By Rebecca Davis, for the Environmental Committee
The Story of Plastic, the award-winning documentary, will be made available for free streaming for all Park Slope Food Coop members between July 6 and July 20. This film presents a cohesive timeline of how we got to our current global plastic pollution crisis, and how the oil and gas industry has successfully manipulated the narrative around it.
To watch the film, register here to receive a link for free streaming. Then, on July 18, from 7-8:30 p.m. join members from the Environmental Committee, and Beyond Plastics Policy Director Megan J. Wolff, PhD, MPH for an online discussion to find out how plastics affect our shopping, our bodies and our lives and what we can do together to put an end to it.
The world’s population has tripled since the 1950s, but production of plastic has increased over 70 fold in the same period (and is on track to double again by 2040). This has consequences for every living thing on the planet. Most visibly, animals eat and choke on plastics (or become entangled), but less apparent are the tiny microplastics that are now being found in the human body, including in breast milk and newborn babies. Plastic is in and around us. Why is this happening? What are the impacts, and what can we do? How might this affect what we buy and eat from the Coop itself?