Surfrider Foundation: Rise Above Plastics VIDEO

The shocking amount of plastic waste funneled into our oceans often falls by the wayside when pitted against other environmental issues. Surfrider Foundation is here to show just how pressing an issue it is with its "Rise Above Plastics" campaign, Treehugger reports. Surfrider's animated PSA puts litter in a horrifying light, showing an ocean brimming with plastic, and a whale that looks like it's been dipped in trash.

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[Peter Hammar]

The Surfrider Foundation's TV public service announcement "Rise Above Plastics" certainly is shocking and true, effectively horrifying us, but it's also largely useless as a means of effectively changing how we deal with plastic waste, both individually and as a society. The implied criticism of people who fail to "rise above plastics" comes across as somewhat unfair, when it's nearly impossible for most of us to avoid the stuff.

More helpful would be to show us how we can "rise above plastics" to get real results by recycling ALL of our garbage. How can we get control of our personal and communal waste streams, so that NONE of this stuff gets into the oceans in the first place?

100% of our waste should be processed and at least neutralized, if not repurposed, e.g., ALL icky, sticky, "non-recyclable" garbage, ranging from snotty old Kleenexes to banana peels, can be added to existing biomass processes. The energy in "non-recyclable" food wrapping and packaging can be reclaimed in extremely high-temperature furnaces -- not traditional, polluting "incinerators" -- that can generate electricity with nearly 100% exhaust recapture, all within today's technical capabilities. Each house should have just one "garbage can," the entire contents of which can be sorted by machines. All garbage contains huge amounts of kinetic energy waiting to be harnessed, along with useful materials that can be directly recycled.

Many perfectly healthy, good, and useful products come entombed in plastic packaging or are made of plastic. That's a fact about which we can do little or nothing. Try complaining EFFECTIVELY to the many hundreds of corporations with head offices in the US and factories in China; see if you can get them to accept lower profits by using less -- or no -- plastic in their packaging and products. That's just not going to happen. Biodegradable packaging, though certainly "nice," represents a tiny fraction of the world's packaging and products.

Some tell me, "Just don't buy those plasticky things." Sorry, but I need them. At least in our lifetimes, we will not be able to avoid most plastic packaging and content in the products we really do require in our daily lives. With the straightforward solution of 100%-effective waste management both possible and societally affordable, but just not politically palatable for some, I will not accept a personally punishing boycott of plastic products and their packaging just to make a "statement."

Think about it: The Toyota Prius automobile, favored by many environmentalists, has an exceptionally high plastic content vs. traditional -- and easily recyclable! -- metal. The Prius's plastic helps reduce its weight for better mileage and to compensate for its heavy batteries consisting of large, plastic cases filled with toxic chemicals. When all Priuses hit the junkyards someday, most will be shredded and added to the world's growing pile of plastic and other waste.

What should civic-minded, potential buyers of plasticky Priuses do instead of driving? Walk? Take "public transit," a never-ending joke in most US cities and nonexistent in the suburbs and exurbs? Please don't say, "Ride bicycles." Try that with a 30-mile commute on busy, dangerous streets, or in the Central Valley where daytime temperatures routinely hit 100F, or anywhere if you're sick or elderly. Dealing with environmental problems MUST remain practical -- in the case of plastics, through high-tech (but expensive) waste management.

We can do much better, and soon -- but watch out for the reactionaries! 

The real problem: effective trash management costs lots of money, and marine animals don't vote.

We find ourselves in an era of an anarchic, near-lunatic "populist movement," incorrectly labeled "conservative" and largely endorsed by many Republicans desperate to return to power. Noisy, ad hoc groups and their broadcast mouthpieces mindlessly chant "No new taxes!" and even "No taxes at all!" while mumbling about spendthrift "socialists" and even "communists." These delusional anarchists don't want to pay for civilized amenities such as improved water systems, better sewage disposal, good schools offering something beyond rudimentary babysitting, good roads that don't tear our cars apart and cause traffic congestion, and high-tech timed traffic signals that can reduce gasoline consumption and cut air pollution, much less save "a few" sea creatures with expensive trash handling.

Meanwhile, the cowardly California Senate and Assembly are not going to aggressively act, recognizing the common good far into the future with advanced, statewide waste processing, something that costs lots of money now and is therefore unacceptable to more than half the state's voters. 

Where I live in the unincorporated part of Fresno County in the Central Valley -- a hotbed of "Patriot" illogic -- until three years ago, all of our garbage went into local landfills or was carted off to other parts of the state. County residents got curbside recycling, as limited as it still is ("No styrofoam, no tinfoil, no Saran Wrap, no waxed-paper containers, no dry-cell batteries, no this, no that"), only because the normally politically cautious Fresno County Board of Supervisors, always aware of its "Teabagger" constituency, was forced to recycle -- and raise our garbage collection rates to pay for it -- or face millions in state and federal fines, laws passed during progressive "spurts" of the past few years.

Despite Fresno County's obvious need to avoid a series of crushing fines, facts endlessly explained in local newspaper and TV news stories, some of my neighbors still bitterly protested this "unnecessary government interference," chanting the "No new taxes!" mantra as if that were a birthright.

When I became politically aware 45 years ago, I watched Dixiecrats and their reactionary friends in other parts of the country bitterly oppose almost all of the early environmental legislation. That reaction continues to this day. As a college history professor back then frustratedly hissed at me through clenched teeth, "NOTHING ever REALLY changes!"

Or, as my Scandinavian relatives would say, "Uffda!"