Material World: The problem of plastics (2024)

The Material World column from the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plastic is everywhere. It is difficult to imagine how we could live our modern lives without it. According to UNCTAD, the UN trade and development agency:

‘Global exports of plastics or goods made from plastic has more than doubled in value since 2005, passing the $1 trillion benchmark in 2018 and reaching nearly $1.2 trillion in 2021’ (tinyurl.com/an6945me).

The use of plastic encompasses products made from plastic, products with plastic components and products wrapped in plastic.

Invented in 1907, it is a very versatile and useful product, indeed, but the sheer scale of our dependence on it has created enormous and rapidly proliferating problems. According to the United Nations Environment Program:

‘Around the world, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. In total, half of all plastic produced is designed for single-use purposes – used just once then thrown away’ (tinyurl.com/5asrbmnp).

As the article says, we are choking on plastics. It gets everywhere. Its effects are multiple. It can, for example, block up rivers, slow down the flow of water and so encourage mosquitoes to flourish in stagnant pools. It can be devastating for wildlife in many ways. A vast swirling island of floating plastic has been formed in the Pacific Ocean called the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’. It is currently 1.6 million square kilometres in size and growing (by comparison the United Kingdom is a mere 243,610 square kilometres and not growing).

The durability of plastic as a product means it can hang around in the environment for hundreds of years or break down into microplastics that enter the human body via the food chain when we consume fish. Petrochemical plants producing plastic release gases with side effects that range from asthma to cancer to various hormonal disorders. Burning plastic waste can likewise pose serious health risks.

Globally just 15 percent of plastic waste is collected for recycling and only half of that actually gets to be recycled – sorted, baled up and sent to a processing plant to be melted down. Part of the problem is that much of this plastic is not recyclable anyway.

Furthermore, there are many different kinds of plastic each with a different chemical composition – no doubt, much of this diversity being in part a function of market competition. You can´t just lump together these different kinds of plastic in the process of recycling if you want to get a usable product at the end of it. It is constraints such as these that prevent recycling being anything more than just a small part of the solution.

All this plastic comes from fossil fuels like crude oil or natural gas (which is combined with other ingredients to form a resin that is then turned into pellets), fuels that we are supposed to be running out of at some point in the future. Until that happens or until the price becomes excessive there is unlikely to be any really significant move towards embracing sustainable alternatives to plastic. Alternatives are available to some extent but there are powerful commercial interests vested in maintaining a profligately wasteful and polluting way of life heavily dependent on plastic.

These same petrochemical corporations, in order to maintain the market for their products and to deflect public criticism of the environmental effects of these products, have not infrequently resorted to greenwashing tactics – for instance by providing funding for recycling campaigns. What this does is to shift the perception of who is actually responsible for such problems as plastic litter from the producer to the consumer. You can´t blame the producer, goes the argument, when it is obviously doing its best to clean up the environment as evidenced by all that money it spends on recycling campaigns. (Actually, that money is a drop in the ocean compared to the corporation’s revenue and it is good publicity anyway).

This is a tactic not dissimilar to the way Big Pharma blamed the opioid crisis in America on the users. It also overlooks the fact that most of that plastic that does happen to be conscientiously disposed of by consumers into the container for plastic will not actually get to be recycled. The fact that consumers may not be aware of this simultaneously helps to take pressure off tackling the problem at its source while ensuring the demand for more plastic just keeps growing.

While most plastic waste generated within countries tended to remain within the country concerned – buried in landfill sites, burnt, or otherwise disposed of – some of this waste is simply shipped abroad in containers. This doesn’t really solve the problem but merely relocates it and, in so doing, also perpetuates it. It also involves additional transportation costs with all that that entails for the environment. For the exporting countries (mainly in Europe and the US) it relieves some of the pressure of having to deal with the waste problem themselves and for the importing countries – particularly in the case of developing countries, it can be economically (if not environmentally) beneficial.

It is not just the disposal of plastic waste that presents a growing problem. There is also a problem of our growing dependence on plastic itself. Behind this, there are powerful commercial interests intent upon expanding the market for plastic.

Alarmingly, there are projections suggesting a fourfold increase in the global use of plastic over the next three decades. Mostly, this is predicted to occur in the Middle East and Africa, followed by Asia and China but also to a lesser extent in other parts of the world like Europe and America where already, ‘investors from those regions are currently planning to support expanded capacity for plastics-related infrastructure and production, often with government support’ (LINK).

In short, plastic as an invention has been a mixed blessing. One cannot deny the very obvious benefits it has brought when so much of what we possibly take for granted about our material reality is made of plastic – from our toothbrush to the clothes we wear to the laptop we type on. But as we have seen this also has serious drawbacks.

Minimising the latter by significantly reducing our dependence on plastic and by increasing the effectiveness of recycling, requires changing the purpose behind production away from profit-making. Do we really need all those tacky plastic tourist souvenirs that the tourist industry is so intent upon plying us? What about all those plastic toys unceremoniously dumped at the municipal tip after the novelty has all too rapidly worn off? One can multiply these examples many times, but they all point to the need for a significant cultural shift – something that can only really come about by changing the nature of the society we live in – if we are to mitigate the negative aspects of plastics.

Robin Cox

Material World: War drums in the China Sea (2020)

The Material World column from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism continually creates the conditions for confrontations between countries concerning the control of resources and trade routes. Socialists never tire of pointing out that the primary function of military power in capitalism is to protect and expand control over resources, markets and transport routes on behalf of the capitalist class of the country concerned.

America’s ‘deputy sheriff’ in the South Pacific, Australia, is significantly beefing up its armed forces, increasing military spending by $270 billion over the next ten years. Australia is set to acquire 200 long-range aircraft-launched anti-ship missiles and other capabilities to deter future conflicts. It will also invest in developing a hypersonic missile defence system. There is a $50 billion future submarine project and a $7 billion underwater surveillance network to detect submarines approaching Australia’s coast.

In July, the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan, two US aircraft carriers, conducted naval exercises aimed at demonstrating its superior naval capabilities over China. The United States accused China of intimidating its South East Asian neighbours. The United States declare that freedom of maritime navigation is an issue of ‘national interest’ and for another country to challenge America is to effectively declare war upon the United States, which is exactly what China appears to be doing in the South China Sea, a resource-rich and highly contested waterway. The loyal camp-follower of the US, the UK, has also periodically sent its warships into the contested waters to protect ‘freedom of navigation’.

While those aircraft carriers were on patrol, China engaged in its own military drills near the disputed Paracel Islands. China is constructing its second aircraft carrier and also investing heavily in submarines, to be equipped in the future with ‘carrier-killer’ ballistic missiles.

Armament imports by Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia have all increased and much of the weapon types being purchased are for a potential sea war. The acquisition of such sophisticated weapons indicates two things: first, that South East Asian nations are wary of China’s intentions and secondly, they are tooling up for a possible war.

Aside from China’s claim of sovereignty, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also lay claim to parts of the South China Sea, a busy sea lane with a third of the world’s shipping passing through various straits and choke points carrying $3 trillion of trade, while half the world’s fishing boats operate in its waters as well as there being a number of the region’s undersea internet cables. The oil en route to East Asia through the South China Sea is many times the amount that passes through the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. The energy supplies for South Korea, Japan and Taiwan as well as China come through the South China Sea.

They also all seek to exploit the extensive oil and gas reserves which exist. Oil reserves of billions of barrels and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas remain to be tapped. Technological advances mean countries are able to drill for oil far from shore, making it economically crucial to control as much off-shore territory as possible. This expansion of oil exploration and drilling in the South China Sea has raised the stakes and looks likely to escalate sovereignty disputes.

This is not to mention another rivalry over territorial waters brewing between China and Japan over claims to some uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. The dispute is actually also about the natural gas resources. We indeed should be gravely concerned over the possibility of war between China on one hand, and other rival claimant states in the South and East China Seas on the other.

ALJO

Testing to Destruction (1987)

Book Review from the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poisoned Reign. French Nuclear Colonialism in the Pacific by Bengt Danielsson and Marie-Therese Danielsson (Penguin Books 1986)

On 10 July 1985 the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was blown up in Auckland harbour by two French agents. This act might appear to be surprising, considering the fact that both France and New Zealand are members of the "free world". This book tells the story of how successive French governments, including the "socialists" who changed from opposition to support, have been determined to use French Polynesia for nuclear weapons testing and not let any opposition get in the way.

The post-war years saw the great European empires in decline. When the French were being kicked out of Algeria, they were on the lookout for an alternative nuclear testing site to the Sahara. French Polynesia seemed the best bet — its islands are spread over an area the size of Europe and the 120,000 inhabitants were easy-going and the French had been manipulating them for years. The fact that the South Pacific is rich in food, metals and oil was another reason to maintain French dominance.

Other countries at this time were also testing nuclear weapons — the British at Christmas Island, the Americans in the Marshall Islands, the Russians in Siberia, and the Chinese in parts of Mongolia and Tibet. None of them showed much concern for the effects this would have on the local population.

When the French nuclear testing programme was announced in the early sixties the local people were mostly opposed to it. But this opposition was ineffective — the islands were run from France and the various institutions available to the islanders, to have a say in their affairs, were powerless. The authorities used various methods, devious and oppressive, to neutralise this opposition.

On 2 July 1966 the first French nuclear bomb was exploded above Moruroa Atoll. The French President, de Gaulle, was there to observe. He had made many flowery speeches claiming a great regard for. and affinity with, the Polynesian people, who were the first overseas territory to recognise the Free French during the war and who had sent a battalion to two world wars.

The French nuclear authorities, when dismissing the dangers of the tests, had said that the bombs would only be exploded when the wind was blowing east, away from the inhabited areas. This was despite the fact that winds in the South Pacific can blow in many different directions during the same day. However, when de Gaulle was there the wind kept blowing straight towards inhabited areas. Rather than keep the General waiting, the bomb was exploded anyway. The fall-out reached as far west as Fiji and Samoa. Islanders in the vicinity of Moruroa were given advice on how to protect themselves They were told not to drink rain water or eat fish for a while. This advice was not particularly helpful as this is precisely what the islanders exist on.

The nuclear programme had other effects on the islanders. Many of them were needed to work on the project. They were enticed to Tahiti by high wages only to end up in slums around Papeete, the largest town. They had to endure filthy conditions and crime, prostitution and drunkenness all increased sharply. As most of the work was needed at the start of the programme, when this finished they found themselves unemployed and unable to get back to their islands, as they had been promised.

By 1974, 42 French nuclear bombs had been exploded in the Pacific skies. Due to pressure from other Pacific countries and environmentalists the French government decided to continue its testing underground. They still used Moruroa. despite the fact that a Pacific atoll is one of the worst possible sites. The rock is thin and brittle and the many tests carried out almost certainly caused radioactive leakage and contamination of fish, plankton, shells, dams and squid regularly eaten by the local population.

The extent of the pollution caused by these tests and their resulting effect on the population can only be guessed at, as the authorities engage in the usual practice of secrecy and cover up. No reliable health figures are published and safety standards certainly appear lax. Much of the nuclear waste was dumped on the north of the atoll and washed away by several cyclones and tidal floods which have become more common in recent years. Some of these tidal waves will have been caused by explosions blowing out the side of the atoll, spilling out its radioactive muck. The fact that by 1985, 115 French nuclear devices had been detonated in the Pacific along with 106 American and 21 British, does not bode well for the future health of the islanders.

The authors tell the story of the French nuclear programme well, but their analysis of why it took place, with stories of politicians' duplicity and pride is weak. They clearly disapprove of French attempts to keep up with the superpowers and be independent and are sad that French public opinion doesn't seem to care. Unfortunately, the fact that any capitalist government exists to defend its national interest, and will develop whatever weapons it can to do this, with scant regard for the effects on people, escapes them.

There was a statement recently from a French government spokesman that they might stop nuclear testing at Moruroa as even they think that the atoll cannot take any more blasts. The underground rock is apparently in a very fragile, unstable condition. This will come as a relief to the people in the Pacific, although others had better watch out — the spokesman said they were searching the North Atlantic for an alternative.

Ian Ratcliffe

Material World: Antics in the South China Sea (2009)

The Material World Column from the April 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent incidents in the middle of the South China Sea, in which a large American ship was “harassed” by various Chinese boats, have a comical aspect. The “harassment” seems to have been mostly a matter of uncomfortably close approaches, flag waving, and beaming lights. The most violent moment was when the Americans used fire hoses to drench the sailors on a boat that had come too close, inducing them to strip to their underwear.

These antics, however, may be the prelude to more serious conflict. An armed clash between China and the US is, perhaps, more likely to occur in the South China Sea than in the context of a putative Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

A spy ship

Many reports have described the American vessel, USNS Impeccable, as a “survey ship” or “ocean surveillance ship.” This creates the misleading impression that such ships exist for the purpose of oceanographic mapping or scientific research.

In fact, although they are unarmed and have civilian crews, the “survey ships” belong to the US navy and their function is to collect military intelligence. They are really spy ships.

The main job of the survey ship deployed in the South China Sea is to track the Chinese submarines that patrol there, operating from a base at the southern tip of Hainan Island. These are nuclear submarines carrying intercontinental ballistic missiles – that is, they constitute China’s “nuclear deterrent.” The tracking is done by means of underwater sonar arrays attached to the ship by cables. There was some attempt by Chinese sailors to sever the cables and set the arrays adrift.

It is true that USNS Impeccable, lacking armaments more powerful than fire hoses, does not by itself pose a direct threat to the submarines. But the data it collects could be passed on to another vessel equipped with anti-submarine missiles. In other words, the spy ship is a key component of anti-submarine warfare capability. It is therefore no surprise that the Chinese government should want it to leave the area.   

Legalities of carve-up

It is in large part with a view to securing a sanctuary for its nuclear submarines that China asserts the right to control most of the South China Sea, an area of some 2 million square kilometres – to turn it into a “Chinese lake.” The legal case cooked up by its diplomats involves claiming the three main archipelagos in the sea as Chinese territory and then demarcating an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) 200 miles (320 km.) wide around them as well as Hainan Island and along the shore of the mainland.

Finally, China seeks to erase the distinction between territorial waters and an EEZ. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) prohibits the presence of a spy ship in territorial waters, but not in an EEZ. The US position is that USNS Impeccable did not enter China’s territorial waters – it was 75 miles (120 km.) off the coast of Hainan at the time of the incidents – so its activity is perfectly legal. 

Of course, it does not matter to us as socialists which side has the better case in terms of international law. The whole world is the common heritage of mankind, and we do not recognize the right of capitalist powers to carve it up among themselves.

Other issues

While the military issue is the direct cause of the current clash between China and the US, as it was of a similar clash involving aircraft in 1991, there are also other major issues at stake.

First, rights in the South China Sea are crucial to control over vital shipping lanes. The shortest route between the Indian and the Pacific Ocean passes through the sea. This, for instance, is the route taken by tankers transporting crude oil from the Gulf to East Asia. One rationale for the US presence is to keep the sea routes open: if China were allowed strategic dominance it could close off the Malacca Strait, which connects the South China Sea with the Indian Ocean.

There are also plenty of resources to fight about in and under the sea, including valuable fishing grounds and still unexploited oil and gas fields. This is the underlying reason why it is so difficult to unravel the complicated tangle of territorial disputes over the sea and its islands among the six coastal states: China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan and the Philippines. In 1974 and 1988 these disputes led to military clashes – in both cases between China and Vietnam.

Stefan

Who Owns the Land Under the Sea? (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Carry on conferring" may sound like the latest title in a series of third-rate comedy films but in fact this particular farce is anything but funny, at least not to the participants who have gathered in Geneva in an attempt to arrive at some common ground for the establishment of clearly defined and governable laws on the question: who owns the land under the sea? Capitalism being the epitome of a private property system at its most complex necessitates an equally complex network of laws. Nothing exemplifies this more than the latest follow-on from last year’s session when the legal eagles went Caracas trying to solve their perplexing problem.

The problem is more easily understood when the underlying cause which motivates it is recognized. That cause is profit which in this instance is envisaged from the mining of “nodules” — fist-sized lumps of mineral ore found on the floors of the Pacific and Indian oceans, and the realization of the potential untapped sources of wealth such as manganese, iron, nickel, and cobalt etc, which they contain.

Evan Luard in his book The Control of the Sea-bed tells how in 1959-60, a study by a group of US scientists from the University of California estimated that the total volume of nodules in the entire Pacific ocean, based on the size of concentrations revealed by undersea photography, could be around 1,700 billion tons. A more recent UN study assessed that the nodules may contain 16.4 billion tons of nickel, 8 billion tons of copper, 8.8 billion tons of cobalt. The importance of the resources can be made clear by relative comparison of the same resources found on land. If the calculations of the Californian study quoted were confirmed, nodules in the Pacific ocean would contain about 358 billion tons of manganese, equivalent to reserves for 400,000 years at the 1960 world rate of consumption, compared with known land resources for only 100 years. 43 billion tons of aluminium, equal to reserves for 20,000 years compared to known land reserves for 100 years. Nickel, equivalent to reserves for 150,000 years; copper equal to reserves for 6,000 years; cobalt for 200,000 years. Also, the nodules may contain iron, titanium, magnesium, lead and so on. These are the figures for the Pacific alone. With the content of the nodules in the Indian ocean these figures of course, become even greater. Although the authenticity of these figures has not been verified, the direction in which they point is obvious. Added to this is the discovery that the nodules are forming all the time, and at a rate in the Pacific alone of perhaps 10 million tons a year. This then, is the motivation. The problem arises as the conference tries to introduce legislation which will be acceptable to all the countries represented — a rather fruitless exercise since geographical locations of the individual countries concerned determine the legislation required by them. For example, proposals to widen the outer boundary limits would benefit coastal states (especially the large ones) since the area closest to the coast will in all probability be richer in resources. If the boundary is extended to 2,500 metres in depth as has been suggested or to the 200-mile limit proposed by Latin America, this would mean the appropriation of the most valuable part of the area by coastal governments.

Conversely, countries with small coastlines, the land-locked and the shelf-locked, would have to negotiate for a share of these resources. Again, some countries are favoured with wide and narrow shelves while others have none at all. Then there are the emerging capitalist countries such as those in Africa who see the exploitation of the sea-bed as a serious threat to their economies, since some of them depend heavily on the export of mined metal ores, and obviously metal prices could be drastically reduced.

The exploitation of nodules renders obsolete the need for conventional mining and all it entails such as sinking mineshafts and tunnels. Where the material is already available on the sea-floor it requires simply to be scooped up.

So the talking continues, everyone agreeing that agreement must be reached but all of them unanimous in that they don’t know how. Bearing in mind the insular nature of capitalism with each group of representatives striving to secure the most favourable (profitable) conditions for their masters, it is small wonder that no agreement can be reached since one country’s gain is another’s loss. Therefore, all the useless platitudes being kicked around suggesting that a solution will be found “in the common interest of all concerned” are about as realistic as trying to play musical chairs where no one loses.

By “common interest” what is really meant is capitalist interest. No worker has any real interest at stake in this conference, although our masters would like us to believe otherwise, especially if, as is almost certain, the talking stops. Then warning signals might inform us that some nasty foreigner has got a tight grip on “our” nodules (very painful) and that in the interest of “The Nation” etc. etc.

The ruling groups of the world however, have no illusions about either the economic basis of this tug-o’-war, or the ultimate outcome in the event of a complete breakdown of discussion. It has been frankly stated that the oceans could become an arena of conflict which would make Vietnam seem like a picnic.

A. McNeill

Material World: Rising Sea Levels (2015)

The Material World Column from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tuvalu is one of the smallest countries in the world. It has a population of only 11,500 and has been inhabited for almost 3,000 years. In 1997 the then Tuvalu Prime Minister Koloa Talake addressed world leaders at the Kyoto conference. He petitioned countries around the world to take immediate action on global warming and make the changes needed to stop it in its tracks. He explained his low-lying country was sinking into the Pacific Ocean because of rising sea-levels. The current Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, said climate change was the ‘Enemy Number One’ for his country. The people of Tuvalu don't require scientists to explain it to them. They can see it for themselves. Salt water is flooding the land and the people are having difficulties growing their crops because of salination of the soil. Groundwater is increasingly becoming undrinkable due to sea-water contamination. It is brackish and salty. Islanders are relying on catching rain water.

‘What we are talking about is survival,’ said Anote Tong, the President of Kiribati, another island nation in the Pacific Ocean that comprises a population just over 100,000 on a string of atolls barely 3ft (0.9m) above sea level. ‘It’s not about economic development ... it’s not politics. It’s survival.’

Following the Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s joke about the predicament of the low-lying Pacific Islands ('Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to have water lapping at your door'), President Tong commented ‘What kind of a person is he? As long as there is this kind of attitude, this kind of arrogance in any position of leadership, we will continue to have a lot of tension. It shows a sense of moral irresponsibility quite unbecoming of leadership in any capacity. I find that extremely sad, extremely disappointing that we are making jokes about a very serious issue’. Tong went on to warn Dutton that any future Australian immigration minister will have to deal with a wave of Pacific refugees from low-lying countries like Kiribati, if sea levels continue to rise. ‘I don't think so, I know so, because the science is quite categorical’ he said. Already two islands belonging to Kiribati have been totally submerged.

Nor will it be only vulnerable island-states like Tuvalu, or Kiribati and the thousands of islands around the world that are also just above sea level which will disappear. Vast tracts of river delta are not much higher than the ocean shore while some of the world’s biggest coastal cities are very close to sea level. Approximately 100 million people live in areas below sea level. Tens of millions of people who live in these low-lying areas near the ocean will have to migrate.

According to a 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report the sea level rise on the Bangladesh coastline could be about one meter in the next 50 years this will cause 11 percent of Bangladesh’s landmass to be covered by the water from the Bay of Bengal, forcing approximately 20 million (near enough the population of Australia) environmental refugees inland to the already densely populated and over-burdened cities. Up to 10 million could be displaced in the Philippines and millions more in the Nile River delta which lies only 2 meters above sea level. Such water level rises would affect low-lying cities around the world including: London, Shanghai, Hamburg, Bangkok, Bombay, Manila, Buenos Aires and Venice.

If places like Tuvalu and Kiribati are to survive we must act so they do survive and that can only be accomplished by establishing a socialist society. Socialism is defined as the common ownership and collective control of the means of production and distribution. It is the name given to the next stage of civilisation, if civilisation is to survive and we are not doomed to a return to the Dark Ages. As long as the instruments of production — land, machinery, raw materials, etc — remain private property, only comparatively few can be sole owners and so long as this is the case, they will use their private ownership for their private advantage, regardless of the cost to others. To protect the environment calls for the rational allocation of resources and for the widest possible development of democracy. This is a struggle for today. This is the struggle for socialism. Capitalists are not about to cut their profits for anybody. Have they ever reduced their profits to provide jobs, end disease, or avoid wars? There’s no reason to expect them to do such a thing in order to stop islands sinking into the sea from climate change. Many will simply be seen as unavoidable collateral damage in the drive for profits.

ALJO.