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| Plastic rubbish picked from the coast of Danao, Panglao, Bohol, Philippines |
Here's a thought. Killing humans is against the law, right? We're the most heavily protected species on this planet. The reason why international civil aviation law has made it a criminal offence to remove life vests from aircrafts is because in doing so one is potentially depriving a human being of the possibility of survival. Basically, stealing a life vest is an indirect act of murder. It's a criminal offence as a preventive measure and it makes perfect sense that violators get heavily fined or jailed.
In the same line of thinking, littering non-biodegradable rubbish is also an act of murder towards protected species -- especially marine animals. This has been proven time and time again. Many beached dead rays, sharks, cetaceans and turtles have been found to have died from plastic ingestion. So the indiscriminate disposal of plastic waste is essentially as much an act of murder towards these protected creatures as taking that yellow packet from under your seat is towards H.sapiens. Why don't we then make littering a serious criminal offence?
Legislative efforts to ban single-use disposable plastic bags, straws, stirrers and cutlery could be coupled with laws increasing the criminal weight of the indiscriminate littering of plastics, no matter how big or small -- whether it's a restaurant allowing a fallen dumpster to lay unattended, a hospital dumping used syringes onto a parking lot near the coast, a factory using a nearby ravine as an open bin for disposable hair nets or an individual chucking a cigarette onto a sewer vent. We could even go punitive on corporations, too. Fine Coca Cola for every Dasani bottle on the street. Fine Nestle for every Nescafe sachet retrieved from the ocean.
We can't just wait for corporations (and consumers) to make changes to their game. We have to make the field very, very difficult to play on.
