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2018 WILL GO down in history as the year the world finally woke up to the catastrophe of plastic pollution in our oceans.
David Attenborough’s Blue Planet 2 series set the tone, with a series of shocking images and a heartfelt plea from the great man to take action.
This was followed by an avalanche of news stories over the year – from the Pacific Garbage Patch (which is larger than France, Germany and Spain combined) to the swamping of previously pristine tourist beaches with tonnes of plastic waste – as public opinion shifted and the media began to take notice.
Responding to this sudden change in public opinion, businesses and governments have been scrambling to keep up.
Plastic straws have been labelled enemy number one – you could call this #StrawShaming – and many businesses have moved to ban the offending items in response to public pressure.
Plastic bag bans – something that Ireland has been a pioneer in – are being enacted across the world and the move towards eco-packaging has finally gone mainstream.
Just before the end of the year, the Taoiseach announced that the Irish government would shortly introduce a ban on unnecessary single-use plastics across government departments, state agencies, hospitals and schools.
And of course, all of this action from individuals, businesses and government in Ireland and elsewhere is to be welcomed.
Frankly, we could and should be doing more – particularly when it comes to demanding real action from major corporations like Coca Cola, Starbucks and others.
But the reality is that if every country in the EU instituted a ban on single-use plastics tomorrow, it wouldn’t really make a dent on this global problem.
That’s because the overwhelming majority of plastic in our oceans comes from a handful of large, developing nations.
Five Asian countries
According to research conducted by Ocean Conservancy in 2017, just five developing countries – China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam – are dumping more plastic into the oceans than the rest of the world combined.
Some of these countries have huge population density, but there are other structural problems including poverty, a lack of waste facilities, and the fact that you can’t drink the tap water, which all contribute greatly to this problem.
I believe that anyone who really wants to stop the flow of plastic into the world’s oceans should focus on their efforts on addressing those problems – rather than on implementing straw bans in Ireland.
Water, waste and sachets
To start with, the fact that you can’t drink tap water in many developing countries is a massive contributory factor to plastic pollution.
I’m living in Indonesia at the moment, so let’s look at that for an example.
Indonesia has a population of 260 million people.
When almost everyone – from the richest 0.01% (drinking Fiji Water) to the poorest rural farmer or urban dweller – has to rely on plastic packaged water, it makes for an incredible amount of plastic related to the most basic of human needs.
Secondly, while all of these major polluter countries have fast-growing middle classes, the majority of the population still lives in significant poverty.
This poverty means that most cannot afford to purchase large quantities of anything, resulting in the proliferation of single-use plastic sachets.
Here in Jakarta, these sachets are absolutely everywhere and almost anything you can think of – coffee, shampoo, sugar, instant noodles – can all be purchased in single-use sachets.
The lack of functioning waste services means that people don’t think twice about dumping rubbish into the nearest water source, or if they are feeling more energetic, burning all their plastic waste.
Of course, this is also an ecological disaster, but when people don’t have a functioning waste system it is hard to expect an individual to do any different.
Here in Indonesia, education, as well as improved infrastructure, are urgently needed to stop this increasing plastic pollution.
So what can we do?
Of course it’s great if places like Ireland, where we are lucky enough to have fresh drinking water and functioning waste systems, take action to demonstrate how things can be done in a more environmentally sustainable way.
But if we expect the 736 million people living on less than US$2 a day, who have no access to clean water, to change their behaviour because a café in Sligo or a Hostel in Dublin has switched to non-plastic straws then you are truly deluded
We need to realise that developing countries are ground zero for global action on plastic waste.
That means supporting these countries financially, to rapidly increase access to drinkable tap water and improved waste services.
It means using the EU, the UN and other global bodies to support these countries to make rapid political, economic and social change on this issue.
That, in turn, means supporting poverty alleviation programs (like demanding major brands and celebrities pay people a living wage) so that fewer people have to live sachet to sachet.
It also means holding major companies – who trumpet their commitment to sustainability, while ratcheting up their investments in plastics – to account.
This may be asking a lot of people in Ireland, many of whom are still feeling the effects of the recession, ten years on. But if we want to take meaningful action to stop the destruction of the world’s oceans, this is where we need to start.
Just refusing a straw in your cocktail or buying a long life water bottle isn’t going to save the world’s oceans – if only it were so simple!
Barry Dunning is a writer from Kildare living in Jakarta, Indonesia.
You can find him on Twitter here.
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How about, no?
We’re the worst in the EU because we have the worst government in the EU..
@Steven C. Schulz: we could just walk to the shops instead of driving 2kms or less. The catalytic converter in a car needs to get up to temp to work, the walk won’t kill you
@Barra O Brien: not everyone lives 2 Kim’s from shops
@Barra O Brien: and all the yummy mummies dropping the kids off at the door of the school in their jeeps.
@Steven C. Schulz: Irish people reduce meat like there is some comparison to all the all the non-Irish pumping/frackin oil, drilling for gas and burning rainforests to grow grass for meat production. Who writes this nonsense?
@Gus Sheridan: I never said they did, the point is the majority of vehicle journeys undertaken are less than 2kms…
@Barra O Brien: Jaysus it’s 2019 not 1919. Greenies want us all to go back to the stone age
@Barra O Brien: Can you provide the research for your 2 KM statement???
@Steven C. Schulz: stop the BS…eat away,if anyone believes we are in any way significant in adding to global warming,a lil dot,off the coast of Europe. Headline like ” China must stop building Nuclear Power Stations ” might actuall be helpful.
@Steven C. Schulz: Typical response. Everythings the governments fault but nobody wants to actually do anything themselves. They continue to drive their enormous cars, dump plastic, fly to other countries and facilitate harmful farming practices but have no moral issue with going to climate change protests, sharing posts online about the rainforest and blaming the government for everything. You are part of the problem, but we are so great at passing the buck.
@Pauline Gallagher: You do have it mixed up a little. I do believe that there is hardly anyone in Ireland who is not aware of pollution and most of us do have no problem to help with tackling this issue. One does not sh*t where he live.
Man made climate change on the other hand is pure nonsense. It is a power grab to control people scaremongering and beating them into submission. Climate change is happening. It always does and there is nothing we can do about it.
@Pauline Gallagher: think you will find that the irish government is made up of people who drive enormous cars , fly to other countries , facilitate harmful farming practices and dump plastic (election posters ?) so steven c schult is spot on with what he posted !
Not sure how strongly a lot of this holds water in a country like Ireland – you speak about forestry areas being cleared for livestock feed, not a huge pile of that happening here in Ireland – Coilte do great work in managing and expanding the Irish forestry network, most livestock farmers here graze their animals on our luscious grass lands. one way the Irish consumer is directly affecting the Amazon is by eating soy, soy farms are directly culpable for wiping out huge swathes of rainforest. Think of the carbon footprint of an avocado travelling from Mexico to the ports of Cork/ Dublin. Agreed that we should all cut consumption, but the message should be more about buying seasonally and locally!
@Conor Lyons: soy consumption by humans in Ireland is tiny. Most soy grown worldwide feeds guess who? Livestock. You need to do some fact checking before making nonsensical comments
@Conor Lyons: coilte leave places looking a like bomb went off. Non native trees for profit over a native forest.
@Barra O Brien: Go for a walk and educate yourself. Coillte have planted native forests all over the country that will never be intended for harvest for profit. The spruce forests that are harvested are huge carbon syncs in themselves.
@Dave Wallace: Ireland’s cattle’s art fed for the most part in grass. Stop lapping up US problems and applying to Ireland. Sick of this crap
@Dave Wallace: Soy is not used to feed Irish cattle. Educate yourself. We use grass and grass derivatives.
@wormtubes: I’ve seen coilte’s work, fair play for the minuscule amount of native forest they plant. The devastation I’ve seen in connemara, Wicklow and Dublin going back as far the early 90′s tells me otherwise.
@wormtubes: they also Hoover up water but you don’t hear about that.
@Conor Lyons: it’s all scaremongering. Compare Ireland to any country around the world and we are cleaner than most. The vast majority of this country is fields with a few cows farting
@Dave Wallace: educate yourself…. support the Beef Farmers!!!
Cattle farmers don’t have any option other than to use concentrates to finish cattle to meet factory requirements – these (inappropriate) requirements are supported by government and are in place to ensure farmers incomes are marginalized.
If farmers could receive a fair price for largely grass fed beef – everyone (bar the factory monopoly) would be a winner…. better product & better for the environment
@Conor Lyons: AFAIK a huge proportion of soy is produced to feed our livestock, including here in Ireland.
@Conor Lyons: coillte’s ‘forest’ are mostly made up of non native fast growing trees use for the building trade and energy sector – they plant very few (if any) native trees and they fell them as soon as they possibly can -ie as soon as they reach a saleable height .
@Dave Wallace: never saw a cow in Ireland eating soy, could you point me in the direction of where I might see one?
@Eric Davies: even if they are non native do they help with carbon any less?
I never heard such rubbish in all my life, the size of the national herd most of which is for export and we invite the chinese here to further increase the impact, yet we tell a small population to decrease meat consumption and dairy which even if we all went without would have no impact as we export anyway, crazy stuff , no impact on emissions sending our beef to china no!!!!
@Honeybee: I know. The patients in our psychiatric hospitals don’t hold a candle to those in government.
Could we please be told of our real carbon footprint and this would exclude all energy guzzling data centres as well as livestock farming.
Might the government also acknowledge that our capital city doesn’t have a fit for purpose public transport system.
Also, the fact that much of the country is cold wet and miserable for a large proportion of the year just might hint at more heating requirements than southern europe
Load of
And Heineken, beans and Guinness, they cause awful emissions
Just put carbon taxes on ALL fruit and vegetables produced outside of Ireland in a sliding scale depending on distance and give farmers here an incentive to grow more crops.
You can’t blame farmers who already struggle to make a living in many cases.
Promote market gardening and if there’s a decent profit farmers like anyone else trying to get by will respond.
I know many small farmers that have to work full time outside the farm to scrape by, this just isn’t fair.
Constantly kicking farmers isn’t the solution, give them the support they need and they will grow, it would also benefit the country and make our economy stronger
Not just Ireland, EVERY nation. We do a meat free day once a week and the walls haven’t fallen down. We could probably do two, even three if we really put our thinking caps on.
@The Risen: You don’t even need to be drastic about it. Most Irish people eat meat twice a day, some three times a day. Cut it down to once per day, buy local produce as much as you can, and our agriculture CO2 footprint would halve.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: yee are both nuts, I’ve da frying pan warming up at 11.55pm on good Fridays with the sausages waiting in the shadows. Toughest day of the year for me!!!!!
@The Risen: I went vegan for a year and it was quite easy and enjoyable after the initial adjustment period! Just forming new habits. Detox the auld body. Haven’t touched dairy since. Just cut out processed food and aim for whole foods and you’ll be better off.
@The Risen: eat meat every day and will continue to do so
@Hank Kingsley: best sh1 te you’ll ever have once the aul bowels clear themselves out then! Yer welcome! ;)
@Hank Kingsley: yeah and look at what happened your hair
@Hank Kingsley: a steak or joint of meat would be classed as whole food – there’s nothing added & nothing taken away – milk yoghurts etc the same ….
@Hank Kingsley: veganism is bad for you
what a load if clickbait
Soya is grown for its oil which human demand, much of this demand is from the switch from animal fats in diets, so should it not be accounted for in non meat eating column?
The by product of soya oil production, soya bean meal pulp, was initially a waste product but was then fed to pigs in meal form which recycled this into better quality nutrition.
People have been eating meat for millions of years. The warming co-insides which the rise of industry, not agriculture.
Lastly, carbon dioxide (our breath) doesn’t count as plants absorb this; so why is a cows bletch counted when that is also absorbed by plants?
And if methane is your concern, eat more pork. The pig is the greatest recycler of them all, created by nature.
Suppose people cut their RyanAir city breaks etc. for a start .
@Bríd Uí Mhaoluala: I guess you are not a world traveller then…
Try telling a lion that they cant eat the zebra….I like eating animals because it’s nice it’s a food chain and we happen to be at the top of it….on the global warming scale we are a small fish in a big pond we need bigger countries to act first other wise we are wasting our time
@Mike Murphy: that food chain arguement is ridiculous. the systematic slaughter of animals for consumption has nothing to do with nature. Do you kill your own food? No, you pay someone to do it for you, the process of which is mostly cruel and 100% unnatural. Time to drop this lame excuse.
@Don Kravallo: you’d be no craic at a funeral anyway
Couldn’t make it up
Australia is clearing vast amount of land transporting beef 1000’s of Km to a purpose built airport in Toowoomba to fly beef to Asia to supply the emerging middle class in Asia and we then joe the farmer 80 head herd is problem , and 4/5million people eating a little less beef will offset the 100’s of millions in Asia that are taking up beef with the new prosperity there
Simply incredible
@Sk19: He isn’t saying that Ireland is the only place that should reduce meat consumption. It needs to be done globally.
@Sk19: If they weren’t clearing the forest in Australia, we wouldn’t have been able to get the 37,000 tonne load of wood biomass we have just got from there for keeping the old peat stations going up in the Midlands.
There is only one way this problem is going to be mitigated and that is the mass installation temperate World wide of modular generation 4 MSRs, four for starters in Moneypoint. http://www.bene.ie as our contribution. Mass solar for the sunny climes.
And the mass move to the insect era of protein production. We alone here have a million tonnes a year of food waste, all of which could be devoured by the Soldier Fly, whose larvae could provide our poultry and fish feed and the basis of the new false meats. Little point hammering down our farmers here, for the slack to be immediately taken up by Brazil.
@Fifty Shades of Sé: I don’t disagree with him. What I disagree with is that ireland can make an impact , we can’t. The NAIf is set up to fund ag projects on a scale you can’t imagine to satisfy the new demand for beef out of Asia. They fly the beef talk about carbon footprint . The demand is only rising won’t stop clearing land and flying beef any time soon, so if you want to make an impact that’s where you start . Cos you won’t make an impact in Ireland . They are opening up stations with more head of cattle than the whole head count in ireland .
@Sk19: one cup of water removed form a swimming pool doesn’t drop the level if it happens during a torrential downpour, and that’s exactly what’s happening . This projects and land clearance are on a mind boggling scale
@Fifty Shades of Sé:
When it’s done globally, Ireland can then fall in line. Until then, Dr. Stephen can bugger off. It’s not the first time a successful industry in Ireland has been targeted; remember the sugar beet industry.
Same goes for ‘green taxes’, unless and until the middle classes can leave an event like the Electric Picnic and take all their rubbish with them, the government can shove their taxes.
Unless and until, public transport can transport the public, the government can shove their taxes.
Unless and until, private jets, yatchs and diesel gussling cars are banned, the government can shove their taxes.
Don’t let the globalists and environmentalists pick on soft targets (Irish politicans). The real damage is done by the oil countries, corporate farms, the car industries, aviation and global companies. Ireland’s global footprint is minuscule by comparison.
Until the above happens, everyone shouting about our cattle farts, can bugger off.
Does the person who wrote this article, or the person this article was sourced from, drive a gas guzzling SUV and go on air travel holidays, or does he or she go to work on a bus, eat vegan and go on local cycling holidays?
@WoodlandBard: Ah here, that’s for the little people.
Hahaha No if we all stop eating meat and a factory in China increases production by 1% it’ll probably be all wiped out.. lol this opinion is stupid
@bill2345: that’s the type of mentality that will see the inevitable wiping out if the human species. I mean you’re right but it’ll actually make you feel a little better if you do your bit.
@Bruce Van der Gutschmitzer: will you whist with the wiping out civilisation nonsense please?
@Redhead: so you wouldn’t say that if we continue to obsessively consume as much as we can then it won’t lead to us wiping ourselves out?? Let’s make no changes and increase production of everything and see how far we get…..
Oh go away…….I never heard such rubbish. Climate change. A new buzzword to bully people.
Taking us all for fools. how about the big polluting companies world wide take action and stop putting it on the ordinary citizens.
I am sick to the teeth of this Climate scaremongering and talk of extinction. Take a look at the zealots in the Article’s photograph… talk about hyperbole! I am equally saddened to hear young kids terrified of their lives that the world is going to end next year. They view Greta Thunberg as some kind of saviour. I on the other hand would have reservations about her ‘backroom team’ and would seriously question their motivation. I think she is being manipulated.
@Redhead: Great to see folk are waking up to this scam, designed by the left to control the masses
@Redhead: you took the words out of my mouth. The left are using Greta Thungerg as a human pawn to push their fascists agenda. People are slowly waking up to the BS.
How about the government, rte and the thought brigade stop telling us what to do… your days are numbered.. they just can’t wait for that additional carbon tax. They’ve went as far as taken retirement from us… where does it stop… we need a new government.. a new party for the people.. nobody cares about your crap anymore
@Ger Murphy: taking*
Astonishing that The Journal continuously gives people such a platform to peddle this “climate crisis” nonsense and predictions of an apocalypse that will never happen.
Another academic endeavouring to justify his academic existence.
The farmers say NO, unless, of course, there is a grant, a handout, a subsidy (social welfare handout) compensation or the sniff of free money. The same guys that are breaking the law outside the meat plants denying the paye tax worker lorry drivers entry to the factories and denying the paye worker meat processors in the factories employment. The very people whose taxes pay for the luxuries that the non-tax paying farming community are fortunate to be able to be able to avail of. Oh! The irony. The absolute sense of self-entitled me-fein hard done by farmers. Really, my piles are bleeding for you. I really won’t sleep easy tonight worrying in case your EU subsidy cheque is late in arriving. You know the one, paid for by the paye workers of Europe.
@Pat Farrelly: Well those PAYE workers won’t have any jobs to go to if beef farming goes belly up.
@Pat Farrelly: good man Pat – did you have a few scoops before writing that rant? – should we force farmers to sell cattle for less than the cost of production just to keep meat processing workers in jobs or will you be happy to pay dole to them when that whole industry disappears and our own steak comes from the amazon rainforests
@Thomas Sheridan: The farmers should be setting up co- operatives. Cut out the middleman. Want fresh food, shop at your local co-operative.
@Teresa Ryan: Exactly. Local butcher is always better option to frozen product from good knows when and where.
WTF still going on about meat when the real issue is with OIL COAL & GAS.
@Joby Redmond: This forces the responsibility on ordinary people in an attempt to justify lifestyle change, control and more tax. As long as they are the only solutions being pushed it shows the whole thing up as a scam.
@Dave Doyle: It’s also just a way of cutting out the competion. The amount of times I’ve sat in a restaurant in Europe and noticed Irish beef listed separately on the menu. More expensive too.
@Joby Redmond: Meat is not an issue. Oil coal and gas are neither. Issue is that this is well designed power grab by the extreme left to control people. Anyone who want to control what and when you eat can also decide if you eat or not.
Far more vehicles in the world than Irish cattle.. emissions me hole, Goodman wants to produce beef by having cows raised shoulder to shoulder in warehouses like farmed chickens,farmers get f_all for their troubles, getting the worse prices and told to shut up or else f_off. Cows are weighed at these factories and often tampered with to rip of the farmers,the IFA are payed off too. if teachers, nurses and everyone else can cause drama for a decent wage then I’m 100% behind farmers, backbone of this country.
More pseudo religious green alarmisn. When is the world going to end now? As if the big polluters like China could care less.
What’s it got to do with irish peoples consumption of dairy. Most of our dairy is exported
FOFF
Could we not purchase a couple of carbon credits along with our steaks to offset our footprint, or maybe if we were to cycle to the shop instead of using the car would that then be carbon neutral. I know these are stupid ideas but so is this article. No, I won’t be changing my lifestyle just to suit some deranged guru.
“He is currently working on a project designed to understand the social norms or behavioural characteristics toward responsible production and consumption in Ireland. “……Stephen, if you want to understand human behaviour – start with this one – people don’t like being lectured they *should* do something or to be criticized – and will often do what is not in our best interest just to regain autonomy. But beyond that – what we put in our mouths will be one of the very LAST things that anyone will do to combat any climate change. We will pay double taxes on fuel, you name it, but when you come for people’s steak or coffee or bonbons or whatever, you will never win…… Find a better scapegoat because you are fighting a losing battle on this one.
What about all the harmful emissions from the machinery and vehicles used to farm crops and bring them to market? Those emissions far outweigh the emissions used for farming cattle/dairy.
Cattle do not cause Climate Change
Of course , and every Irish political Partys Plan to incresae pur popilatiom by mass imagrstion , fits right in with the plan ha ha ha
Greta Thunberg is Swiss, not Swedish. She should be in school instead of ruining her life.
@Clarissa: Lol she is minted. She do not need any degree anymore. She gained climate sainthood with all its perks already.
This guy is full of crap. Hopefully he’s environmentally friendly and he doesn’t excrete. Oops too late!!
While Brazil burns the Amazone, which has done more damage in two weeks than Ireland in ten years.
Irish cow farts, the bane of the earth. :)
the biggest harmful ‘emissions’ are coming out the the mouths of politicians and people like the author of this pile of junk – its a SCAM !
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