{"id":1764,"date":"2017-12-11T01:45:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T01:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2017-12-11T01:49:42","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T01:49:42","slug":"why-we-suddenly-have-a-plastics-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=1764","title":{"rendered":"Why We Suddenly Have A Plastics Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

or\u00a0 How Kahneman\u2019s System 1 Fast-Tracked The Plastic Crisis,\u00a0 <\/em>and System 2 Slow-Tracked The Issue<\/em><\/p>\n

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A child\u2019s plastic fish, and a plastic cotton bud innard, both found on my local beach.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Long post – download it as pdf here<\/a>)
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Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UN has acknowledged that we have a \u2018plastics crisis\u2019 and on December 6th<\/sup><\/a> 2017, adopted a (non-binding) resolution<\/a> calling for an end to plastic entering the sea.<\/p>\n

Many see plastic pollution as comparable in scale, threat and challenge to Climate Change.\u00a0 Yet if it seems to have crept up on us \u2018as if from nowhere\u2019, that\u2019s not for lack of earlier warning signs, dating back to the 1960s.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had knowledge about the key elements for a very long time but that knowledge has not been accessed or acted upon.\u00a0\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0\u00a0 In large part, it\u2019s because for decades, \u2018plastic\u2019 as pollution has been a \u00a0\u2018Track Two\u2019 issue (see my previous blog<\/a> for an explanation), confined to the slow-moving domain of analysis and in this case, mainly rather obscure science. \u00a0It was, as my American friends might say, \u2018lost in the weeds\u2019.<\/p>\n

Plastic enjoyed a \u2018near miss\u2019 in terms of becoming a Track One mainstream issue back in 1970 when explorer Thor Heyerdahl got the world\u2019s attention with his discover of \u2018a sewer\u2019 of pollution in the deep mid Atlantic but it then sank below the surface of \u2018general public\u2019 awareness until the chance discovery of \u2018Plastic Soup\u2019 in a Pacific Ocean gyre by sailor Charles Moore (see below).\u00a0 This gave plastic pollution its second signal \u2018moment\u2019 on Track One at the turn of the century.<\/p>\n

The high degree of separation of slow Track Two from the fast moving mainstream of Track One, helped keep it plastic off the radar of major policy and campaign groups from 1970 through to the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Decades of research into plastic pollution down on Track Two effectively found no audience up on Track One.<\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s discovery turned him into a scientist and campaigner. \u00a0The publicity he gained boosted existing research efforts and began to interest the media in plastic as a global pollutant, sucking up scientific findings from Track Two, making it \u2018news\u2019 on Track One and feeding dramatic documentaries like the BBC\u2019s recent Blue Planet II<\/a><\/em>, in which David Attenborough has admirably laid into plastic.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a summary:<\/p>\n

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A history of plastic as a pollutant in Track One and Two terms<\/a>.\u00a0 See later for discussion.\u00a0 Communication on Track One is dominated by Kahneman\u2019s System 1, intuitive, easy, unconscious and fast, and on Track Two by System 2, slow, hard, conscious and analytical. <\/em><\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s 1997 discovery was blessed with scientific confirmation in 2001, meaning that it\u2019s taken another sixteen years to get plastic pollution firmly onto Track One.\u00a0 1970 \u2013 2017 is most of a lifetime of wasted opportunity, leaving us with a truly monumental problem.<\/p>\n

So as there were signs that plastic posed a pollution threat early on, how did plastic proliferation evade control from the 1960s until the present day?\u00a0 \u00a0One significant reason is the psychological status that was conferred on plastic on Track One, through decades of everyday use. \u00a0\u00a0Intuitive System 1 thinking means that we take-for-granted and mainly just don\u2019t notice what is normal and repeated, and interpret new information through what we \u2018already know is true\u2019. \u00a0Plastic, became framed as a benign, helpful, modern convenience (cheap and disposable). \u00a0This was promoted by the plastics industry even before it was actually true (early plastic items were quite durable and relatively expensive).<\/p>\n

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The \u2018throwaway\u2019 appeal of plastic celebrated in LIFE magazine in 1955.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, as noted in the previous blog, the more we saw others using plastic (social proof), the more we used it; and the more we used it, the more we accepted it (the consistency heuristic): behaviour rationalised as opinion.<\/p>\n

It became \u2018common sense\u2019 and \u2018inevitable\u2019 that we \u2018rely\u2019 on plastic.\u00a0 Anything which did not fit with that frame had a hard time being taken seriously. \u00a0So ingrained is this idea, that even science groups generating evidence to the contrary, have often accepted it as a starting point.\u00a0 In the Royal Society\u2019s 2009 \u2018Theme Issue\u2019 Plastics, the environment and human health<\/a><\/em>, which was mainly devoted to the problems created by plastic, the very first \u2018scientific\u2019 article stated:<\/p>\n

\u2018Any future scenario where plastics do not play an increasingly important role in human life [therefore] seems unrealistic\u2019. <\/em><\/p>\n

In the early 1990s I remember hearing a very senior UK government climate expert saying something similar about fossil fuels: \u00a0\u2018no government would ever close a coal-fired power station to meet climate commitments\u2019.\u00a0 I doubt he\u2019d really thought about it, rather asked by a journalist if that\u2019s what was needed, it just seemed \u2018unrealistic\u2019 to imagine it.<\/p>\n

Plastic has had some highly effective advocates in the shape of the PR and advertising industries.\u00a0 They made sure that mass use of plastic was helped on its way by judicious promotion to hit all the Motivational Values \u2018hot button\u2019s: from being safe, to fashionable, to planet-saving (eg it\u2019s lighter than glass so transporting plastics drinks bottles creates less climate changing emissions).\u00a0 Here are a few examples of how the industry has covered off the three values groups of Settlers, Prospectors and Pioneers:<\/p>\n

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Plastics make you safe<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Settler messages from industry group \u2018Plastics Make it Possible\u2019<\/a>: safety slides and life saving heroes using plastic.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Plastic is fashionable.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Prospector messaging. Vintage 1960s when vinyl became fashionable (for the first time).<\/em><\/p>\n

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Plastics Save the Planet. <\/em><\/strong>Slide from a 2015 Plastics Europe strategy workshop.\u00a0 Their main concern (centre) was regulation against endocrine (hormone) disrupting chemicals but bottom right you have two public communications objectives, one (saving energy, less CO2) aimed at climate-concerned Pioneers.\u00a0 \u2018The Wonder Material\u2019 is what the industry has been claiming since the 1950s and is now probably evidence of self-delusion. <\/em><\/p>\n

Rethinking Plastic<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a small group (which I\u2019ve done a bit of work for) called \u2018Rethink Plastic<\/a>\u2019 and that\u2019s exactly what needs to happen.<\/p>\n

Plastic communication strategy needs more than a bit of an overhaul. \u00a0For example if scientists governments, the UN, EU and campaign groups working against plastic pollution want to make rapid and effective progress, they have to stop using the \u2018litter\u2019 frame for plastic, and start thinking of it as inherently dangerous stuff, and acting and communicating accordingly.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more challenging, the reality is that \u2018recycling\u2019 and conventional waste strategies are not only incapable of taking plastic out of circulation to the point where plastic pollution actually declines and stops, but they, like \u2018litter\u2019 framed beach cleans, have been heavily co-opted by the plastics industry, whose simple objective is to maintain the flow of plastic production.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll return to this in a following post but now that plastic pollution has finally become a public issue, the immediate risk is that it is kicked into the \u2018political long grass\u2019 of Track Two, with detailed and lengthy \u2018studies\u2019 and \u2018commissions\u2019 on how to rejig the \u2018recycling system\u2019 and if politicians succumb to the entreaties of the plastics industry for time to come up with \u2018innovations\u2019, which will inevitably be reformulations of their polymers.<\/p>\n

To begin with, we need to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, both on issues like climate change, and in the history of plastic pollution itself.<\/p>\n

1970: Plastic Momentarily Gets Onto Track One<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just as the mass production of plastic was really taking off, there was a moment where plastic in the \u2018wrong place\u2019 hit the headlines with the help explorer Thor Heyerdahl, of Kon Tiki<\/em> fame.<\/p>\n

In 1969, Heyerdahl had set out on a papyrus boat Ra I<\/em> to try and show that ancient people could have made it across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas.\u00a0 He almost succeeded before having to abandon the voyage.\u00a0 On the way he had signs of noticed pollution, and arranged to make observations send a report to the UN, on his second attempt a year later.\u00a0 That came at a moment when the world was sensitized to news of environmental pollution, as the first \u2018Earth Day was to be held in April 1970.<\/p>\n

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Earth Day 1970 – <\/em>http:\/\/www.lincolnandrose.com\/home\/photos-first-earth-day-1970<\/a><\/p>\n

Earth Day 1970<\/a><\/em>, regarded by many as the inception of \u2018the modern\u2019 environmental movement, took place on April 22nd<\/sup> 1970. It featured \u2018teach-in\u2019s\u2019 across the US and a rally in New York, along with demonstrations, speeches, protests and the start of the great environmentalist bombardment of \u2018the general public\u2019 with \u2018facts\u2019 (the start of a long-running attempt to change people on Track One with System 2 thinking).\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

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Earth Day 1970\u00a0AP Photo<\/em><\/p>\n

On 8th<\/sup> July 1970, after traveling some 6,100km across the Atlantic (some of it backwards as he was relying on intuition and experiment rather than knowledge of how to steer such a craft), Heyerdahl made it to Barbados.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, this feat created a lot of public interest but so did the revelation that he had found signs of industrial pollution far out in the ocean.<\/p>\n

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May 1970 Heyerdahl\u2019s papyrus boat Ra II proves the ancients could have crossed the Atlantic, and shocked the world with reports of mid-ocean pollution.\u00a0 <\/em>Signed by the 8 crew members. <\/em>https:\/\/www.bajanthings.com\/the-ra-expeditions-thor-heyerdahl\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Heyerdahl\u2019s reports of nylon and other plastic containers in the \u2018unspoilt\u2019 mid ocean, along with many clots of oil, momentarily captured mainstream attention.\u00a0 He recollected<\/a> :\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018we had hardly been to sea three days before we discovered that we were in something like a city sewer\u2014and yet we were 100 miles or more from land \u2026 we saw plastic containers, nylon bags, empty bottles, all sorts of refuse\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

But it seems he took no pictures of plastic and he counted the sightings of oil: \u201cI decided to make a day-by-day survey, dipping down with a dipper and taking samples of the oil clots. We found oil clots on 43 days of the 57\u201d.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=j9ElC_luicY<\/p>\n

Heyerdahl\u2019s report to the United Nations spurred action on oil<\/a>, which was already framed as \u2018pollution\u2019 but plastic pollution receded from view.\u00a0\u00a0 While far from the only factor, Heyerdahl\u2019s oil report probably gained more political traction because he put numbers to the oil.\u00a0 That complied with the dictum attributed to<\/a> management guru Peter Drucker: \u201cwhat gets measured, gets done\u201d.<\/p>\n

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From the Kon-Tiki museum in Norway<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Most of all, oil looked like pollution was expected to look.\u00a0 Plastic didn\u2019t, and in the following decades, a succession of\u00a0 oil-spill disasters such as Exxon Valdeez (1989) kept oil in the \u2018public eye\u2019 and on the monitor-and-manage agenda of institutions tasked with pollution control.<\/p>\n

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Sea Otters oiled by the Exxon Valdeez in 1989.\u00a0 After the spill Exxon kept the ship but changed the name.\u00a0 After being resold more than once it was scrapped under the name Oriental Nicety in 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n

For politicians, quantifying oil also helped resolve their constant need to prioritise: let\u2019s \u2018do something\u2019 about the \u2018biggest\u2019 (and also most soluble) problem.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much to be gained by dwelling on might-have-beens but we can imagine that if Heyerdahl\u2019s report to the UN had led to a surveys to check on plastic at sea elsewhere, and some examination of the emerging science, things might have turned out differently.<\/p>\n

As it was, although by 1970, plastic was already starting to lose its sheen as a \u2018wonder material\u2019 and symbol of modernity (most famously captured in Dustin Hoffman\u2019s encounter with Mr McGuire \u201cthere\u2019s a great future in plastics\u201d in the 1968 movie The Graduate<\/em>), plastic was already established as a mainstream opportunity.<\/p>\n