What do cigarettes and single-use plastics have in common? Most cigarettes have a single-use plastic filter -- so smokers get a dose of petrochemicals along with their tar and nicotine. Also, single-use plastics are becoming recognized as a public health crisis just like cigarettes were decades ago. Finally, both the tobacco and plastics industry have demonstrated a disconcerting lack of ethics in pitching their products to kids.
The current environmental, health and safety battle over the impacts of single use plastics reflects the early days of the anti-smoking movement in many ways. Public awareness about the impacts of single-use plastics on the environment and human health is increasing due to the work of nonprofits, universities and governmental bodies. Single-use plastics are becoming recognized not only as an eyesore that litters our nation, but as threats to public health as they have entered our food chain both directly, through leaching their chemicals into food and drink, and indirectly, as plastic pollution is consumed by marine life in our lakes, rivers and oceans.
But with the plastic bag being the number one consumer item on the planet according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the plastics purveyors won't go down without a real fight. The war is being fought between environmental and public health interests and the petrochemical lobby, headed by The American Chemistry Counsel (ACC) with Dow Chemical at the helm. In pushing its agenda to keep Americans hooked on single-use plastics, the ACC has employed many of the same tactics that were used by the tobacco industry.
Remember Joe Camel? He was the R J Reynolds Cartoon Mascot for Camel cigarettes that was abandoned by that company in 1997 under pressure from public-interest groups and a pending lawsuit alleging that Joe Camel was a marketing ploy to attract children to smoking. In 1991 The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study showing that by age six nearly as many children could associate Joe Camel with cigarettes as could associate Mickey Mouse with the Disney Chanel logo. Also, 32.8% of all cigarettes illegally sold to minors were Camels, up from less than 1% before the cartoon camel campaign. Internal documents from RJ Reynolds that were to be used in the trial showed that underage children were indeed on the minds of the cigarette manufacturers despite their claims to the contrary: RJR's Vice-President of Marketing explained that the "young adult market... represent[s] tomorrow's cigarette business. As this 14-24 age group matures, they will account for a key share of the total cigarette volume -- for at least the next 25 years."
You can rest assured that the purveyors of the lucrative single use plastic bag have done their market research to keep young Americans asking for plastic at the cash register. While municipalities and countries around the world are banning single use plastic bags, the petrochemical lobby is upping their game at marketing them. Plastic bag manufacturers who call themselves "an environmental group" in court papers created "Save the Plastic Bag Coalition" to file lawsuits against jurisdictions who ban or place fees on plastic bags. Three of the largest plastic bag manufacturers have sued a small reusable bag manufacturer ChicoBag for "irreparably harming" their business. The ACC sponsors the plastic recycling section of Earth 911 as a means to promote recycling plastic as the solution to plastic pollution when evidence shows otherwise (see Plastic and the Great Recycling Swindle). And now the ACC is trying to enter the classroom via our children's textbooks.
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