It’s #EarthDay 2024 today. And it’s recycling collection for the Lyons household today – well done us, just look at that blue bin brimming over with….packaging.

Wikipedia reminds us that “In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970”. It is now an annual demonstration of support for environmental protection.

Head to earthday.org for all the information. The big focus is plastics. With my first grandchild a few months old I was drawn to the report ‘Babies vs Plastics’. “Microplastic ingestion, inhalation and bioaccumulation have been linked to a wide range of health issues in children”.

Here’s a quote to focus the mind:

“Our reliance on plastics could be the biggest gamble in the story of human health, in history. We are all ingesting and inhaling microplastics. They are everywhere. Are we just hoping they are safe, or is even the remotest possibility they might be toxic so terrifying, that we can’t contemplate it?” ~Kathleen Rogers President, EARTHDAY.ORG

The report’s opener in the Intro is this: “We are living in the Plasticene. An era in which plastics have permeated every aspect of our lives like an epidemic. Microplastics are impossible to avoid.”

Humans must have thoroughly researched the consequences for life of earth before it went into mass consumption of plastics, right? RIGHT?

“While the rising Greenhouse Gasses alone caused by plastic production are of concern in their own right and understood, the potential harmful impact of microplastic particles on human health, as well as the 10,000 chemical additives used to make them, is only just beginning to be investigated in earnest.”

The report mentions something I find feels often conspicuous by its absence when it comes to environmental protection – the precautionary principle (you know, like maybe resisting carrying on prospecting for new oil and gas).

“as the European parliament defines it “the precautionary principle enables decision-makers to adopt precautionary measures when scientific evidence about an environmental or human health hazard is uncertain and the stakes are high.” What stakes could be higher than the possibility that one of the most prevalent man-made materials on the planet might be toxic or have additive chemicals that are damaging to human health, if ingested or inhaled?”

Earthday.og offer up some facts on disposable plastics, including:

One million plastic bottles are purchased every minute worldwide, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used a year

An estimated 9.7 billion cigarette butts are littered in the U.S. every year, 4 billion of these in waterways. They comprise nearly 20% of all litter.

If only we just had to worry about accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere and the collapse of biodiversity. Now we have another ‘hyper-object’ on our hands Robin Lyons.

Make sure you put your recycling out.