Friends of Palm Beach here. Keeping the beach in Palm Beach clean.
If you’ve read the articles here on our work, joined our community clean ups or heard me at Town Council, you know I’ve been talkin’ trash for a while now to educate on what I have learned on the front lines of the ocean’s plight. We have been protecting Palm Beach’s coastline for 13 years now — removing plastic and marine debris, documenting its sources and witnessing firsthand the growing scale of this issue. Finally, mainstream TV news outlets have been talkin’ trash too, specifically about plastics and how it is negatively impacting our own health.
I couldn’t be more ecstatic to not feel like Chicken Little anymore. The International Space Station is monitoring plastic pollution from their vantage point and even the beauty guru Gwenyth Paltrow is doing her part to educate and be realistic on this issue thrust upon us by an industry that is unregulated and unabashed about their end result, the negative impacts on our health.
Did you know that water bottles have expiration dates, but it’s not because the water itself goes bad. The expiration date indicates the point at which the manufacturer is no longer guaranteeing the quality of the plastic bottle, which can begin to leach chemicals into the water you will drink.
It is well-documented that many plastics are complex mixtures containing thousands of chemical additives, many of which are known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals. These additives are used to give plastics specific properties — such as flexibility, durability, color, or flame resistance — but they allow for leaching into your food, water, and the environment. Never microwave in a plastic container.
Your endocrine system regulates vital bodily processes, including metabolism, growth, reproduction, mood and sleep. Disrupting this system can increase the risk of developing certain cancers. I’m not a scientist or a doctor — I’ve only learned this by walking and collecting and then investigating the hows, whys and whats of over 380,000 pounds of plastics and marine debris that we removed in our years.
Our goal is not to alienate, but to invite participation and progress. We rely on your support, and we believe that meaningful change is possible when we work together.
So, we do ask you to support our daily cleaning efforts to remove plastic and debris from our beach environment but we also ask you to reduce your own personal plastic consumption wherever possible. And an even bigger ask: We hope you will advocate for systemic solutions that address the problem at its source. Help us champion forward-thinking policies like extended producer responsibility, ensuring that those who produce plastic share in the responsibility for managing its lifecycle. Recycling as it is now does not work. And support the overturning of Florida’s ban on banning plastics, a ban that takes away our home rule to protect our own community.
Because if we don’t act collectively, the natural world we cherish and rely on for our own health — and the health of our future generations — will continue to be at risk.
Diane Buhler, Palm Beach
Buhler is founder and president of Friends of Palm Beach
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Letter: Help remove plastics from the environment and cut plastic use
Reporting by Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
