Plastic Soup

Intellectual property

November 8th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized

All of a sudden the plastic soup has become fashionable. No self-respecting newspaper, magazine, or broadcaster has ignored the plastic waste problem.

I think that’s great, and it gives me more and more confidence that Victor Hugo was right when he said: “There is no army as powerful as the idea for which the time has come.”

But why, oh, why are there people who use such a global problem for their own personal benefit? A working group is currently being created, lead by Rudolph Eilander, the young architect who has received a grant to put into practice, his idea on cleaning the Pacific Ocean. I wrote about him in my book and in this blog. A number of important people have joined the working group—coming from DSM, the Dutch Polymer Institute, AKG Polymers, the European Patent Office and including our one and only astronaut: Wubbo Ockels.

Nobody with any knowledge of the situation of the plastic waste problem in the Pacific.

And what do you think was agreed upon? … That the ideas originating from this think tank will be the “intellectual property” of the parties involved.

Reading this made me feel sick.

What is this all about, guys? That we find a solution for this problem together, or that you profit from it yourselves?

If you really want to confront the problem, you need to consider experts from all areas. Also, and especially, people who know what they are talking about when it comes to the plastic waste problem in the Pacific Ocean.

But what I am really afraid of is that this is not about finding solutions for the problem.

The working group established that the plastic soup endangers fish and bird life and damages the image of plastic for a good reason.

I can’t get away from the impression that this is the reason why the real experts aren’t involved in this consultation.

This group doesn’t want to know what the real problems are at all:

- that there isn’t 60 million tons of floating plastic that can be dredged up. But that the largest part of the plastic has disintegrated into minuscule particles—microplastic that has become part of the water column and that can’t be filtered out.

- that this microplastic is not only a great danger for marine plant and animal life, but also for us humans. The danger is the toxins in the original plastic and the toxins that attach themselves to the plastic in the sea.

- that the greatest part of the problem is a result in the way plastic is produced today (using toxins).

This working group is a smoke screen sympathetically produced by parties who, if they really want to change something, should start changing themselves.

Moreover, they have set this up in such a way that should they come up with a good idea, others will have to pay for it.

Are you not surprised why I am feeling so sick?