NI 415 - September, 2008

Drowning in plastic

A note from the editor

I don’t know about you but I’m both an inveterate label reader and a sceptic – have been for years. Cans, boxes, bottles: you name it, I read it. It’s a bit of an in-joke at our family dinner table. There’s Dad reading the label on the pickle jar again. Maybe it comes from growing up when consumerism was still in its infancy and the wonders of modern science were accepted without question.

‘Better living through chemistry’ was more than an advertising slogan back then – it was, in those innocent times, a declaration of faith in modernity. Then came DDT, asbestos, agent orange and horrors of Love Canal. Suddenly, corporate chemistry didn’t look so good anymore.

Today it’s more of the same. The toxic substances in your sunscreen, shower curtains, plastic bottles and cleaning products may be killing you. Chemical companies are literally getting away with murder. Profits trump human health – the industry continues to peddle poisons with little accountability while resisting any attempts to regulate their trade.

So I read labels, recycle like crazy, shun food additives and try to limit my intake of hazardous chemicals.

But it’s not enough. As citizens we have the right to know what poisons are out there. We need to push our lawmakers to get tough. How can we allow industry to poison people for profit in the 21st century?

Wayne Ellwood for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

Aamjiwnaang activist and ‘toxic tour’ guide Ron Plain (right). The Chippewa community’s cemetery flanked by petro-chemical plants (centre). A warning sign (left) beside a pond on the native reserve – the land is laced with poisons from decades of pollution and spills.

Photo by *Wayne Ellwood*

NI 415 - September, 2008

Drowning in plastic

A note from the editor

The big story

They’re in our homes and our workplace, in the air we breathe and in the food we eat. Wayne Ellwood argues that toxic chemicals are changing the nature of nature.

Features

The good ship Alguita sails an ocean choked with plastic. Blog by Anna Cummins.

As oil supplies dwindle, the plastic industry is pinning its hopes on biomass. Not a great idea, reasons Jim Thomas.

A history of plastic.

Things you can do to avoid toxic plastics. PLUS the Action / Campaign directory.

It’s a fashion statement and an environmental nightmare. Zoe Cormier examines one of the most successful marketing ploys ever – bottled water.

The facts about plastic

What can be wrong with putting five notorious Khmer Rouge leaders on trial? Plenty, argues lawyer Brooks Duncan, as he examines the nature of the long-awaited, and foreign-funded, trials currently underway.

Currents

A special on coal – including the ‘clean coal’ con, windpower in China, success in Bangladesh and activism everywhere.

Jorge’s community is part of the 500,000-strong Wayúu indigenous group, and it is not only their home in the northern foothills of the Sierra de Perijá which is under threat.

Renewables revolution is there for the taking

Positive outcome, but at a cost of seven campaigners lives, killed by police during a demonstration against the GCM coalmine in Bangladesh.

Activists scrub the grubby face of globalization clean

Desperate industry’s ludicrous claims exposed

Regulars

Since independence in 1966, Botswana’s annual growth rates have been the highest in the world – bar none. It is estimated that were it not for the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, growth rates would be one or two per cent higher today.

by Mitchell & Richardson

True tales of a mixed-up world

Polyp’s peak oil fun ride

Senegal’s beacon of good music and positive energy Youssou N’Dour talks to Ed Stocker

Maria Golia on conflicting loves in Cairo

Earthworks 2008: highlighting cartoonists from the global South taking part in the Biennial Ken Sprague competition.

Things to do before I retire… humble thoughts from the diary of GW Bush, as revealed by Stefan Simanowitz

Film, Book & Music Reviews

Chinese Mongolian ‘Björk’ steps into Tibet controversy

The Garifuna Women’s Project from Central America

A film about the Pope’s toilet. Directed by Enrique Fernandez and Cesar Charlone

This is a book that highlights how people caught in between places are denied identity, perspective and intimacy.

Superstar philosopher Slavoj Zizek writes in defence of lost causes

Stories of continuity and change in the Polynesian community of Tikopia by Julian Treadaway

A beautiful contemplative immersion in the children’s sense of the immensity of time and events. Written and directed by Reha Erdem

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