When Coca-Cola first arrived in Qatar in the early 1960's, returning bottles to the supplier was simply the norm. My father and his friends understood this as a normal part of life. There were no grand discussions about sustainability or reusing; it was common sense in action. Fast-forward to today, and the reality couldn’t be more different. And with this reference, I would like to point out the cringey fact that today Coca-Cola is the single biggest polluter of single use waste in the world.
Brian Eno once said, “Civilizations with long nows look after things better.” As we grapple with single-use plastic waste, our collective attention span for the “longer-term now’s” has dwindled. We accept a plastic bag to use for minutes, only to discard it and let it linger in the environment for centuries. Millions of times a day, convenience settles and trumps common sense. Is this the feeling we want — to trade a fleeting moment of ease for a future riddled with environmental and health crises?
If you are still unaware of the discussions surrounding the hazards of single use plastic, and the recent studies that every human now has nano plastic flowing through there body or that we eat the equivalent of a credit card of plastic every week, one would hope that some form of social osmosis has captured your attention, raising awareness about the perils of plastic pollution.
The Illusion of Innovation
If education and science are the vehicles of progress, then accumulated common sense should be the foundation of our intellectual infrastructure. For over a decade, we have tried to bend, burn, and reuse plastic. Unfortunately, people have various motivations for attempting to solve the single-use plastic crisis through “innovations” and “commodification” of solutions that are often not scalable or require complex recycling systems that need heavy subsidization. Reading this article from Wired “the cure for disposable plastic is here”, you might feel we’ve made progress, but frankly it’s just clickbait. Bioplastics will not save us, plastic lined paper cups — are not the solution. It’s time to stop this cycle of misguided innovation and rethink our approach. The novelty of innovation seems to be fading, and the urgency of the issue is often lost in the noise. As we enter 2025, it feels like we’ve reached a point of innovation fatigue.
Innovation in Behavior, Not Products
What we need now is a profound shift in social behavior which studies show is the most impactful way tor reduce our single use plastic use. Research and innovation agencies and venture capitalists will not back behavior-change initiatives because they lack the allure of a “product” or the promise of profits. But the hidden costs of plastic addiction — on our health, environment, and future — are already being paid by all of us which needs collective action from the relevant health and environment authorities.
The stakes are too high to rely on fragmented solutions. Real change requires individual and collective action, through voluntary participation, education, and policy-driven change. To paraphrase “environmentalism without activism is just gardening.”
