10 ............... Monday, April 22, 2024

1SM

EARTH DAY PLEA TO PURGE SYNTHETICS..NOT RECYCLE

That’s awrap forplastic

All to pay for
SCOTLAND’S public finances are in a mess.
And it is not going to get any betterany time soon.
For Nats ministers, that puts them in abind. We reveal today that they are yet
to settle on how much they will pay
their public sector workers.
Make no mistake — that decision willaffect millions. It’s nurses, doctors,teachers, police officers, council workers, civil servants.
And after years of low or non-existent
pay rises, SNP ministers buckled under
severe pressure from striking workers
last year and paid out huge new deals.
These — experts later said — had notbeen budgeted for and worsened analready terrible outlook. They wereunaffordable.
You would think ministers may learn
their lesson and sit down with unions
early doors in a bid to see off any
potential repeat.
But no. Instead of negotiating a sensible deal, it has been fingers-in-ears timefrom Finance Secretary Shona Robison.
No offers put on the table, not even awhisper of how much has been budgeted in for the 2024/25 financial year
which began at the start of this month.
This not only breaks with the traditionof publishing a public sector pay policy
ahead of time so opposition politicians
and the press can scrutinise spending.
But it irritates unions, makes workers
wait for often well-deserved increases
in pay, and sows distrust and anger.
Industrial relations in Scotland are at apost-devolution low. Workers and unions
do not trust ministers and vice versa.
It is past time for ministers to pulltheir fingers out and be honest withunions on what they can afford.
Crowing about record pay deals again
would cast serious doubts on how bad
Scotland’s finances supposedly are.
You cannot claim there is no money for
housing (a £200million cut in the budget)and then hand out equivalent or higher
amounts found down the back of the sofa
in new pay deals just to avoid strikes.
But that scenario — as happened lastyear — could be set for a repeat.
And it would only further underline
Humza Yousaf’s weak grasp on Scotland.

Greens woe
PATRICK Harvie admitted yesterday he did
not know if the Scottish Greens would stayin government with the SNP.
Their vote — set for May — is a significant moment for the party. And a
defeat for the leadership would likely
see them rapidly replaced, given theirpersonal pushes for a coalition deal.
Green members are furious at thedecision to scrap climate targets.
And while Mr Harvie attempted anolive branch to the LGBT wing of his
party by disgracefully labelling theCass review into gender healthcare
unscientific, he looks like he is on an
increasingly shoogly peg.
It is clear the co-leader knows he isdefending the indefensible.
Only time will tell if his membershipagrees.

GREEN campaigners have insisted
recycling is not the answer – instead wehave to drastically cut our use of plastic.
Today marks Earth Day, when people
around the world come together tomake an impact on climate change andsustainability.
This year’s theme is Planet vs Plastics
and the organisation’s goal is to reduce
production of synthetics by 60 per centin the next 16 years.
Communications director Sarah
Davies says microplastic particles havecontaminated 80 per cent of the coastal
waters in Scotland.
Meanwhile, research has revealed thatsynthetics have an adverse impact on
many aspects of human health.
Here, Sarah urges Scots to take part in
Earth Day and help in their fight to purge
the planet of plastic.

TODAY is Earth Day, celebrated byover one billion people globally,
many of them here in Scotland.
Ever since it was founded in 1970 toshine a light on environmental pollution,
Earth Day has been associated with cleaning up rubbish, defending water and air
quality and speaking up about climatechange.
Given that Earth Day’s Theme this year
is Planet vs Plastics, you might think thisis just a continuation of the long traditionof advocating for the health of the planet.
This year, however, it’s not just plastic
pollution and its environmental impactthat Earth Day has its sights on, we’realso talking about the impact of plastics
on human health.
When plastics started to become popular
back in the 1940s — post-war — nobody
could predict that, by 2024, we’d globally
be producing more than 400million
tonnes of it annually, creating
mountains of unsightly plastic
rubbish.
We also failed to predictthat plastics are not inert
but degrade over time
into trillions of tiny
fragments,
often
smaller than a grainof rice, called microplastics.
AsI
discovered
while researching areport for EarthDay.
Org called Babies vsPlastics, there’s compelling
evidencethat
microplastics are associated with a whole host ofhealth issues, especially ininfants,
frominterrupting
maternal-fetal
communication to cancers.
The latest research has
foundthepresence
ofmicroplastics in the plaquethat clogs human arteries,
quadrupling the risk of heartdisease and strokes and death.
Anyone who lives in Scotland
will be aware that heart disease

By SARAHDAVIES

Communications
Director, earthday.org

and stroke are two of the country’s biggestkillers.
While we know that diet and lifestyle
play a significant part in both — and as a
Buchlyvie native, I love a good Friday
night curry — but could microplastics also
be partially responsible?
Compared to global levels, Scotland
seems to have relatively low sea surface
microplastics concentrations — with themost impacted areas being Solway, Loch
Long, northwest of Skye and the Firths ofClyde and Forth.
But we can’t be complacent as
microplastic
particles
have
contaminated 80 per cent of
the coastal waters around
Scotland.
As a mother of twokids, I took my children
for fish and chips backin their school days.
Had I known what I
know now about what
they
were
probablyingesting — and I’m
not talking about theoil and salt — I would
have reconsidered.
All the microplastics
in our waters are almost
certainly being consumed
by shrimp, fish and othersmall sea creatures that inturn get eaten by larger fish.
When we eat those fish, we
also ingest microplastics.
Scottish universities aretrying to work out how
muchdamage
allthesemicroplastics are having on
human health.
One study by a team fromStirling
University
discovered
microplastics
carrydangerous

Microplastics
carry dangerous
bacteria from oursewage plants
onto Scottishbeaches

bacteria from our sewage plants onto
Scottish beaches, giving these often drugresistant bacteria a landing spot where
they can potentially infect anyone enjoying
the beach.
If, by some miracle, the plastics getting
directly into the food chain and onto ourbeaches don’t manage to get inside us,then drinking from plastic water bottles
and eating food wrapped in plastics willalmost certainly do the job. Plus, we are
all inhaling microplastic fibres from ourpolyester clothes and carpets.
Faced with this onslaught of microplastics, what can we do to limit our own
plastic intake?
The type of food we eat plays an important part in our plastic consumption so try
cutting down on red meat and shellfish —both of which have shown to containmicroplastics.

Learn to love vacuuming
Studies have found leafy vegetables contain less microplastics than root vegetables
and stop drinking from from single use
plastic water bottles as new evidence
found that a single bottle can contain up
to 240,000 nano particles of plastic perbottle.
Ditch microwaving your food in plastic
containers as the heat releases plastic
chemicals into your food.
Learn to love vacuuming because dust is
full of plastic fibres which have been shedfrom polyester clothes and carpets.
While these daily swaps are critical, thesingle most important thing you can do istell your local MP to back calls for astricter UN Global Plastic Treaty.
Today, on Earth Day, governments fromaround the world are in Ottawa, Canada,
discussing this — and they need to knowthat we want to limit our exposure tomicroplastics by capping plastic production
worldwide.
No other action will have as big an
impact as this one.
So, if you do one thing today, sign theEarthDay.Org Global Plastic Treaty Petitionand send a clear message that Scotland
has had it with microplastics.

Earth Day tips — Savers, Page 24