Actor William Shatner may have played the captain of a starship for years in the hit TV series and movie Star Trek, even the best fiction work about space exploration could not have prepared him for the life-changing experience he underwent when he traveled to space in 2021.
“I went up into space, and when I came down, I was weeping, and I didn’t know why I was crying,” Shatner said. “It took me hours of camera and all to figure out I was in grief for the earth I’d seen even more dramatically and clearly. This beautiful, fragile rock that we live on is being subjected to such a bombardment by mankind that this incredible story of the intertwining of everything is being wiped out.”
Shatner has been a climate advocate for years, even decades, he said, but he felt even more compelled to speak about what he calls “the self-destruction the human species is engaged in” regarding climate change after seeing the Earth from afar. His current focus is plastic production and pollution’s impact on our planet, and he is pushing for countries to agree on an ambitious internationally binding agreement to reduce plastic waste.
“Plastics have a great deal to do with it, and so when I realized how emotional I was unbeknownst, I would talk about our ignorance and our stupidity and lack of foresight,” Shatner added.
Next week, the United Nations will hold the fifth and last round of negotiations on a global treaty that would work on ending plastic pollution globally. The last round of talks is taking place in Busan, Korea, and the treaty is set to be adopted by consensus. However, significant roadblocks remain and the return of Donald Trump to the White House casts a shadow on how ambitious the treaty can be. The White House also recently signaled a potential backtracking on previous commitments to reduce plastic production, according to Mother Jones.
Graham Forbes, Global Plastic Project Leader at Greenpeace USA, believes now is the time for countries, especially and US, to be ambitious. “The chaos that surrounds an incoming Trump administration creates an opportunity for other member states to step up, be the adult in the room and put human and planetary health before short-term profits for a dying industry,” he said.
In September, Shatner was one of dozens of artists, athletes, and activists who signed an open letter calling world leaders to agree on a reduction of plastic production and use in the document.
To adopt such a treaty, every country in the world must agree on contentious issues such as whether or not to put a cap on plastic production, improving recycling practices, and what financial responsibility plastic producers hold for the pollution they create. As with other intergovernmental negotiations, developing countries are pushing for rich, high-pollution countries to foot the bill so their economies can continue to develop to be fair to them.
For Forbes, the treaty has the potential to completely change the way the world approaches plastic. “Plastic has such a tremendous negative impact in many different stages of its life cycle,” Forbes said, “from extraction to production to packaging to the waste to the impacts on our marine ecosystems and biodiversity. I think that if we are able to land something that takes a full life cycle approach, it has tremendous opportunity to have a very positive impact on people’s lives, across that supply chain.”
However, considering that many countries sitting around the negotiation table have oil- reliant economies, and many actors in the private sector attended each one of the previous four rounds of negotiations, visions differ on how ambitious the treaty can be. Shatner is thus pushing for negotiators to be bold and end plastic pollution, for what he calls a “life or death” decision.
“Plastics, if they haven’t already mass killed, are going to kill us. It’s just obvious,” he said.
A Life Observing Plastic Pollution
At 93, Shatner can still remember when the big global swap towards plastic began. “When plastic was first invented, there was a great deal of commotion,” he recalled. He said at the time, “Because we don’t need paper bags and paper containers. We’ll use plastic. Nobody thought that it would be harmful, but now we see it’s not only harmful, it’s destructive.”
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), from 1950 to 1970, when the world started using plastic as an alternative to other, more costly materials, the amount used was small and manageable. However, the following 20 years saw an explosion in plastic production, and as a result, plastic waste more than tripled.
Of the seven billion tons of plastic waste generated so far, less than 10 percent has been recyclable. Millions of tons of plastic waste are now lost in the environment, invading beaches and animal’s natural habitats.
“You’re on the beach looking at the miracle of an empty beach like we look at them. Oh, look at that, plastics,” Shatner said. “It’s hard, and it’s impenetrable, and it works and what we don’t hear is this thing about It’s choking us, and why we don’t hear about it? I think it’s just too much to bear.”
The world currently produces 430 million metric tons a year – an amount surpassing the weight of all human beings on Earth combined, according to the MIT Technology Review. This rate is set to triple by 2060 if nothing is done to reduce plastic production.
“The picture I get is like this: somebody’s choking, and that’s what’s happening to the earth, and eventually to us, [is] we’re choking on plastic. How do you get rid of it? Well, you got to stop making it first,” Shatner said.
One aspect the treaty explores is the responsibility the private sector holds for plastic pollution. Coca-Cola, for example, produced 3 million tons of plastic packaging in 2017 – the equivalent of 200,000 bottles per minute. Considering companies have a key impact on production and pollution, the treaty explores notions such as extended producer responsibility (EPR), which, in the case of plastic, would potentially force producers to pay a market fee used to collect, sort, recycle, or dispose of the material, could significantly change the industry.
But forcing private companies to foot the bill for their pollution would have a significant impact on their bottom line – and as such plastic producers have tried to influence the negotiations since they began two years ago by lobbying member states during and between rounds.
Shatner believes private companies should be held accountable for the plastic pollution they create. “They don’t say something to the heads of these companies; we’re looking for alternatives. How do we get plastics out of civilization? Why don’t they say something and promote the well-being of Earth? I guess it’s out of the interests of the shareholders.”
Towards a Plastic-free World
Plastic is an intrinsic part of everybody’s life, and as such, the adoption of an ambitious treaty aiming to stop plastic pollution could have real-life tangible effects on people’s daily lives.
While governments are at the heart of cooperation, Forbes from Greenpeace also believes private actors will be the ones central in finding new ways of thinking about packaging and plastic alternatives.
“For the treaty to work, whether you’re trying to accelerate reuse solutions, whether you’re trying to inspire innovation or create incentives for new types of economies that are less based on toxic plastics, you have to stop making so much,” Forbes said, “Economics is basic economics. If we continue to flood the earth with cheap, virgin plastic, you cannot get anywhere. We can’t manage it. You won’t see innovation.”
According to UNEP, cigarette butts — whose filters contain tiny plastic fibers — are the most common type of plastic waste found in the environment. Food wrappers, plastic bottles, plastic bottle caps, plastic grocery bags, plastic straws, and stirrers are the next most common items.
While it is unlikely the treaty would ban the production of such items, Forbes believes it will incentivize private companies and individuals to think about new ways of packaging those items.
“I think what you will start to see in its first instance is all of us have stories about ridiculous, unnecessary uses of plastic, whether it’s a banana or an orange wrapped in plastic or a cucumber wrapped in plastic,” he said, “and I think for 99% of those, you’ll notice no impact in your life, except for that use [of] cheap, toxic, virgin plastic, because it’s so incredibly cheap, and the costs are externalized on people on the planet.”
Ultimately, however, a lot of the implementation will also be in the end of individual citizens choosing to use, or not, plastic.
“Our definition of convenience has been given to us based on the profit interests of companies that haven’t had any direction, any real regulation, or any incentives to do things differently,” Forbes said, “I think once you shift those basic dynamics, you’ll build greater awareness in people around what the impacts are, what they show up. We don’t even have options in so many cases right now.”
Still, even if individual decisions matter, Shatner and the letter co-signatories also push for ambitious goals towards plastic production reduction.
“We have to find a solution,” he said, “one of the solutions is to start not making so much plastic, and that’s the nature of the letter. We’ve got to do that. That’s the beginning.”