Dear readers, see https://www.philmpark.com/copy-of-article for the work of Joonhee Elliot Park in highlighting this critical issue of plastic recycling.

He writes,

“The pandemic has given us the indulgence of unlimited use of single-use waste for public health. Humanity will eventually overcome the pandemic, but the disposable masks and plastic containers thrown into our oblivion will leave a genetic mark on our minds and habits, which will come back to us later with a greater calamity. While individuals and societies focus only on the air, water, and food that enter our bodies, we forget that the things we emit are destroying individuals and society into an irreversible state.

This documentary attempts to observe the problem of garbage not from a materialistic point of view but as a discourse of mind and memory, relationship, and future. In particular, by focusing on recycling waste, the goal is to question and update the audience’s current perception, which is merely an enlightening discourse on the economic benefits of circulating resources and the conservation of ecosystems.”

In 2023 and 2024, global leaders are negotiating a treaty to ban plastic waste. Renew Our World, a global coalition for justice and creation care including Tearfund, A Rocha and many national partners, is spearheading a campaign to put pressure on our political leaders to act on plastic waste.

While the official Rubbish campaign week of prayer just passed, we invite you nonetheless to continue to pray!

Join people around the world in responding to the world’s rubbish problem through prayer and action. Here is a prayer resource you can use: Rubbish Campaign Week of Prayer and Action.

Are you curious and concerned about the global issue of plastic?

Join the Lausanne / WEA Creation Care network (LWCCN) for a public webinar on this! The webinar is part of a series exploring theological and practical aspects of creation care.

Join the conversation on “Plastics: Blessings or Curse?”

Time: 14.00 UTC | Date: 21 November 2023

Watch this space: https://lausanne.org/gatherings/plastics-blessings-or-curse for more details and registration—which is opening soon!

In 2023 and 2024, global leaders are negotiating a treaty to ban plastic waste. Renew Our World, a global coalition for justice and creation care including Tearfund, A Rocha and many national partners, is spearheading a campaign to put pressure on our political leaders to act on plastic waste.

Watch the video here:

Sign up at https://www.renewourworld.net/rubbish_petition

There is too much trash in the world. Most of it is made up of plastic. And it is hurting people living in poverty. And God’s creatures. And everyone else as well. Something has to be done.

Enter The Rubbish Campaign.

Tearfund, Renew Our World and many others are launching an international campaign for a strong global plastics treaty – treaty negotiations started well last year and aim to finish by the end of next year. Launching on March.

Here’s video from Tearfund explaining the campaign:

Please email Jack Wakefield jack.wakefield@tearfund.org if you’re interested in joining in, at or after launch. 

Plastic waste is a problem around the world. This story from EcoWatch shows how it is affecting our most iconic wildlife as well as humans:

In a new study published in the Journal for Nature Conservation, titled “Plastic ingestion in Asian elephants in the forested landscapes of Uttarakhand, India,” a team of scientists collected dung samples from inside and around forested areas in Uttarakhand, India, and found that the endangered Asian elephants there had been ingesting human garbage, including plastics.

“Each human-derived item was identified, measured, and sub-categorized into plastic or other anthropogenic waste. About one-third (32%) of the elephant dung samples showed presence of anthropogenic waste,” the study said.

Elephants disperse seeds through their dung, but when their food supply is contaminated with plastic, this natural process transports the ubiquitous and damaging pollutant into wild spaces, endangering the health of the elephants and their forest companions, reported The New York Times.

Read the full story here.

Bob Sluka of A Rocha has just published a new book through Grove addressing the problem of plastics. (We seem to be talking about plastics a lot this month – here’s a story about a possible solution in Malawi)(and about books from Grove!)

Here’s the blurb on Bob’s booklet:

Plastic pollution continues to be a global problem. There are many “how to” resources, but fewer that examine the role plastic plays in our Christian life. A Rocha’s Lead Marine Scientist Dr Robert Sluka has published a new Grove Book “Marine Plastics” which could be useful for better understanding how plastic can play a positive role in healing our relationships: with God, each other, nature, and ourselves. Copies can be ordered from the Grove Books website – https://grovebooks.co.uk/products/e-201-marine-plastics.  A bargain for GBP 3.95!

The Grove booklet is a short examination of how plastic can heal or hurt relationships. Bob examines plastic pollution in light of biblical texts and several theologians’ writing, including Michael Northcott, Ellen Davis, and Pope Francis. The Epiloque looks at plastic in an age of Covid and broadens the discussion to Christian relief & Development. The book points readers to A Rocha’s newly updated Plastics Toolbox (www.arocha.org/plastics-toolbox) for tools and information on how to practically relate to plastic pollution in your location.

This event would be a leading news story around the world if it had happened in the US or Europe: a cargo ship carrying a veritable witches’ brew of toxic chemicals catches fire and eventually sinks, dumping fuel oil and cargo onto some of the world’s most beautiful beaches, endangering human livelihoods and sealife together, It appears that the ship caught fire on 19 May, and finally sank yesterday.

From the Guardian:

Plastic pellets have also poured out from the ship’s containers, washing up on the beaches. The navy has been called out to clean the burnt wreckage and debris.

But other effects cannot be easily cleaned – or even seen. The ship was carrying a whole array of hazardous chemicals: nitric acid, used for explosives; epoxy resins, used for paints and primers; and ethanol and lead ingots, used for manufacturing vehicle batteries.

There were other products, too: caustic soda, lubricating oils, aluminium byproducts, polyethene used for grocery bags and packaging, cosmetics and even food items, according to Hemantha Withanage, an environmental scientist and executive director of the Centre for Environmental Justice in Sri Lanka.

One container, Withanage noted, is named Environmentally Harmful Substances. “What are these substances? We don’t know. Authorities haven’t told us yet,” he said. “But why are they keeping this information a secret?”

The sinking of the ship means the probable leaching of these chemicals into the ocean. “And that’s a serious risk to our ecosystem,” he said, explaining that it could lead to death and contamination of the corals, fish, turtles and other marine life that abound off the country’s coasts.

Pray for our friends in Sri Lanka, and all those affected by, and working desperately to clean up this mess.

Dustin Hoffman was famously told “the future is plastics” in the 1967 film The Graduate. More than 50 years later, the Nelson Institute at the University of Wisconsin is tackling the other side of that question: Does plastic have a future?

The event is a free public online lecture next week (Thursday, 11 March 5:30 pm Central Time) as part of the Sustainable Success lecture series.

The Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, the Grainger Center for Supply Chain Management, and the Weston Roundtable invite you to explore the future of plastic with engineers and business leaders who are at the forefront of recycling science. Currently, recycling is viewed by many as expensive and difficult with experts estimating that only 9 percent of plastic has been recycled since the 1950s. Today, new technology and an improved understanding of plastic chemistry is helping to make recycling and upcycling easier and less expensive. Join us as leading experts discuss the improved recycling methods and circular initiatives that will allow more plastic to be reused and recycled.

More information and registration link here.

We didn’t think so. You need to know – these tiny bits of plastic are everywhere, and are causing all kinds of damage. Nurdles have been found in almost every body of water around the world.

Now ‘The Great Nurdle Hunt” is seeking to document the problem with the help of ordinary people, ‘citizen scientists’. That’s you, if you live anywhere near an ocean, lake or river. Here’s the main website for the nurdle hunt and a form where you can report your findings. You can even upload pictures of the results of your own hunt.

It took billions of us to pollute the oceans with plastic. Let’s see if we can mobilize at least some thousands of people to start the clean up process!

Here’s an A Rocha blog entry on the hunt:

A Rocha’s marine conservation globally has developed projects to study nurdles using methods that non-scientists can join in with. The method is simple, search for a set amount of time on a coast, river or lake and upload your results to the Great Nurdler – a global partner documenting citizen science nurdle hunts globally. Visitors, students at Coastal Community School, Titusville High School, Eastern Florida State University, churches, and families have all contributed to our study of nurdles on Florida’s Space Coast, which includes the amazingly beautiful Canaveral National Seashore here near the Kennedy Space Center. I gave a talk on our research at the International Marine Conservation Congress and put together a short, non-academic video showing what the sites are like and also some of our results. Thank you to the many A Rocha supporters and friends who contributed to this study.

https://arocha.us/small-things-that-make-a-big-difference