” you might have flipped the page. Now that I have your attention, let me tell you that there is good news from the Caribbean and the world. Retailers in Barbados, representing 60-70 per cent of the retail sector, have agreed to charge customers BDs$0.20 (TT$0.68) for single-use plastic bags, from May next year. There are two good-news aspects to this. First, the expected reduction in plastic bag use and secondly, the fact that this is a private sector initiative. The Barbados government had no hand in this.
Corporate leaders saw the need to act and chose not to hide behind government inaction. No doubt they will also increase their bottom line. Retailers do not make money by giving away free bags.
Plastic does kill, though. The title is not off. Sometimes plastic saves, in the case of a plastic syringes for instance, but not when it comes to single-use plastics, such as plastic bags, bottles, food containers and product packaging. Plastic waste is so abundant that deposits on land and in the sea is now considered one of the characteristics of a new proposed geological era called the Anthropocene, the age of humans.
Future geologists will find plastic fossils, evidence of a consumer culture driven by convenience. That’s if there is a future. It is the same culture that physicist Stephen Hawkings predicts will result in human extinction within 1,000 years, unless we find another planet to pollute and destroy, or mend our ways.
The Anthropocene is dominated by the influence of humans on our planet. Nearly every aspect of plastics plays a part in what defines the new era. Its production relies on hydrocarbons, linked to climate change and pollution. Plastic bags kill one million seabirds, and an estimated one hundred thousand marine creatures including whales, turtles and dolphins. They mistake it for food and end up choking on it or starving to death when it gets stuck in their stomaches.
If tiny organisms such as plankton, shrimp and crustaceans are counted, that ingest tiny bits of plastic, the number of living things killed by plastics can number in the billions. This links plastic with the 6th extinction of species, which is caused by humans, another sign of the Anthropocene.
Finally, plastics end up in humans when we eat the animals in the food chain below us.
Corporate leadership is as important as political leadership. The election of Donald Trump in the United States proves how fickle environmental behaviour is when it depends on political whims.
And it is from the United States that another good-news story comes. While environmentalists despair at the election of Donald Trump some good came out of the election process when voters in California chose to ban all plastic bags, statewide. From now on Californians must bring their own reusable bags or expect to pay at least US$0.10 for a recycled paper bag. California’s ban was heavily opposed by the plastics industry. There is simply too much money on the table for these companies to give up. They used the usual arguments that jobs are more important than planetary health. Barbadian plastic bag manufacturers are no different, but they were not able to sway the majority of retailers, despite Barbados having a small, closely knit business community of who-knows-who.
When the pendulum swings too far, evolutionary survival instinct kicks in. The danger is not a saber-toothed tiger or chainsaw wielding murderer, but out of control consumerism and convenience-led behaviour.
Saying no to plastic bags is a survival instinct. We need to do the same with plastic bottles, plastic food wrap, the excessive packaging that encases products.
The Barbados retailers are an example of positive leadership. Hopefully their peers in the business community in T&T and the Caribbean will be influenced by this example.
Columnist