The answer is definitely not the consumer or the common people who are usually called out on their conscience to clean up and blame their fellow consumers for this mess. While millions get out of their homes to sort out the waste disposal problems we face, there are giant factories churning out two kinds of waste (the regular waste and the packaging that will turn into a waste after use) in monstrous amounts and the governments all over the world are busy thinking of ways to make things easy for them. The math simply doesn’t add up.
For starters, indisposable packaging was never a consumer demand. It simply brings down the cost product of the goods. There were guidelines in various countries limiting the waste of various packaged goods producing companies. But they we’re changed overnight. A little reference to this can be found on the web. As mad as it sounds, this is what several ‘genuine’ activists did dig into this and here are some facts about the world’s most polluting company Coca Cola.
Coke began a shift to plastic bottles in the 1950s. As the waste piled up, the public began to push the company to take responsibility for it. Coke pushed back hard with a double-edged strategy attacking efforts to make the industry deal with its waste while pushing forward the message that consumers were instead to blame for the problem. Both were accomplished largely through generic-sounding organizations that worked on behalf of Coke and other soda and bottle companies while keeping their brand names out of the public eye.
Coke’s strategy of using other organizations to convey its messages proved useful. In 1968, when state and federal legislation was proposed that would have made deposits on nonreturnable containers mandatory, Coke didn’t lobby against it, at least not publicly. Instead, it was the National Soft Drink Association, funded by Coke, that did the work to defeat the bill. At the same time, Keep America Beautiful was letting people know that “keeping America beautiful is your job.” Those who failed at that job were “litterbugs,” or, as the nonprofit organization made disturbingly clear in a video that year, pigs.
Coca-Cola now makes 117 billion plastic bottlesa year, according to its own estimates, untold billions of which end up being burned or dumped in landfills and nature. Coke was responsible for more waste than any other company in a 2018 global plastic cleanupconducted by the advocacy group Break Free From Plastic, with Coke-branded plastic found along the coasts and in the parks and streets of 40 out of 42 participating countries.
Though Coca Cola has made huge monetary donations along with the ‘world Without Waste’ goal i.e. to recycle every bottle they produce by the year 2030, it’s a lofty goal (simply unrealistic as they failed even to bring down the non-biodegradable content in their bottle as they promised).
With Coke taking the lead and creating a precedent, it was just a default way of functioning for major waste producing giants all over the world. THEY ARE SIMPLY SHIFTING THE BLAME FROM THEMSELVES TO THE PEOPLE! And making a few noticeable donations (which is minuscule compared to what it would cost them if they had to take care of it).
Adding to this are nuclear landfills (radioactive wastes), unregulated discharge into reservoirs and seas and a ton of other categories. And with everyone hell bent on blaming themselves for fucking up the planet, it’s Christmas all year long for them.
