{"id":1656,"date":"2017-09-27T01:55:07","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T01:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=1656"},"modified":"2017-09-27T01:55:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T01:55:07","slug":"a-beautiful-if-evil-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=1656","title":{"rendered":"A Beautiful If Evil Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the planet fills up with plastic and the EU ponders its new \u2018plastics strategy\u2019, is the great re-framing and concern co-option strategy of the plastics industry finally going to run out of road?\u00a0 The threat of invisible omnipresent micro-plastics may force policy-makers to rethink plastic entirely.<\/h2>\n

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It is said that the world\u2019s most viewed image is Microsoft\u2019s \u2018bliss\u2019, that unreal looking green hill, blue sky XP background which personally I always found unlikeable and repellent because it shows such complete subjugation of nature.\u00a0 Anyway, according to Seventh Light Studio, by 2017 it was \u2018safe to say\u2019<\/a> it has been seen over a billion times.<\/p>\n

But probably the greatest actual communications dis-service ever done to nature was by a 1970s TV advertising campaign which is said to have been viewed 14 billion times: the \u2018Crying Indian\u2019 by Keep America Beautiful<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The pure genius of this highly emotive campaign was that it bought a social licence for mass production of disposable packaging, by championing action to clean up the pollution it led to.<\/p>\n

The story is legendary in the annals of advertising and now that hundreds of NGOs are joining forces to try and head off the tsunami of plastic waste invading our environment and our bodies, campaigners should have a good look at it.\u00a0 Try this brilliant article<\/a> from Orion Magazine<\/em> by Ginger Strand.<\/p>\n

The exact same strategy still sustains the plastics industry and is being used by groups like http:\/\/www.plasticseurope.org\/<\/a> (100+ plastics manufacturers), and the \u201869 plastics organizations and allied industry association in 35 countries\u2019 behind https:\/\/www.marinelittersolutions.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

It is a beautiful, if evil strategy, simple and elegant: once underway it is even cheap to run, as it is powered not simply by petro-dollars but by the active voluntary participation of people who care about environmental pollution.\u00a0 This is true genius.\u00a0 It co-opts the energy, goodwill and emotional commitment of those people, especially the young, who care enough about birds choked on plastic and beaches littered in plastic waste, to spend their own time, at their own expense, picking up the industrial detritus that the plastic industry creates.<\/p>\n

The dark charm of this strategy is that it operates in plain sight, indeed it is intended to be very visible.\u00a0 www.marinelittersolutions.com<\/a> explains that it has 260 projects \u2018planned, underway or completed\u2019 since 2011, such as Waste Free Environment<\/a>, which started with school children cleaning up plastic in the Arabian Gulf and\u00a0 has now been \u2018successfully exported to Shanghai, China; Mumbai in India; Singapore; and Sittard\/Geleen and The Hague in the Netherlands\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Such projects provide something more valuable even than children happily wearing shirts emblazoned with petrochemical logos:\u00a0 they frame and visualise the problem as litter not plastic production, and they suck environmentalist energy into picking it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople start pollution. People can stop it\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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