It's all around us, everywhere we go, everywhere we look. Many people might assume that it's always been like this. But it hasn't.
Plastic is truly everywhere. In just a few decades, it’s become an inescapable part of modern life, permeating nearly every aspect of our lives, from the food we eat (usually wrapped and bagged in plastic and often containing it) to the clothes we wear (60% of which are made from plastic) to the microplastics hiding just about everywhere, from clouds to human placentas to the Earth’s most remote corners.
“Plastic packaging is definitely a major source of plastic pollution, and it can seem totally overwhelming to folks when they go out to get food, especially since the great majority of our food is wrapped in plastic,” says Erica Cirino of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. “It’s estimated that more than 40% of all plastic produced is single-use plastic packaging, which is an astounding amount.”
Before the advent of plastic packaging, food was packed in a variety of materials, from natural substances such as gourds and leaves to, most recently, glass bottles and jars, metal cans and paper products. Today, plastic encases a large and growing percentage of our food: A recent survey of Canadian grocery stores found that 71% of all produce was packaged in plastic, and that baby food had the highest share of plastic packaging at 76%.
There are a few reasons why so much of our food is packaged in plastic. Perhaps most importantly, it’s cheaper to manufacture and transport than alternatives. And as the world grapples with an urgent energy transition, fossil fuel companies jittery about the prospect of decreasing demand for oil are looking to plastics as their next major profit driver — and are on track to triple global plastic production by 2060.
Read the rest of the article to get the whole story, including the huge amounts of plastic waste we're producing, and the myth of plastic recycling.
