Sustainability is taking responsibility
The main characteristic of companies offering green alternatives is not so much sustainability as responsibility. Sustainability is only a result of taking responsibility and not an end in itself. The responsibility does not start and end with the raw material, but continues in production and distribution and starts again with the end of life of the product, true circularity.
The upcoming European legislative change regarding single-use plastics has a lot to do with it. For decades, the plastic industry was able to run its course, producing even higher volumes every year without worrying about what happened to all that plastic after use.
The result is disastrous, our planet is literally drowned in plastic, from large pieces to microbeads you come across plastic waste everywhere, in our soil, in our water, in our food and even in our own bodies.
Faced with this massive pollution, the plastic industry’s rhetoric is shocking. Surely it’s not up to them, it’s up to us; to the people. It is our consumption urge that causes the plastic soup and not the plastic industry itself, it is only facilitating. A strong example of shirking responsibility.
In recent years, more and more studies and articles about the circularity of plastic have been published. When recycled properly, plastic pieces would be more sustainable than all the green alternatives combined. You will read that these green initiatives are even more disastrous for our environment than plastic. Even worse, I hear you think? Yes, money makes shameless, I read an article in which a plastic producer casually indicated that he mainly wanted to look ahead. Yes, that’s nice and easy when you feel zero responsibility for your past actions.
Most articles and studies about the green alternative revolve around the greenhouse effect. However, our planet would never, ever have experienced such an effect if we hadn’t extracted so much fossil fuels from the ground. Its combustion, the so-called long carbon cycle, causes the current imbalance. But this aside, talking about circularity is a travesty if you don’t clean up the previous mess first.
The price of the green alternative is also frequently brought down, it is said to be much more expensive than plastic. However, a calculation error is made here, the price of the green alternative is a “true price” with no hidden costs for society afterwards. After all, green entrepreneurs are responsible entrepreneurs. If we were to add the cost of global plastic pollution and its cleaning and repair costs to the plastic price, the unnecessary use of plastic would soon be over.
Despite all the supposedly sustainable initiatives of the plastic industry and all its related companies, as long as plastic production continues to increase and with it pollution, the use of plastic is the least sustainable thing to do. As long as the plastic industry does not take its responsibility for cleaning up the pollution, it is not its turn to talk about impact, sustainability and circularity.
