Plastic: Too much of a good thing

As we enter the holiday season, you’ll see some commonalities among a lot of your kid’s toys: plastic. That new Transformer, Barbie, board game — it all comes either sheathed in plastic, or made of it.

Plastic is not necessarily a villain. Plastics are incorporated into lifesaving medical equipment, structural and functional components of the homes that keep us safe and warm and automobile parts that give us the freedom we so desire; plastics clearly have an important use in our lives.

Dig deeper. The world produces 413 million metric tons of plastic, up from 50 million metric tons in 1976 (Statista report 2024). It’s estimated all plastic ever produced is still in existence today, because plastic’s helpful qualities are also its most harmful — it takes an outrageously long time to break down into constituent parts. Even when it does break down, those tiny molecules are finding their way more and more into our environment, our foods, our bodies, with evidence demonstrating damaging health effects.

A worldwide plastic conference disbanded on Dec. 1 without reaching an agreement on how to curb plastic production. We don’t even know how to slow down production, much less what to do with it once we’ve made it.

Resolve to be mindful this holiday season: of purchases for yourself; purchases for others; the materials and packaging that go into your presents. The planet could use that gift as well.

Nathan Dombeck

Janesville, Wisconsin