Toxic Legacies / Filtering the Truth
The concept of recycling has gained immense popularity as a sustainable approach to waste pollution and is embraced as a potential solution to our escalating environmental crisis. However, not all recycling practices – especially when it comes to plastic – are necessarily environmentally friendly. In many cases, claims to recyclability are merely greenwashing, a marketing strategy used by companies to position themselves as environ- mentally conscious without implementing actual changes in their production practices. My master project aims to investigate the greenwashing behind recycling and how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system.
The concept of recycling has gained immense popularity as a sustainable approach to waste pollution and is embraced as a potential solution to our escalating environmental crisis. However, not all recycling practices – especially when it comes to plastic – are necessarily environmentally friendly. In many cases, claims to recyclability are merely greenwashing, a marketing strategy used by companies to position themselves as environ- mentally conscious without implementing actual changes in their production practices.
My master project aims to investigate the greenwashing behind recycling and how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system.
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As for cigarette litter, an independent study by the
Environmental Research on Public Health from 2012
clearly shows a disconnect in the behaviour and beliefs
of smokers. Despite the fact that the majority of smokers
considered cigarette butts to be litter and acknowledged
the fact that it could have damaging effects to
the environment, about the same amount of smokers
reported disposing of them on the ground. This poses
the question, whether education is truly the missing
link. A current petition is proposing to distribute portable
ashtrays and give back a deposit of 20 cents per
cigarette butt to be collected at any place where cigarettes
are sold, 61 making the tobacco industry pay for
their waste and starting to enforce responsibility to
those producing it, as well as motivating the consumer
to collect their own waste. Seeing as the filter is however
openly is one of corporate tobaccos biggest marketing
scams, 5 and has meanwhile been proven to induce
additional health risks for the smoker in terms of
the inhalation of microfibres 62 and larger amounts of
toxins 63 – an even more radical approach could be to
eliminate the filter completely, questioning if we even
really need it in the first place.
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