City Council Holds Hearing on Harms of Plastic
The League of Women Voters of Chicago joined with other Chicago-based Coalition for Plastic Reduction (CPR) members to plan a joint hearing of the Committees for Environmental Protection & Energy and Health & Human Relations on Wednesday, April 23. An expert panel of doctors, scientists, waste specialists and community advocates shared their expertise on the harms of plastic on human health as well as the environment. Watch the recording.
A special thank you to Alderpersons Maria Hadden and Rosanna Rodriguez-Sanchez for holding the hearing. Read the testimony from LWV Chicago President Jane Ruby:
“As we pull back from using fossil fuels to cook, heat our homes and fuel our cars, the fossil fuel industry has found a life line…Plastics.
“Beer and soda cans and canned foods are lined with it. More and more of our fresh food is prepackaged in it, Coca-Cola no longer refills their iconic glass bottles, they stock the shelves with plastic bottles that are only minimally recyclable. Our cleaning supplies have been infiltrated with ‘convenient’ pods, tablets, sheets and wipes, all made with plasticizers.
“Additionally, our country's single-use, quick-serve mindset has furthered this explosion of plastic. We pick up or deliver to our homes made-to-order food in polystyrene foam containers containing a known human carcinogen, and paper boxes coated with plastic to make them leak-resistant, rendering them unable to be recycled or composted.
“We’ve come to expect our groceries to be bagged—double-bagged—with single-use plastic bags that end up in our landfills, where they remain forever, and as litter hanging out in tree limbs, in our gutters and along our lake and river fronts.
“Then all this plastic lingers and degrades into smaller and smaller pieces, becoming microplastics that we inhale, eat and drink.
“To pile on, additional chemicals are being intentionally added to plastic products already rife with chemicals to keep food fresh for longer periods. There are so many chemicals the FDA has no way of keeping up, so there are few constraints and our food is unprotected. This should give us pause.
“There is no way to recycle our way out of this problem. Less than 12% of all plastics get recycled and only 1% are effectively recycled, meaning made into the same item. Single-use plastics are just that…single use.
“So we need to turn off the tap. We need to say no. We need to ban the worst of the worst, then we need to go farther. We need to demand the fossil fuel industry and chemical companies pay to clean up this mess.
“We need to do this for our health, the health of the planet and every living thing on it.”
We applaud the City Council for taking the first step, to educate themselves. Now will they take the next step and champion substantive action?