Recycling Doesn't Help—By Now, Plastic Is In Our Bloodstream

In this alarming yet timely opinion piece, John Vidal, The Guardian's veteran Environment Editor, argues that the world is plagued by plastic to a point of no return.

Talking about a recently proposed government scheme to recycle plastic in the UK, he explains how deep the damage already is.

"[Environment secretary] Gove’s initiative is welcome, but minimal, and will have zero impact on the vast and growing scale of the plastic problem. The scheme is aimed at people fed up with litter, and to Blue Planet viewers who are shocked by images of birds swallowing plastic straws and turtles being choked by plastic bags. It is no more use than a heavy smoker forgoing a single cigarette," Vidal writes.

He draws attention to the fact that since people started engineering polymers to make plastic on a mass scale in the 1950s, 6 percent of all the oil we extract a year is used to produce plastic.

Researchers find more and more plastic in the human body.

"Plastic is now ubiquitous, insidious and impossible to avoid. It makes up our clothes, containers, bottles, electronics, food trays, cups and paints. Our cars depend on it, so do our computers, roofs and drain pipes. It’s the global packaging material of choice. We sleep on it, wear it, watch it, and are in direct bodily contact with it in one form or other all day and night."