Did you know that plastic is the new coal?
Emissions from plastics are on track to outpace coal in the United States by 2030. If plastics were a country, they would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China, the U.S., India and Russia.
Make no mistake, plastic is a huge environmental justice issue.
Companies sacrifice low-income and communities of color at every stage of plastic’s lifecycle, from the cancer clusters found around drilling sites and plastic manufacturing plants to plastic pollution in our oceans and waterways and concentrated in our food chain, which disproportionately impacts folks who are politically, socially and economically marginalized.
I envision a world where we are healing our relationships with ourselves, one another and our planet. I think all of us in sustainability work could stand to be more inspired about what is needed and what is possible. I personally look to queer, trans, nonbinary, and BIPOC commmunities who practice radical hope, resilience, and community care as sources of inspiration. Specifically, Kamea Chayne, host and producer of the podcast Green Dreamer, Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd, co-founders of Queer Nature, and Leah Thomas, founder of Intersectional Environmnetalist have all helped me on my journey to unlearn heteronormative, settler colonial, white supremacist systems and relearn ideas of embodied, authentic, collective liberation. We’d all do well to listen to these folx.
"A" is the missing letter in "E.S.G."
As companies are increasingly aware of the need to address environmental issues as a license to operate, they must not treat it like a checkbox exercise, as this is certain to keep plastics, and the fossil fuels that they are made of, thriving. Instead, companies must be accountable for the specific harm that they have and continue to cause, and they must focus on repairing that harm. “A” for “accountable” is the missing letter in ESG.
As consumers, regulators and especially us members of “Sustainability, Inc.”, we must work to ensure that companies are using an environmental and climate justice lens when they develop ESG strategies. As has been well documented by scholars Paulla Ebron (Stanford) and Anna Tsing (Santa Cruz) and later by Traci Brynn Voyles (The University of Oklahoma), our country, from colonization to slavery and forward to today is built on the concept of wastelanding: that Indigenous folx, Black folx and communities of color can be sacrificed to grow industry and business and an economy that keeps white, middle class folx safe. We need to support companies in efforts to build a value chain that is free of any “sacrifice zones,” which are the foundation of our current economy.
Why would we settle for anything less?
Only once we have raised the bar to build the thresholds for human and ecosystem flourishing into our products and business models will we find ourselves moving away from extraction and exploitation and into the regenerative, wellbeing economy that we need and deserve.
