Plastic Pollution On Track to Surpass Fish By 2020 while ALEC Derails Legislation to Curb the Problem

Fund Balance has covered the damage done to the world’s ocean’s by discarded plastic at great length. Based on World Economic Forum projections more pieces of plastic will contaminate the world’s ocean than there are fish within it by 2050. Only about 5% of plastic is recycled. There is no system in place takes these plastic materials back. So after their use they pollute the ocean. Freshwater systems suffer as well. Plastic pollution interferes with every aspect of the world’s water ecosystem.

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Photo Credit. The US Environmental Protection Agency.

 

All countries to one extent or another experience effects from the way plastic damages fish by filling up their stomachs causing them to starve or killing them by ensnaring them and causing serious injuries and even early death. Nations like the US and China, whose livelihood and or protein sources are highly dependent on the ocean worry.

The World Economic Forum argues that innovation will be essential for the world’s oceans. Yet we all have reason to wonder if such innovation will be choked off before its can be launched. The shadow governance group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) promotes model legislation to prevent local governments from banning plastic bags. Such moves run counter to innovation and seek to create and coddle ALECs corporate backers and their monopolies, particularly the Petroleum Marketers who provide substantial funding for ALEC. Petroleum is used to make plastic. The authors the World Economic Forum study argue that plastic manufacturing should be decoupled from fossil fuels. This will require doable and currently in process innovation. Such efforts will create many new economies and industries, as opposed to protecting one from the competition such innovation would bring. Apparently ALEC is not interested in the health and well being of future generations. If it did, it could use its abundant resources to help innovation of healthy ways to manufacture plastic materials.

Source: World Economic Forum
Source: World Economic Forum

How can such groups claim to be focused on the future when they seek to continue to sell products that make the leave behind a badly damaged ocean for future generations? And what is the impact of such efforts to stifle common sense legislation to ban plastic bags on the drivers for innovation our way out of the plastic trap?