"When they had all had enough to eat, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.'" John 6:12 (NIV)
‘Life in plastic, it’s fantastic’, sang Aqua in the excruciating ‘Barbie Girl’.
But in reality our world is drowning in a sea of plastic. Quite literally.
I recently heard Dr Lucy Woodall, a scientist from the Natural History Museum, explain how, whilst looking through a microscope at nematode worms in deep-sea sediments (as one does), she kept noticing tiny brightly coloured threads. They turned out to be plastic waste, and further studies have suggested that remote parts of ocean sea-beds may contain 4 billion fibres per km2. It’s almost unthinkable, but every time we forget to take our own bags when shopping or buy plastic-bottled water we make it worse.
It’s hard to fathom the links between the oil we extract, the gaudy disposable plastic toys we give to children, the convenience of plastic bags and bottles, and the hard evidence of the damage plastics are doing to ecosystems and human health, but the evidence is clear.
In a world God made to be waste-free, where everything gets naturally recycled, plastic is the idolatrous symbol of our desire for both products and life itself to be cheap and disposable.
The problem is that plastic is anything but disposable. Because micro-organisms can’t eat polyethylene it simply sits in landfill for 100s of years. Even though sunlight breaks plastics down (they photodegrade) this leaves microscopic plastic pellets and fibres that are now filling our marine environments.
Can we change? In the UK over 66% of our plastic still goes to landfill whereas in much of Europe it’s now less than 10%, so yes, a total ban on plastics in landfill and a plastic tax on producers to build in the environmental costs would both help, but it’s also those daily decisions that every one of us makes.
Life in plastic, it’s turning drastic!
Dave Bookless
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