NonPlastik

A privately owned retail and wholesale store for non-plastic alternatives for everyday products. Our mission is to reduce plastic consumption by making environment-friendly alternatives more accessible. Plastic, once hailed for its convenience, is now suffocating our planet – and every human is ingesting as much as a credit card of microplastics per week. More than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been produced, with a meager 9 percent recycled, leaving 6.3 billion metric tons in our land and water graveyards. The United States is the largest producer of plastic waste, generating 0.75 pounds per person per day. However, in Asian and African countries, where mismanaged plastic waste reaches 80 percent, people are often forced to live on a plastic layer. Eighty percent of plastic polluting our oceans comes from five river systems in the Philippines, Indonesia, and India. Product packaging is the major culprit fuelled by cracker plants of the first world countries. These large-scale petrochemical facilities process ethane into plastic pellets known as nurdles. Millions of people in third-world countries are engaged in the informal plastic waste industry, finding work in sorting, cleaning and processing plastic. China is a major importer of plastic waste from such illicit sources, creating issues for the planet and these marginalised communities. When the photographer Randy Olson, whose work is presented below, began researching this issue, the magnitude of the problem was not widely known. At that time, the prediction that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 was just hitting our radar. To solve our plastic crisis, a multi-faceted approach is essential. Governments must implement stringent regulations to curb plastic production and encourage sustainable alternatives.