CAMPAIGN FOR ZERO WASTE - Supermarkets and oil companies have a lot to answer for. Politicians must explain why they let the retailers and fossil fuel industry get away with a practice they know to be harmful to marine life. Companies are largely driven by money and greed, their shareholders often kept in the dark. All the while millions of seabirds are dying, polar bears are playing with plastic and even shellfish have become inedible in some locations. This is morally unsound!

After the Second World War, humans were finally given the right to life internationally and legally, via the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, brought into being by the United Nations members as signatories. This came about because of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and others countries during hostilities, ending with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the mass taking of life by nuclear weapons.*

In 1946, whales were (sort of) protected by the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) and the International Whaling Commission. In the USA, they introduced the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Unfortunately, these measures have not stopped some nations killing whales illegally.

We aver that other marine animals also have the right to life, and should not have to become endangered to protect them from humans. We also offer that humans should be protected from ingesting poisons as a result of the folly of policy makers, who appear to want to take us to the brink of extinction before putting in place appropriate safety mechanisms.

Surely though, prevention is better than cure?

For this reason we believe that it is expedient to enact laws most urgently, to be recognized internationally by a majority of UN member nations - and therefore propose a 'Plastic Free Oceans Treaty' in draft form, for consideration of the Members, to protect us from a system that is seriously flawed, hoping to create a moral world, less influenced by capitalist institutions, and more driven by sustainable ideals aimed at preventing unnecessary suffering.

There is no point just talking about it, we need action. The US is one of the worst offenders. Their Environmental Protection Agency tells their plastic recycling rate is just 8%. Where more than 90% of plastics is buried, burned or released into the environment. Dirty Birtie!

The federal government is the single largest purchaser of goods and services in the US, spending more than $450 billion on products and services each year, meaning that buying policy could hugely impact on producers.

A US lobby group consisting of 20 Convening Partners and over 550 Endorsing Partners has put an Eight Point Plan to President Joe Biden, differing in approach markedly from our own, but making equally valid observations with :

1. Use the purchasing power of the federal government to eliminate single-use plastic items and replace them with reusable products.

2. Suspend and deny permits for new or expanded plastic production facilities, associated infrastructure projects, and exports.

In the next 10 years, the petrochemical industry plans to increase plastics production by at least 35%, with more than 300 new projects slated for the United States alone. Using cheap fracked gas, the new and expanded facilities planned by the industry produce raw material for an endless deluge of throwaway plastic, approximately 40% of which is discarded within minutes. This dirty industry disproportionately fouls the air and water of poor communities and communities of color.

3. Make corporate polluters pay and reject false solutions. Plastic producers must be held accountable for the plastic pollution they have created.

Voluntary measures like Operation Clean Sweep, small scale financial contributions like the industry-backed ALLIANCE to End Plastic Waste, and the plastics industry’s promotion of “chemical recycling” and “waste to energy” are all dangerous distractions from the massive, global plastic pollution problem we need to face. We need to place the responsibility where it belongs: on the industry that generates the waste.

4. Advance environmental justice in petrochemical corridors.

Petrochemical companies continue to locate new and expanded plastics facilities near existing fossil fuel infrastructure, which means they are targeting the Gulf Coast, Appalachia, the Ohio River Valley, and other communities that already shoulder a heavy burden of oil, gas, and plastic industry pollution. Across the United States, these facilities are often located in and have a disproportionate impact on low-income and minority neighborhoods.

5. Update existing federal regulations to curtail pollution from plastics facilities by using best available science and technology.

6. Stop subsidizing plastics producers. 

For too long, the United States has subsidized the fossil fuel industry. It’s time to stop the flow of financing to the petrochemical industry and the oil and gas industry that supplies its feedstocks. 

7. Join international efforts to address the global plastic pollution crisis through new and strengthened multilateral agreements.

For many years, the U.S. government has hindered the work of a growing number of countries to enact new and strengthen existing global governance structures to address the plastic pollution crisis. It is time for the U.S. to become a proactive partner with key allies to address the global plastic crisis by targeting production, consumption, and disposal. 

8. Reduce and mitigate the impacts of discarded and lost fishing gear.

Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear, including gillnets and fishing traps/pots causes ecological and economic harms. This fishing gear is often called “ghost gear” because long after it is lost it entangles, captures, and kills sea turtles, seabirds, marine mammals, and fish. It changes the marine environment, poses navigational hazards, introduces plastic into the marine food web, and creates a persistent marine debris and pollution problem, with high cleanup costs. 

HELP US LOBBY FOR A CHANGE IN THE LAW - VIA OUR 7 POINT PLAN (SDG14)

With SeaVax falling at the capitalization hurdle, it is doubtful that the millions of tons of extant ocean plastic will ever be recovered. There is no point us banging our heads on walls, it just hurts.

Hence, a change of tack - the next battle we face is turning off the tap - as a damage limitation exercise. What you discard locally today, a polar bear, birds, fish and whales, are eating tomorrow an ocean away.

This is a problem that so far nobody has succeeded with. Wiping away the tears for all those poor marine animals living in the plastic soup, we must concentrate on preventing the prediction that there will be more plastic that fish in the ocean by 2050.

Polluted oceans are driving insecurity from the communities suffering from hunger, to warlords capitalizing on the increasingly scarce resources. These impacts become the drivers of local conflicts which can be cultivated to escalate violence into wars for political control.