Why do we have anti-plastic paranoia?

Posted on 05 Oct 2022

Plastics have been around for over 100 years. We have been packaging our food in plastic, since the 1950’s. Our homes rely on plastic for light, heat, and water. There are over 30,000 plastic components in our motor cars. Plastics are invaluable in medicine, according to the World Health Organisation, we used 24 billion units made from plastic in the fight against COVID and the modern food industry couldn’t exist without plastic packaging to preserve, fish, fruit, meat, bread, snack food, confectionery etc. 

In summary, plastics are an essential part of modern living. They are a low cost, high strength material with endless applications, saving millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions when compared to any of the alternative materials. 

So, why do we think plastics are bad for the environment? 

According to the BBC’s own annual report (2021) 90% of UK adults use BBC Radio – TV – online each week thus the BBC is the UK’s largest provider of information. 

BBC Blue Planet 2 – October 2017

The series took 4 years to make with 4,000 hours live filming. There were 7 episodes and the final one showed scenes of a scuba diver swimming through a sea of floating plastic, an albatross feeding her chick with plastic and most disturbing a whale mourning her dead calf. 

The commentary by Sir David Attenborough told the viewer that the calf had probably been poisoned due to contamination of the mother’s milk by plastics. The BBC later apologised for the claim, admitting that they had no evidence to support it. Similarly, they did not say where the scuba diver sequence was filmed, nevertheless, the viewer was left with the impression that the World’s Oceans were swimming in plastic. Yet in 4,000 hours of live filming no other plastics were evident. 

BBC Drowning in Plastic – October 2018

This was a feature length film, where once again there was footage of chicks being fed plastics, along with a river completely covered in plastic. 

The river was the Citarum in Indonesia. It is ecologically dead and is claimed to be the most contaminated river in the world. Over a 5,000 square mile delta, the local textile industries pump their waste directly into the river including lead, mercury, and arsenic. The local populace also dispose of their domestic waste into the river. The plastic element floats, all the rest sinks! 

BBC War of Plastics – June 2019

This was 3 episodes, which told us that there were 19,500,000,000 pieces of plastic in UK homes. It also claimed that ‘a truck of plastic waste enters into the World’s Oceans every minute of every day’. 

What the programme didn’t tell us was that some 90% of the tipping was done in Asia (particularly China) and India. At no point did it investigate the origins of the tipping, or those responsible, nor did it state where the information came from. 

Finally, BBC The Big Plastic Count – May 2022

This programme was designed to inform the viewer that ‘recycling plastics doesn’t work’. It claimed how we throw away 100 billion pieces of plastic every year. 

What it failed to tell the viewer was that according to the UK Environment Agency, 56% of all plastic packaging is recycled. Nor did they inform them that UK supermarkets (and many others) will take back plastic articles for recycling, and, if glass was used instead of the plastic bottles for sprays, shampoos, washing up liquids, cleaning products etc, we would add millions of tonnes to greenhouse gas emissions every year, with thousands of extra lorries on the roads to carry the extra weight of glass. 

Summary 

Tim Davie, the BBC Director General, has recently produced a 10-point plan to improve ‘impartiality’ at the BBC. However, since 2017 the organisation has consistently produced a series of programmes denigrating plastics. At no point have they attacked the origins of plastic pollution, each programme has focused on the pollution and not the polluters. At no point have they informed their audience that plastics are potentially 100% recyclable. That plastics use less of the Earth’s natural resources than any other alternative material, or that plastics have lower carbon footprint (GHG) than any of the alternative materials in their manufacture and use. The BBC claim to be the main information provider to the UK public, thus we have the source of plastic paranoia.  

Hopefully, Tim Davie will have some success in making the BBC more impartial and improving their presentations and plastics may be a good place to start. 

As ever, I would welcome your views on any of the items raised, and why not join me on LinkedIn for more regular updates? 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-twigg-3a440b53/ 

#donthateplastic