|
By Ivan Chen  The world is packed with garbage. Plastic and consumerism have played a significant role in polluting the planet. (Credit: Karuvadgraphy/Pixabay) Every year, the world generates over two billion tonnes of municipal solid waste. That number is expected to double to nearly four billion by 2050. Global waste production is currently at unsustainable levels, driven in part by the cultural desire to buy more, even when people don’t necessarily need to. Once goods are used or lose their appeal, they are thrown away simply because it’s convenient. But this way of thinking is not innate to humans. In fact, it’s a relatively new phenomenon that has been ingrained in human behaviour through factors like the invention of plastic and cultural conditioning. The rise of plastics and consumerism Modern plastic has its origins in 1907, when inventor Leo Baekeland created Bakelite. Dubbed “the material of a thousand uses,” Bakelite was a synthetic material that was durable, heat-resistant and could be shaped into nearly anything. Over time, more plastics would be invented. Plastic manufacturing and usage skyrocketed among the Allied forces during the Second World War, as it became a useful substitute for scarce natural resources that had to be preserved. Military equipment, attire and vehicles all used plastic in some form. After the war, plastic was mass-produced and entered civilian life, including in the manufacturing of cars, goods and furniture. The seemingly endless possibilities of plastic excited people, and many believed that a future abundant with material goods was on the horizon. This was a turning point, as plastic helped drive the cultural transformation that turned people into consumers. However, the notion of people being “consumers” wasn’t entirely due to the rise of plastic. People have always needed to consume resources for their survival. Growing food, making clothes and building infrastructure necessitated consumption. But originally, people were much more frugal and thoughtful with their belongings, largely out of necessity. The inclination to buy more than needed began to materialize in late eighteenth-century Britain and nineteenth-century United States, when there was an increase in the commercialization of goods. Shops and department stores were expanding in quantity and physical size, and they openly displayed products for public viewing. While many of these stores primarily served a middle- to upper-class demographic, they cultivated feelings of envy and desire among people. There were growing perceptions that consumption and newness were means of achieving happiness. These ideas soon aligned with corporate strategies to foster more consumption. As manufacturing continued to grow into the twentieth century, concerns arose that insufficient consumer demand would stall profits and lead to an overproduction crisis. Corporations realized they needed to stimulate consumption artificially. To address this, they turned to advertisement campaigns that began encouraging people to be less frugal and to put greater value on material goods. At the same time, products were being intentionally designed with shorter lifespans, a strategy known today as planned obsolescence. After the Second World War, consumerism took off in the West. People were eager to spend money. Plastic democratized material goods, making them cheaper and more accessible. Radios and television became widespread, allowing advertisements to reach people directly in their homes. There was a cultural shift: people were more materialistic and wasteful. This was highlighted in a 1955 LIFE Magazine article titled “Throwaway Living” and encapsulates the life people know today: the convenience of throwing away things after one use. While plastic and consumerism changed the way people lived, they also left behind a wasteful legacy.  An image from the “Throwaway Living” article highlighting the joy of single-use items. (Credit: TIME Magazine) The impact today These shifts and events laid the foundation for many of today’s problems. Excitement about plastic began to wane when plastic waste started to surface in the oceans around the 1960s. This raised alarms about the possible environmental impacts. By the 1980s, plastic was widely considered a major issue for the marine environment, just a few decades after it was introduced. Steps were soon taken to mitigate this problem, including the push for municipalities to start collecting and processing recyclable materials. But, despite these efforts, most plastics continue to enter landfills or the environment. Today, over 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year, with about half of that being intended for single-use applications. Consumerism continues to expand as well. With today’s technology, it has never been easier to sell or purchase something. People are inundated with advertisements on their devices. Social media and influencers are constantly raving about new trends and products. Online shopping makes getting products easy. Much like the decline in product quality decades ago, many of today’s goods are produced without durability and craftsmanship in mind. This is particularly evident in fast fashion, where clothes are cheaply produced with the intention of falling apart quickly or going out of style after a season or two. The unsustainable patterns of the past have not only persisted but been amplified, becoming the ideal business model. Summary The advent of plastic and the rise of consumerism have profoundly shaped society today. Convenience and abundance have led many people to value the idea of having more goods and replacing them as quickly as possible. But this puts strain on the planet’s already overstretched resources. And as global waste production continues to rise and the environment becomes more polluted, governments, corporations and individuals all share a responsibility in tackling this problem. By rethinking our approach to consumption, we can ensure that generations today and in the future live in a cleaner, more sustainable world. Edited by Jess Blackwell, Lumida Creative Services
By Philippe Edde  Canada produces a whopping 31 million tonnes of garbage a year! That's more per capita than any other country on earth. Because of this, you probably think that Canada has great infrastructure for taking care of this trash. But, unfortunately, this is not the case. The Problem Instead of managing and recycling all the waste Canadians create, Canadian governments and companies take the easy way out and dump much of this trash onto other countries. Unfortunately, the incentive for this has nothing to do with sustainability. Instead, it is done simply because it is cheaper to export waste than to develop local infrastructure to deal with it sustainably. To make matters worse, the countries that are receiving our trash are often developing countries like China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. These countries tend to have even worse waste management infrastructure than Canada, so the trash we send to them often gets incinerated, releasing dangerous pollutants into the atmosphere, or dumped into unregulated landfills, eventually making its way back into our oceans. Sometimes, the waste Canada exports is deemed contaminated by international recipients and is subsequently sent back, leaving us with both poor waste management infrastructure and a whole load of waste that will be dumped into local landfills. Of course, that’s on top of the extremely high carbon emissions that go into shipping tonnes of waste halfway across the world and back. Waste export bans Thankfully, some countries have begun to take a stand against this. Since 2018, China has banned imports of 24 types of solid waste, greatly reducing the amount of garbage imported into the country. A handful of other Asian countries have followed suit due to the increasing environmental cost this practice has for their nations. The Canadian government has also seemingly taken a stand against this, having issued no new overseas trash-export permits since 2017. In 2021, Canada also signed the United Nations Basel Convention on hazardous waste, which aims to reduce the harm of transporting and exporting waste by ensuring that such materials are managed and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner. Waste export ban loopholes While committing to the Basel Convention, Canada also signed an agreement with the USA that allows our nation to send its waste to this southern neighbor. This means that while it is illegal to send trash overseas, we can still send it to recycling brokers in the USA. Once it is sent to America, the Canadian government can no longer track or regulate it. The Americans then send it straight to our east Asian friends in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Another loophole is found in the practice of simply not listening to the government and illegally shipping waste anyways. While it is difficult to find stats regarding illegal activities, we know that in the past five years, over 120 shipping containers full of waste have been returned to Canada due to the materials being contaminated. This reveals the unfortunate truth that Canadian companies continue to ship their waste to developing countries with poor infrastructure. What is especially surprising and distressing is that the Canadian government has chosen to keep the names of these companies anonymous, and most of them have simply been let off with a warning. Since 2017, nine warning letters and six fines have been sent to these companies, with the fines totalling less than $9,000. This lack of transparency helps protect those companies from real repercussions that consumers can face. What can we do? Perhaps all this talk about illegal dumping and government complacency has left you feeling powerless in the face of these systemic issues. But worry not: there are initiatives you can support that can make a difference. For example, Nina Azzahra is a 14-year-old Indonesian environmentalist who has raised awareness about this issue on social media and who has even been able to get representatives from Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands to promise to change their export policies. She has also reached out to Trudeau--twice—but has yet to receive any meaningful response. To get involved, you can petition your city councilors to push Canada to make a meaningful commitment to this cause, or follow Nina online and spread her message to raise awareness about this issue. You can also work on reducing waste on an individual and community level by limiting your plastic consumption, promoting upcycling, and encouraging the use of reusable materials. Aditionally, you can support local recycling initiatives. Check out this blog for a great list of recycling initiatives. Canada's plastic waste exportation underscores the need for immediate and collective action to address the global plastic pollution crisis. Canada must take on this challenge and invest in domestic recycling capabilities while reducing plastic consumption and promoting eco-friendly alternatives. By taking a proactive approach and working together on a global scale, we can create a future where plastic waste exportation is an outdated practice and the well-being of the planet takes precedence over short-term convenience. This post was edited by Lumida Editing & Proofreading
|
Welcome to our blog!
This is where you can find more in-depth information on how to reduce waste in our local communities and live more sustainably. Categories
All
Community info below is related to the SLNA itself and not the WRG committee.
Archives
November 2025
|
RSS Feed
Community
|
|