Blog by Elles Tukker, Communications Manager, Plastic Soup Foundation
World
Environment Day was designated as such by the United Nations in 1974 to not
only raise awareness among the world’s population for environmental pollution,
overpopulation and climate change, but to call on everybody to take action.
In 1974 I was six years old and I
cannot remember that we really worried about the environment. What I do
remember though, was that you could roller skate in the middle of the street on
Sundays. But the car free Sundays were caused by an oil crisis and had nothing
to do at all with an awareness about air pollution.
Acid rain
My
concerns about the environment only came about when we heard about the
phenomenon of ‘acid rain’ and the role that vehicle exhaust fumes played. And
then – completely in line with the goals of the UN – I took action myself. I
categorically refused to get into our Volkswagen Beetle, or did so only after
making a great fuss. Then, throughout the journey, in a show of resistance I
‘entertained’ my parents with doom and gloom stories about the environment and
their personal role in its devastation.
It was 10 years later, in 1986
and 1988, that the reality of the situation hit us all hard in the face. The
massive industrial disasters in Bhopal and Chernobyl caused huge levels of
environmental pollution that directly affected hundreds of thousands of people
and the environment at an unprecedented scale.
Innocence
Then much
later on, plastic lost its innocence. The 1970s were the glory years of
plastic. There were Tupperware parties and peer pressure to buy the pastel
coloured dishes, lunch boxes and tall narrow cups with lids.
Only at the end of the 1990s did
our eyes slowly open to the problem of plastic pollution. In 1997, the American
oceanographer Charles Moore noted the vast number of small pieces of plastic
that floated past his ship. He was the one to introduce the term ‘plastic
soup’.
Courage
What was
once acid rain for me, is the problem of the plastic soup for children in the
21st century. On this 48th year of World Environment Day, I would like to say
some words of encouragement to them. It is highly unlikely that we will ever be
able to clean our seas and oceans, but let’s do everything we can to not make
the problem worse.
Let’s all use less plastic and
turn off the ‘plastic tap’! Let’s raise a fist to the large oil companies who
see the production of new plastic as a growth market and in so doing will flood
the world with even more plastic. Let’s make ecocide – the large scale damage and devastation of ecosystems – a
punishable offence. And let’s especially find encouragement in the
verdicts of the wonderful judges in the Urgenda and Milieudefensie (Friends of
the Earth Netherlands) cases!
Plastic Soup Foundation wishes everyone a
wonderful World Environment Day!