Skip to main content

Global Plastics Treaty

Why It Matters Plastic pollution has reached even the most remote corners of the planet, from the Mariana Trench to Mount Everest. 460 million tonnes of plastic are produced annually.Only 9% is recycled; the rest leaks into the environment.By 2060, plastic waste is projected to triple, without intervention.

 A letter adapted from #BreakFreeFromPlastic’s campaign regarding the UN negotiations regarding a Global Plastics Treaty taking place in Geneva right now. 

Dear Minister Dabrusin
CC Leader of the Green Party, interim NDP leader, interim Conservative leader, local MP

This is urgent. Manitoba was under the highest air quality advisory yesterday after a summer of smog and cancelled activities. This isn’t just seasonal forest fires or silly accusations of arson. Drought and extreme heat are driving these wild fires – and those are caused by climate change, which in turn is caused by massive industrial extraction of fossil fuels. 

Plastic is driving climate change and polluting oceans, rivers, soil, air, impacting humans and other beings. Plastic is poisoning our communities, our homes, and our bodies.

Citizens should and must make better choices regarding how they manage the plastic that comes through their hands but we desperately need you politicians to make legislation that will reduce how much plastic that is. I can try to use less plastic but if it's impossible to buy products that I need without them being encased in layers of plastic, that’s your problem to fix, not mine. 

Here, I add my voice to the many – citizens, scientists, businesses – who are calling for ambitious and urgent action to address this threat. We have to stop producing so much plastic; it is the only way to end the impact of plastics on the environment and human health.

I call on your leadership to work towards the adoption of a strong legally binding Global Plastics Treaty and create a future free from plastic pollution, where our health and planet flourish, now and for generations to come.

*Crossposted to KFR 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Whose death matters?

In June of 2024, a man was just riding his bike to work. Early in the morning when traffic should be low to nonexistent. Wearing a helmet and a reflective vest.  A racing driver lost control and plowed him over.  Anyone who bikes in this city was grieved and outraged.  This stretch of roadway is designated as a bike route. There's a little green sign with a bicycle icon to tell you that. The wide road that invites speeding certainly doesn't. How does a person even drive 159 km/hr on a sleepy residential street within city limits? (Because the street is too damn wide.) For about as long as it has existed, the cycling advocacy organization has identified this stretch of roadway as a route in critical need of remediation to make it safer.  So, within a week, temporary safety measures had been rolled out. Reduced speed limit signs were erected, poly posts narrowed the roadway and speed cameras made sure folks took it seriously.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. 20, 40,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bike 19

It's Earth Day today. It's a day, not to worship creation, but to pay mind to it, and in so doing, to worship the creator. So, says Sarah Pulliam Bailey , was the intention of Earth Day's originator. I confess I'm not doing anything special for the day. I take pride -- perhaps too much -- in the "eco-morality" of the normal things I do. That morality, sense of self-righteousness, is not the reason for my choices. Instead, it's a conviction that it is, in fact, worship when I climb on my bike; dig paper out of the recycling bin or stock used envelopes for reuse; dissect a teabag so the paper tab goes in recycling, the bag into compost, and only the string into the garbage; use my thrift store dishes; even when I carpool with someone else. The little bits of inconvenience that I subject myself to in order to reduce waste are intended for the sake of the Creator. The attitude is not always worshipful; on my way home today, I was once again muttering i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bike 7

Steady falling snow against grey skies did not encourage bike riding. But when the sun broke through late afternoon, I got up my gumption to leave the house for a short jaunt to the Forks. Leaving behind the gloves was a mistake but otherwise, it wasn't too bad. Underneath the Norwood Bridge, the bike path was covered with rivulets of ice from meltage dripping down from the bridge, and for the width of the two bridge spans, the river was flowing water right up at the surface, whereas the rest of the way appeared to be completely snowed over yet. That small view of open water was a reminder of the pending flood we'll see this spring, and of the great vulnerability we have to the elements: all it would take is the combination of above zero temperatures and an enormous ice jam, and we'll have some seriously rising water.
Post a Comment
Read more