For many who care about the global effects of our consumption habits, recycling has long been considered one of the easiest and most effective ways of addressing the issue. But meaningfully addressing the world’s ongoing plastics problem is much more complicated and goes beyond individual acts. This is one of the reasons Greenpeace released its recent toolkit, “A Million Acts of Blue,” to help concerned individuals address the problem of plastic pollution.
In 1907, Leo Baekeland created Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic. Since plastic began to be mass-produced in the 1950s, 9.1 billion tons of it have been created. Most of it still exists, on land or in the ocean, due to plastic’s durability. As a result of the current rate of plastic production, the ocean will have more plastic in it than fish by 2050. We can’t recycle our way out of this problem, experts say.
“We’re not saying that recycling is not important or that people should [not] be doing it,” Kate Melges, an oceans campaigner with Greenpeace, tells Teen Vogue. “The responsibility to solve the problem to deal with plastics shouldn’t be placed on the individual as the consumer. [The responsibility needs] to be put back on these companies [creating plastic products]. They have the power to switch what they’re packaging their products with.”
“A Million Acts of Blue” explores a number of strategies and tactics that can help people reshape their community’s relationship with plastic usage, which we’ve shared below. Melges notes that Greenpeace wanted to create “something that is accessible for people to meet them where they’re at.”
This activism starts with learning about the environment, then taking a simple first step toward making a change in your own life. You can start by eliminating the purchase of single-use plastics as often as possible and asking your family and friends to do the same.
Next, look around the areas you frequent — your school, local hangouts, spaces that you and your friends spend time in. How much plastic are people using? And could anything change?
Julia Griffety says when she was in middle school, educational videos about plastic pollution shown at her school’s environmental club inspired her to fight against plastic pollution. For a newer activist like Griffety, the first major steps toward impacting her community were educating herself about the environment on a deeper level and then making a simple phone call.
“I emailed my school’s service coordinator a few days before school started to briefly explain my hope to ban the purchase of bottled water on campus,” Griffety says. “[My school’s service coordinator] responded with, ‘Yes I LOVE this idea,’ and immediately all that self-doubt I carried disappeared,” she adds. She worked with her middle school’s environmental club to ban the sale of bottled water on campus, which exemplifies one of the strategies in “A Million Acts of Blue” — starting a plastic-free community group. Griffety would eventually start the EcoCitizen: Water Project “to reduce migrant labor workers' dependence on bottled water in the UAE by creating systemic access to refillable water and carrier solutions.”
By appealing directly to those in positions of power, teens can effect change. Many adults are willing to take steps to save the environment, but it can sometimes take a leader approaching them about the issue to get that process started. You could be that leader — and maybe your efforts could move beyond the local to statewide or national levels.
Take sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen, who were also middle-schoolers when, in 2013, they started Bye Bye Plastics, which fought to stop the use of plastic bags in Indonesia.
“Together with [the Bye Bye Plastic Bags Crew], we started a multilayered approach based on an offline signature petition, [and] educational and inspirational presentations in schools,” Melati said during a 2015 TED Talk with her sister. “We raised general awareness at markets, festivals, beach cleanups, and last but not least, we distribute alternative bags,” she said.
Learning hard lessons along the way and thinking outside the box helped the sisters alter certain strategies. Instead of petitioning at a typical place, like a shopping mall, the sisters got creative and convinced Bali’s airport to agree to let them petition there, so tourists would get a better idea of the problem in the nation they were visiting. The sisters eventually achieved their goal after going on a hunger strike, and they got a memorandum signed by Bali’s then governor to make the country plastic-bag-free by 2018.
Teenage activists have also been part of the struggle to eliminate plastic from their communities, even their countries. Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, an internationally known environmental activist since the age of 6, spoke earlier this year in Chico, California, about reframing the challenge of talking about environmental destruction.
“It’s about people’s lives. It’s about people’s families, their home, their community,” Martinez said on The Daily Show With Trevor Noah in 2017 while discussing his approach to activism. “That is the issue we are facing and as a member of the younger generation. I believe that we have this opportunity now to face this crisis and to change the way we are acting. And we are doing something about it.”
And it’s not just about banning plastic bags or straws, though both are a good start for young people hoping to make a change in their communities. The “plastic straw is not [a] one-problem-solve-all, but it opens up a window into this disposable culture,” said Jennifer Jen, the cofounder of Sustainable Blacksburg.
Jen has been interested in environmentalism since she was a teenager and is at the forefront of educating restaurants in Blacksburg, Virginia, about plastic pollution through single-use plastic. The nonprofit, which started an educational campaign in 2017, has since circulated a pledge, with the hard work of volunteers, to have restaurants sign on to different levels of commitment against single-use plastic straws — ranging from giving straws only to customers who request them to purchasing a viable alternative to plastic straws. (It is important to note, when advocating for the ban of single-use plastic straws, that there are clear negative impacts on those living with disabilities. A recent Teen Vogue op-ed by Madison Lawson emphasizes that environmentalists should adapt their strategies to include solutions for disabled people, too.)
The Greenpeace toolkit expands upon many ideas or strategies that have been used to achieve positive change for the environment by holding corporations accountable for their waste, something every individual can do. Take to social media, for starters, when you see plastic pollution, and tag the brand responsible for making the product.
This could lead to a brand audit, which the toolkit defines as “the identification of the companies responsible for the trash.” This is exemplified by the 2017 cleanup of Freedom Island in the Philippines, which led to an eventual brand audit by Greenpeace Philippines that accused several companies of being responsible for much of the waste on Freedom Island.
For more ideas on how to fight plastic pollution, check out “A Million Acts of Blue.”
For more information on the global plastics crisis, read the rest of the Plastic Planet series.
