Third Dimensional Silo Environmentalism

Plastic is the villain of the mainstream environmental coverage these days. 

To be sure, there are lots of undesirable and unsustainable things about plastic.  But I'm concerned that the attacks are coming out of environmental silos. In the same way I was labelled an "apologist" of used electronics purchases by emerging markets 15 years ago, I've been called an "iconoclast" for even questioning sanctions on plastic packaging, such as the Vermont ban on plastic straws and single use bags. 

Our seeding of the plastic litter offset in Cameroun should demonstrate we are serious about the threat of ocean plastic. But it also shows we are looking for ways to defend the packaging from unfair threats and scapegoatism, without sliding into denial.

https://www.oregon.gov/deq/FilterDocs/MaterialAttributes.pdf

If you never read another one of my blogs, read the Oregon Packaging Paper from 2018. Then visit US Geological Survey USGS.gov every time a recycling story hits the press.

Reporters like Adam Minter, Oliver Wallis-Franklin, and  Laura Sullivan, Emily Kwong, Rebecca Ramirez (of NPR "The Myth of Plastic Recycling") should start with the link above.  It's not all about recycling.

For decades I've described the perfect packaging from a waste silo perspective - organic, reusable, natural and compostable, native American / First Nation adapted... Baby seal pelt bags.

Life Cycle Analysis should keep score of the environmental harm implicated in microplastics, ocean litter, recyclability and recycled content. In all of these, plastic fares poorly. But the camera lenses always focus on the fingerprint, the downstream, the gotcha. It's called fetishism, and it is blind to the role of the total path of consumption. 

“You can be for the environment, or against plastics, but not both”

Getting to know Megan Fontes, the new Executive Director of the Northeast Recycling Council this week. Lynn Rubenstein is retiring - Lynn and I worked together in several capacities over the decades (she came with me on my first visit to China in 2002).

Via LinkedIn, Megan just shared this article to ask my thoughts.   Plastic – Fact over Fiction

Chris DeArmitt - PhD, FRSC, FIMMM

Written by Chris DeArmitt.  He's a paid "expert witness" who's got industry connections, but I guess I do too, and have seen my articles dismissed based on my "recycling business".  The article makes several of the same points made in the Oregon study from a couple of years ago.

Remember: “you can be for the environment, or against plastics, but not both”.

Well, I'm not as sure about microplastics as Chris DeArmitt (his argument that the number of alarmed scientific reports is 24% but number of press reports 90%+ does point to journalistic alarmism, but if he's an expert on plastics, that's a really weak response to concerns on microplastic pollution).  But his LCA lifecycle analysis is spot on.

He also takes some cheap shots against other materials, like "ceramic takes longer to degrade than a plastic bag". It's an apples to oranges comparison. Same with carcinogens in dust industries like cement. I'm sure if a study was done on inhaling plastic particles, they'd be just as carcinogenic (abrasion is the cause with cement, not toxicity). But he's defending his team, and it is true Team Plastic is getting ganged up upon.

#PhotoJournalism and the Tire Fire Mirror: The Vampire Class Can't Find Its Own Footprints

#PhotoJournalism and the Tire Fire Mirror:  The Vampire Class Can't Find Its Own Footprints

Poverty Porn photographers claiming to "hold up a mirror" to society fail to document the true value of reuse and maintenance is in saving the environmental expense of virgin material extraction and production. The vampires can't see themselves because they are holding the mirror facing forward, where goods go to be reused, instead of at our own extractive environmental footprint.

The perfect example? The tire fire. A fresh one appears today in the respected Council on Foreign Relations... even they use the African Tire Fire to lead their story.

Council on Foreign Relations Gets Into the Act.

(This blog is summarized on my Twitter feed in 5 tweets plus 2 postscript, copied at bottom)

ENVIRONMENTALISM cannot be scatalogical. While waste analysis is as vital to earth environmental policy as a pap smear, urine sample, or colonoscopy sample, it isn't the cure for obesity, heart disease, disease exposure, or stupid behavior... all of which are bigger predictors of death than excrement.

PHOTOJOURNALISM likes to tell us (or themselves) that they make complicated science more understandable and relatable. Photos definitely stir a human empathy (nurture) or anger/fear reaction.

For years this blog has drummed about the danger of simple looking solutions which are in fact comically fictitious if the photo is given a time lapse treatment. In today's twitter feed, I use tires as an example of photojournalist "whistle blowing" to well-meaning environmentalists - triggering collateral damage via subconscious racial profiling.

To get your attention, I'll start with the guilty western pleasure of whacking off to an African burning a pile of tires.

Long term followers will recognize this 30 year old man as Awal Muhammed of Savelugu, used here to solicit hand-wringers to view "Welcome to Sodom", the most recent "documentary" to add to the pile of lies about Agbogbloshie, the auto scrapyard in central capital of Accra, Ghana. Here's another shot of Awal, from #SashaRainbow's glam-rock-band Placebo music video of the same vein of lies about Africa's waste being not African, but recently illegally imported externalized waste from OECD evil recyclers who refused to boycott Africa's Tech Sector entrepreneurs.

I don't credit the photographer, sorry. But the photographer didn't credit, or describe, Awal Muhamed, so call it even. In any case, after one more guilty pleasure shot of Awal's accelerant dowsed tire fire performance art, I will share an actual diagram of the life cycle of automobile tires, from rubber plant production to crumb rubber or cement kiln fate in the USA or Europe.

The entry point here is Sasha Rainbow and whatshisnameWelcometoSodom and Kevin McElvaney's re-treaded claim that they are not exploiting men like Awal, that their photo-economy is necessary to HOLD UP A MIRROR to wealthy societies who, they claim, are unaware that their OECD recyclers are faking it and dumping your electronics (as evidenced by tires) on Africa.