What difference can a word make?
In The Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center's new report “Towards an Equitable Approach to Marine Plastics Pollution,” the authors make a case for using the term "plastic pollution" instead of "plastic litter."
They argue the word 'litter':
🚮 "Is most often deployed by those in positions of power to assume consumer responsibility for the causes and effects of plastic pollution."
🚮 "Implies a narrower range of localized and visible impacts."
🚮 Intentionally and systematically obscures "a broad range of politics and colonial injustices."
On the other hand, using the word 'pollution':
☠️ "Implies broad structural responsibility and thus a potentially powerful, collective, and effective site of response."
☠️ "Emphasizes the much broader range of plastics’ impacts and their socio-material liveliness."
☠️ "Also captures the toxicants associated with plastics throughout their life cycles, from extraction to post-consumption disposal; in all of their sizes from micro to nano-sized particles; and the novel ecologies that they precipitate."
More simply, if we keep saying "plastic litter," we are diminishing the scale of the problem and placing the burden of responsibility on individuals, excluding the broader industry-wide and systemic changes that need to be made.
Of course, words alone won't make a difference, but choosing which words we use can change how we view our world, how a problem is approached, and how a solution is found.
So, next time you talk about the plastic 'problem,' will you say "plastic litter" or "plastic pollution"?