Darla Thyng of Hollis is a family practice physician in Milford.

As a primary care physician I am deeply concerned with the effects of plastics on my patients’ health. And as a physician I am deeply aware of the need for plastic materials in the medical sector.

Artificial limbs, dental appliances, organ saving stents and many other medical products allow us to offer life and limb saving care. Unfortunately, a large amount of our plastic pollution is nonessential and single use plastics such as that used for groceries, packaging, toys, and the take out restaurant industry.

The large plastic producing companies have great information campaigns about meeting our plastic pollution crises. They are changing many single use products to extended use so they can be used more than once. The plastic companies also talk about chemical and mechanical recycling as solutions to plastic pollution. Instead of allowing plastics to end up in landfills or at the bottom of oceans we simply make it into new plastic.

That certainly sounds good and I do think we should continue to explore ways of recycling that produce less toxins into our air, land and waters and release less greenhouse gasses into our fragile atmosphere. We are going to need sound production and recycling practices just to clean up the tons of plastics in our oceans and landfills and to produce and re-purpose the essential plastics that are in the medical and transportation sectors.

However I think we should not be fooled that this will truly solve our plastic pollution problem. Most plastic never makes it to a recycling center. Strengthening the requirements for plastic product producers to be responsible for the collection and recycling of their products is one way to prevent plastic from ending up as litter.

Current estimates vary but suggest around 5% of plastic is actually recycled, 10% is incinerated, and 85% ends up in landfills. And the processes involved in making and then chemically recycling plastic releases pollutants into our air, water, earth and atmosphere. Movements like Plastic Free July help educate people about the true effects of plastic on our earth and on our health. Plastic Free July is the brainstorm of a group in West Australia that promotes the reduction of plastics throughout the world.

Stopping the production of single use products like plastic bags, bottles, packaging and restaurant products and using non plastic alternatives like cloth bags, glass bottles, and paper products can drastically reduce the future contribution to the already millions of tons of plastic litter in our oceans, landfills and roadsides.

So when you see advertisements promoting unrestricted production of plastics and the use of chemical recycling as a sensible solution to the pollution please take this with a grain of salt.

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