Waste Wars

Plastic waste is killing the planet and its time to fight back.

- Carmela Maraan Fernando

Imagine how such a tiny object, used only once and multiplied, can cause thousands of marine creatures to die prematurely, enough to create a massive imbalance in the ocean’s ecosystem. In only the past year, numerous reports of turtles, whales, fish, seals, seabirds, and other ocean life have been found horribly deformed, injured, or dead simply from having encountered a piece of our plastic trash in the water.

And we’re just talking plastic straws. We haven’t a yet gotten to plastic bags, water bottles, balloons, and other forms of plastic rubbish that litter our seas each day.

Even microplastics—tiny bits of plastic residue—have made their way into our commercial table salt. After all, they’re still nonbiodegradable at any size. Would you like a side of grocery bag with your dinner?

And this is just the danger to our marine ecosystem. Consider our cities, villages, countryside, mountains, forests, and practically every other spot where thoughtless visitors heedlessly toss their rubbish. Wherever we let plastic waste accumulate becomes a venue for environmental destruction on a long-term and far-reaching scale.

This threat has grown to such proportions that it’s now an urgent issue that’s being officially tackled by several cooperatives and groups all around the world. From the United Nations to global brands to government and family initiatives, they offer plenty of ways that you can choose to support, or better yet, run your own plastic-free and zero waste project.

UNdoing PLASTIC WASTE DAMAGE