Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution is a growing and serious threat to the health of marine life, their homes, coastal habitats, and other aquatic environments. From the tiniest to largest creatures, and from pole to pole, plastic has infiltrated a baffling number of nooks and crannies and food chains in our oceans. But our oceans can’t stomach any more plastic.

Studies have found that 90% of seabirds have plastic in their guts, 1 in 3 sea turtles have eaten plastic, over half of all whales and dolphin species have ingested plastic, and hundreds of other species are negatively impacted by plastic every day. In Canada, off British Columbia, some of the tiniest creatures in the food chain, zooplankton, are showing signs of plastic ingestion with one in twenty sampled by scientists having plastic in their bodies. Meanwhile, whales have been found washed up in Canada with stomachs containing plastic, and eighty-seven per cent of birds in the Canadian Arctic have ingested plastics of some sort. And that’s just the tip of the plastic iceberg.

The real solution to the plastic pollution crisis is back on land by stopping the way our societies have become accustomed to consume, discard, repeat. The predominant fast-paced, convenience-centric and “cheap and easy” culture drives the booming demand for throw-away plastic products, while current business models favour the production of cheap, light-weight, petroleum-based products, and major plastic producing companies fuel a throw-away lifestyle with no or limited repercussions or extended product responsibility. If they don’t have to take responsibility for the waste they create, corporations don’t have any incentive to produce reusable, sustainable packaging and delivery systems. In addition to all this, inadequate infrastructure and a lack of alternate product delivery systems mean proper disposal and also avoidance of single-use products is challenging at best.

Canada is a major offender of plastic waste production, generating around 3 million tonnes of plastic waste a year, only 10-12 per cent of which is actually recycled. Single-use plastics like straws, coffee cups, beverage bottles, throw-away cutlery and packaging are increasingly found on city streets, in storm drains, in ditches, along river banks and ultimately in our oceans and on our shorelines. While our beaches may not be as polluted as other regions of the world, our consumption and generation of waste is part of the global plastic problem, and about one third of the plastic waste we generate is exported to other countries including China, India and Vietnam, where plastic marine pollution is a more visible problem.

But even with proper disposal, people doing their part to recycle and an increase in recycled content in single-use products, the sheer volume of plastics flooding our market, being used and being disposed of cannot continue. The major single-use plastic producers need to be held accountable for the destructive products they are selling and their role in choking our oceans.

Greenpeace is campaigning globally to shine a light on the proliferation, wastefulness and destructiveness of single-use plastic products and stop the overproduction and flow of plastic into our oceans at the source - the producers. We are calling on major producers of single use plastics to stop producing these throw-away products, develop alternatives for packaging and delivery, and ensure true circular models that promote reuse.

You can help by signing our plastic pledge, and following a refuse, reduce and reuse lifestyle by:

avoiding single-use plastic items
asking the stores and businesses you frequent, and producers of products you use, to provide alternative distribution models and stop offering single use products
buying long-life, repairable products and refusing short-life throw-away things
buying less and enjoying more!

You can also help by urging Coke, a producer of over 110 billion plastic bottles a year, to curb its reliance on single-use plastic and stop choking our oceans.
Sign our petition here.