Campaign For Change

Tossing a plastic bag or container into the garbage or recycling after using it for a few minutes may not seem like a horrible feat. Yet, millions of metric tons of single use plastics end up in ecosystems around the world each year, especially because less than 10% of all plastic produced since the 1950s has been recycled.¹ There are many negative consequences of plastic making its way into bodies of water and onto land: larger pieces of plastic affect wildlife through ingestion, plastic production releases greenhouse gases, and microplastics enter animals, food, and water, to name a few. Cleanup of all of the plastic that is incorrectly discarded may seem impossible, especially because we are consuming plastic at a rate faster than it is breaking down; many single use plastics last in the environment for hundreds of years.²  Therefore, rather than focusing on cleanup efforts, it seems imperative to direct our attention to diminishing the amount of plastic that humans consume each year in order to limit plastic pollution.

Providing a guide for action for a specific audience is helpful to encourage change and to increase sustainability within the context of a problem. It provides resources and examples of how to achieve this change. My campaign’s goal is to provide businesses (whether that be large global corporations such as Target and Amazon, or small businesses) with tools in the form of a guide for action, to make conscious decisions regarding their plastic use. This guide is intended to decrease a businesses’ contribution to plastic pollution in the environment, make plastic alternatives accessible to everyone, and ensure that these changes are economically sustainable for the company. It is important that a business takes measures to achieve all three pillars of sustainability. 

Businesses are large contributors to plastic pollution because packaging that is used once and then discarded is responsible for 40% of all plastic pollution.³ Figure 1 demonstrates the wide range of single use plastic containers that we often rely on. Reducing plastic consumption and pollution requires action from multiple people and organizations. On a large scale, we need large industry reforms that turn away from the use of fossil fuels. Since plastic is created by burning fossil fuels, this would result in less plastic production. Furthermore, individuals should also do their part to buy single use plastics. However, a societal change such as switching away from fossil fuels and therefore away from plastic, which has such a large impact on our lives, will require tremendous amounts of money and infrastructure changes. Individual action may also be hard to achieve and while individual action has its benefits, it may not have large scale effects like we need. Therefore, targeting this issue to large businesses will have far reaching benefits that may be more plausible than if targeted towards government organizations. This campaign is intended to reach business managers, employees, entrepreneurs, and those involved in the supply chain for any product.

The objective of this campaign is to provide resources for businesses to be less reliant on plastic. This includes demonstrating ways to switch away from plastic bags and show what other alternatives are available. Furthermore, I plan to include eco-friendly suppliers that are able to partner with these businesses, such as biodegradable products, or products that do not use plastic packaging. I will also encourage them to provide recycling plants at their stores. If they cannot do this, I will provide a link to How2Recycle which is a label that goes on a product to provide information that makes recycling more easily understood by the average consumer.⁴ These goals will be communicated via an informative poster and visual that will have links to these resources as seen below. Providing these resources in a compact information guide will hopefully reach businesses and encourage them to take steps to becoming more sustainable environmentally, socially, and economically.

To assess the success of this resource guide I would like to compare a business’ plastic footprint before and after they are exposed to this visual. This would consist of how much plastic waste they generate, but also how accessible plastic alternatives are to the public, and the economic costs of any new changes on a business. I would also like to see which of the links and resources businesses use the most in order to make improvements to my guide so that it includes tools for action that will actually be useful to encourage change.

References:

1. Reports, Consumer. “You’re Literally Eating Microplastics. How You Can Cut down Exposure to Them.” The Washington Post. WP Company, October 7, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/youre-literally-eating-microplastics-how-you-can-cut-down-exposure-to-them/2019/10/04/22ebdfb6-e17a-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html. 
2. Parker, Laura. “Plastic Pollution Facts and Information.” Environment. National Geographic, May 3, 2021. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-pollution. 
3. Parker, Laura. “Fast Facts about Plastic Pollution.” Science. National Geographic, May 4, 2021. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastics-facts-infographics-ocean-pollution?loggedin=true. 
4. How2Recycle. Accessed April 11, 2022. https://how2recycle.info/. 
5. “Resources: Product Suppliers ” My Plastic-Free Life.” My Plastic-free Life. Accessed May 9, 2022. https://myplasticfreelife.com/product-suppliers/. 
6. “Beyond the Bag.” Closed Loop Partners, January 14, 2022. https://www.closedlooppartners.com/beyond-the-bag/. 
7. Anderson, Deonna. “Major Retailers Are Backing These 9 Alternatives to Single-Use Plastic Bags.” Greenbiz, February 19, 2021. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/major-retailers-are-backing-these-9-alternatives-single-use-plastic-bags. 
8. How2Recycle. Accessed April 11, 2022. https://how2recycle.info/.