NANO
PLASTIC CITIES;
A METAPHOR THAT COMES IN PLASTIC.
Cities of plastic, could be the title of a movie, a book, a play …
We all put our hands to the head, when they give the official figures, in the environmental summits on recycling rates.
Developed countries often boast of these figures, alluding to the increasing involvement of citizens in these areas. But is this enough?
Do you imagine that every day a 5,000-kilometer-long caravan of trucks carrying trash passes by your street? According to estimates, in 2025 cities will generate a daily amount of waste of this dimension, twice as much as they currently produce.
However, among all these wastes generated, plastic has a leading role.
There are studies that ensure that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. In fact, nowadays, the continuous dumping of plastic waste in them, has caused the formation of a garbage surface in the Pacific Ocean, about 3.4 million kilometers in length. Almost 7 times the surface of Spain.
In the United States alone, 500 million bottles of water are purchased per week, and 17 million barrels of oil per year are needed for its production, regardless of the ones used to process, transport … Water that needs 2,000 times More energy than tap water.
It must be acknowledged that much progress has been made in the area of environmental awareness, and that acceptable levels of recycling are being achieved in most countries.
But recycling is useless if you do not take it one step further.
We have a great dependence on plastic, we buy a thing of 25 ml, packed with a plastic box 7 times bigger. The thing and the plastic are protected by a piece of cardboard that in turn is inserted in a cardboard wrapped by a film of plastic closed with adhesive of plastic, paradoxical.
It is unfair to hold only consumers responsible, they do not directly throw the plastics to the sea, there are other factors that allow these nonsense to get there, garbage companies, institutions with legal recodes …
In any case, what is in our hands is, being able to introduce even small changes in the market, acquiring responsible and sustainable consumption habits.
