Why is it OK to package something as perishable as food in something as indestructible as plastic?
It’s a question we have to ask ourselves continually, and it’s something at the core of our mission at A Plastic Planet, a non-profit that I am proud to be a part of that is dedicated to dramatically reducing the amount of single-use plastic packaging. Needless to say, I was thrilled to see that a pair of environmentalists created a plastic expiration date sticker campaign.
The project comes from creatives Gagandeep Jhuti and Joe Foale-Groves, and they crafted the labels to look like a traditional food expiration sticker, except they show the end date of the plastic itself—the year 3020:
It’s the year 3020. You are no longer around. Your plastic bottle from 2020 has finally broken down. It takes 500-1000 years for plastics to degrade. That’s why we created the Plastic Expiry Date Sticker.
Why the urgent call to action? Walk into any store, and you’ll see our involuntary and total addiction to plastic.
Recent history has proven that recovering this kind of plastic is not the answer. In 2018, less than 5% of plastic found its way into a recycling bin in the USA, and we can no longer hide behind the myth that we can recycle our way out of this crisis.
Over half the plastic waste from many rich countries gets exported, often to developing nations that do not have the infrastructure to cope with it. We are sending our plastic trash to some of the poorest people in the world, all in the name of “recycling.”
Of all the plastic made back in 2018, approximately 40% comes in the form of packaging. It has little value, is mostly down-cycled, is too difficult to reclaim, and, more often than not, is contaminated. It’s fundamentally the wrong use of plastic in the first place. But the public has no choice but to buy everything packaged in this indestructible material simply because that’s what we’re fed on a day-to-day basis.
When there are so many alternatives readily available, it is wrong to continue to use plastic for such a temporary purpose.
We are all plastic addicts. We have all created this plastic pollution disaster together, but it’s not a time for finger-pointing, it is a time for action.
Get involved. Learn more about A Plastic Planet, and discover Ganandeep and Joe’s campaign here.
