Pervasive Plastics

Plastics are everywhere!!!

"The true costs of plastics — including the energy required to manufacture them, the environmental contamination caused by their disposal, their health impacts, and the recycling and eventual disposal costs — are not reflected in product prices. The American Plastics Council now estimates that only about 5 percent of all plastics manufactured are recycled; 95 billion pounds are discarded on average yearly. Adding to the environmental toll, most plastic is produced from natural gas and petroleum products, exacerbating global warming."

"In the case of plastics, Congress instead has been content with limited federal regulatory responsibility, now fractured among at least four agencies: the EPA, the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. None of these agencies has demanded pre-market testing of plastic ingredients, none has required ingredient labeling or warnings on plastic products, and none has limited production, environmental release, or human exposure. As a result, the entire U.S. population continues to be exposed to hormonally active chemicals from plastics without their knowledge or consent."

"In order to make responsible choices in the marketplace, consumers also need to be educated about the content and effects of the resins, so we need mandatory labeling of plastic ingredients. The chemical industry itself needs to replace persistent and hazardous chemicals with those that are proven to be safe. Finally, manufacturers should take responsibility for cleaning up environmental contamination from the more than one trillion pounds of plastic wastes they have produced over the past 50 years."