I’ve written about the “end of environmentalism”over the past two years. Here’s another reason why I haven’t changed my mind. If you don’t understand how the oil industry is poisoning us and lying to us, you need to hear this podcast by NPR’s Fresh Air. It’s “Big Tobacco” all over again. It’s worse than you think. Get angry, demand change. Buy at the Co-op where they use less plastic on produce. But you can’t avoid it and the industry banks on it. Literally.
In award-winning journalist Beth Gardiner’s new book, ‘Plastic Inc.,’ she traces how plastic went from a wartime miracle to the survival strategy of the fossil fuel industry. What Gardiner found after years of reporting is that while millions of us were recycling and using less fuel, the companies that make plastic are producing more to make up for it. She spoke with Tonya Mosley about recycling, microplastics in the human body, and the environmental impact.
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/01/nx-s1-5770396/an-expose-of-the-plastic-industry
Filed under: Environmental Activism, environmental education, Environmental Protection |
It’s hard to find organic produce not grown with and/or not packaged with plastics. I don’t blame growers—they’re trying to get by, and was I a market grower myself decades ago. I want to help get us off this treadmill…
I agree Steve. What I’ve done is try to only buy organic from the local co-op, though I do know that Safeway and QFC keep many of their organic products open for people to visually rather than wrapped in plastic like you often see at Trader Joe’s.
Bringing your own bag to put them in saves it needing to be wrapped, though the podcast that I reference here says that no matter what we do individually it doesn’t matter because the industry itself is out to produce more and more plastic. They don’t really seem to care un less they are stopped at a much higher level like at the state or national level.
It is hopeful when we see actions like here in Port Townsend that a banded plastic for to go containers, though they still put plastic forks and silverware in it.
Ultimately we have made only baby steps in protecting the environment against the onslaught of plastic, and we are definitely losing the battle on a global level. You can only really fight at this point on a personal level.
Yes, I’ve done it on a personal household level all my life, but plastics are baked-in as an integral part of production, transportation & marketing. Over 40 years ago, I worked with a Peninsula organic farm. Among other things, I managed a greenhouse covered in plastic sheeting, putting out 2,000 vegetable starts weekly in plastic trays. There was no economically viable alternative. There are reasonable uses for some plastics. The problem is with the predominance of single-use, throw-away products.
I totally understand, and that sort of the point that this wonderful podcast is pointing out that it’s impossible for us to deal with this and especially the main concern is single use plastics used in packaging, food services and the like. It’s really pointing out that while we can each do our individual best, it’s going to take state and national power to do more. In the meantime we’re being poisoned every single day and the medical community is finding the ways we are being poisoned every time they look. This is about economics were poor communities are exploited for their labor and low cost of land, and a lack of opposition to chemical companies, while the rest of us sit around and essentially do nothing. This comes full circle to my belief that environmentalism is dead we have lost. It’s not to say that I won’t continue to do my own personal thing and try and teach my son and his family to try and save my grandson from this poison, but I don’t hold out a whole lot of hope frankly