Echoing the film, Bennett-Martin stressed the problems of plastics go beyond litter. There is an issue all the way from the extraction of it being a fossil fuel in the earth all the way to the other end of the cradle, which is when it s litter and it starts to break down and heat up, she said. It s in our waterways, it s in our air, it s in us. And so as that develops, if we continue on this trajectory of everything being made of plastics, then we re going to see a steady increase in the issues around public health.
The entire life cycles of plastic emits greenhouse gases, said panelist Hermina Glass-Hill of Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center.