Stick it to the Man: Not your mate who drinks nitro through a straw
Jamie Clarke | He/Him
As a member of the ~vegan community~, I spend a lot of my time scrolling through vegan food on social media, and no time at all writing that essay I was meant to do last week. One thing I’ve noticed as I scroll through delicious plant-based food while ignoring all responsibilities is that vegans can be total dicks to other vegans
Reducing environmental impact is a major reason many people eat a plant-based diet, but this can lead to floods of angry comments every time a well-meaning animal lover posts some food on their feed that came wrapped in plastic packaging.
It’s time to start hating on Coca-Cola instead of your friends. We need to stop hating on ourselves, and each other, for not being perfect environmental warriors all of the time. This polluted, melting, and suffocating planet isn’t all our fault. Whether it’s a vegan drinking a bottle of Coke on their lunch break, or your flatmate drinking their vodka Coke through a straw, corporations have as much of a responsibility to the planet as us consumers.
Plastic has become a hot topic of environmental activism over recent years, and for good reason. Plastic in our oceans kills millions of animals a year, with nearly 700 different species currently known to be affected by plastics. According to National Geographic, there’s also growing evidence that the microplastics our plastic waste breaks down into could be harmful for humans too. Plastic doesn’t only pollute our oceans, either—plastic is made of oil or natural gas, and so its production results in significant greenhouse gas emissions. 8% of the world’s oil produced is used just to make plastic, and this is predicted to rise to 20% by 2050. [1]
Now, you might be thinking that the angry vegans are right, and that we should be getting riled up every time someone uses A Plastic. Plastic, after all, sucks. I’m not saying it doesn’t. But, can you really blame your friends/consumers for this crisis? If corporations are producing this plastic, and most governments lack the regulation, infrastructure, or will to recycle it, can we really put the onus on the consumer?
I hate to burst your bubble, but no amount of students bringing their reusable cups to the coffee shop can save the world when we’ve still got companies producing a metric fuckton of plastic. The plastic packaging sector, for example, produces the most plastic waste out of any sector by a large margin—around 140 million tonnes of plastic waste per year. [2] Coca-Cola recently revealed that they alone produce over 3 million tonnes of plastic packaging a year—the equivalent of 200,000 bottles a minute. [3] So, while, yes, maybe you should choose to drink tap water over a bottle of Coke, remember that this choice means fuck all really as long as companies like Coca-Cola continue to give no fucks about the planet.
I can hear the “what about recycling?” question from everyone that I’ve now made feel utterly useless in the fight against climate change (sorry). Recycling plastic is nowhere near as effective as just reducing plastic production itself, but let’s float the idea for a minute. Recycling plastics is obviously far better than dumping them in landfill or on the ground, as keeping plastic from becoming waste can help keep it from entering the ocean. But, less than 20% of plastic is recycled globally, and no, this isn’t because of that time in first year when you drunkenly left your empty scrumpy bottle on the Dixon Street steps instead of recycling it. [1] It’s because countries just don’t have the infrastructure in place to recycle the sheer amount of plastic waste that corporations produce.
Plastic pollution isn’t going to go away until governments and corporations work together, and start taking the health of the planet seriously. China spent 30 years importing around half of the world’s plastic recyclables, but in 2017 it banned the majority of these imports due to environmental concerns. [4] Due to this ban, it is predicted that there could be over 100 million tonnes of displaced plastic by 2030. [2]
While stopping this import can be seen as a progressive step by the Chinese government to focus on their own environmental issues, imported plastic only made up around 15% of China’s entire plastic waste. [5] China only recycles around 25% of it’s own plastic waste, choosing to incinerate most of the rest. [5] Which, as a bonus, releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Countries relying on other states to deal with their mess for them, only for those states to then refuse their waste or burn it up into greenhouse gases, isn’t exactly what we might have pictured when we smugly put our old marmite jar in the recycling bin. While we can continue to use recycling facilities as much as possible, to make a true global change it is up to governments to regulate and disincentivise the production and waste of plastic by big corporations.
Let’s imagine something insane for a second—a world where free-market capitalism doesn’t dominate our society. A place where those in government actually cared more about their grandkids having a livable planet with breathable air, than the money in their pockets. Sorry, I should stop making such hilarious jokes in such a serious issue—let’s get back to reality. Yes, the world sucks, and will probably continue to suck. I’m not saying we’re totally doomed, or that you may as well start littering the streets with plastic bottles and throwing plastic straws directly at turtles. I’m just saying that every time you direct your anger to someone using a plastic straw, remember that’s how the corporations want you to feel. So please, keep reducing and recycling, but from now on direct your anger about dying turtles towards the Man, not your friend drinking coffee out of a single-use cup.
Parker, Laura. "Fast Facts About Plastic Pollution." National Geographic, 2018.
Hannah Ritchie and Max Rosner, "Plastic Pollution," Our World in Data, Plastic waste generation by industrial sector (2020)
The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment 2019 Progress Report, Ellen MacArthur Foundation UN Environment Programme (2019), 19
Sean McNaughton and Kelsey Nowakowsi, "How China’s plastic waste ban forced a global recycling reckoning," National Geographic, 2019
Lin, Chen, and Shinichiro Nakamura. "Approaches to Solving China’s Marine Plastic Pollution and Co2 Emission Problems." Economic Systems Research 31, no. 2 (2019): 143-57.