In the  various advertisements in the print media, radio, and emerging television presente the new element calle “plastic,” which would replace obsolete fabric, glass, paper, or other elements use as wrappers or packaging for daily use. . Nobody imagine that 70 years later, the massification of this petroleum product would be so serious that no living being would exist without microplastics within its body. Companies, academia, governments and civil society have starte various campaigns and allocate efforts and investments to reduce the use of plastic, particularly bags; However, they have not achieve sufficient success because a cultural change is require for millions of people who have live their entire lives with plastic at their side.In Mexico alone, 20 million plastic bags are use daily, the problem is that each one takes between 400 and a thousand years to degrade depending on its size and weight.

Global alliance against plastic

Of the billion plastic bags use annually in the country, less than 1% is recycle while the rest ends up in the streets, wastelands, rivers, lagoons, dams, beaches or landfills, according to information from the Ministry of Environment of Mexico City (Sedema). This reality cannot be the sole responsibility of a company or a Switzerland Phone Number List government, but rather of the entire plastic production and consumption chain, which has normalize the abuse of a material whose impact will take a couple of generations to reverse. The cost of saying goodbye to plastics The president of the National Association of Plastic Industries (Anipac), Aldimir Torres, in an interview with Export News reporte that “today it is politically correct to speak ill of plastic out of fashion and ignorancebut by being thrown into the streets he has become the bad guy in the movie.

Bioplastic, far from being the solution

He said that as a business and industrial sector “we are open to dialogue with all authority to provide alternatives for their appropriate use and not just implement laws on plastic bags without achieving business consensus. Legislating and prohibiting is the same as doing nothing.” He explaine that “the culture of using Vietnam Phone Number List plastic is inefficient. We are not responsible for our actions, society, government and companies, but the appropriate solution will only come from a consensus between all actors.” He mentione that 7.3 billion tons of plastic are generate in Mexico, while bioplastics are emerging in their presence in the market, with just 1% of the industry’s total. For this reason, he emphasize that we have to work on other alternatives as well as raise awareness about the use and reuse of plastic packaging and bags by consumers.