American Chemistry Council Promotes Beach Clean-Up

At this point, we should all be familiar with your friend and mine, the American Chemsitry Council. Famous for taking a stand in favor of the wonderful science of disposable plastic bags, they are one of the foremost and most formidable opponents in the quest to promote reusable bags. Oh, and now they are promoting and donating resources to Keep California Beautiful’s coastal clean-up efforts. Wait a minute, what exactly is going on here?

ACC fully supports efforts to keep our oceans clean by putting trash in the can and recyclables in the bin. Nearly one year ago, ACC entered into a successful partnership with KCB and California State Parks to increase the recycling of plastics, particularly on California beaches. Under the “Plastics. Too Valuable to Waste. Recycle.(TM)” campaign, new recycle bins are in place in various beach locations in Los Angeles, San Diego, Monterey and Santa Cruz.

“Plastic should not end up as litter on our beaches and in our waterways,” said ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley. “Our partnership and program works in concert with efforts like the International Coastal Clean Up to increase recycling and protect our environment for the future of California.”

Hmm, yes. Who can argue with them on this point? They’re right — plastic should not end up as litter on our beaches and in our waterways. If only it were that simple. If only littering were the problem. If only plastic bags, once properly disposed of, didn’t tend to find their way back irregardless.

ACC is also taking advantage of this publicity to promote an agenda heavy on plastics recycling — this, too, is a mixed bag. How can you argue with recycling? It is always, always better than plain old waste. That said, the recycling process itself can be a dirty and wasteful process, with most recyclable plastic products quickly being downcycled into new products that are in and of themselves non-recyclable.

So sure, of course it is imperative that we recycle what plastic we already have out there. But, when it comes to making new plastic as opposed to putting an emphasis on reusables, is it so hard to agree that prevention is the only viable long-term option? No, I suppose not.

Yet.

Photo via Flickr!

Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.