It’s amazing how we many environmentally harmful things we come into contact with everyday without even knowing it. The siding on houses, the chemicals we put in our cars, the plastics we give our children, and the batteries we put in our remotes, all come from a process that is environmentally harmful, and continue to be harmful. We as consumers, however, are unaware of this because we companies have done a great job keeping the harms under wraps, and most of us are too busy with our daily lives to research every little man made thing we come into contact with. If we don’t see something bad happening right in front of our eyes, we simply go on about our normal lives, ignoring all the things that could happen in the future, or more depressingly, all the people that were harmed in them making of the products we use.
Judith Helfand is not one of these consumers, however. She spends her time making films and supporting other filmmakers that attempt to educate and change the way people think about the things they come into contact with everyday. Her film “Blue Vinyl”, for example, is one that points out the problems of PVC as well as highlights all the places it pops up in our daily lives. Some places that vinyl appears include the siding on our houses, medical equipment, and even toys for children.
As I was watching the film and learning about all the environmentally and healthy damaging chemicals that were involved in the making of PVC, I wondered if it was really a good idea to give products made from that to children. When I looked at the “Blue Vinyl” website, I found out this really isn’t such a great idea. According to the website “although soft PVC have been made for babies for years, studies find that these additives leach out of soft toys and into the mouths of the children chewing on them.” Babies and young children put EVERYTHING in their mouths, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to give them hazardous materials to chew on, and as the website points out, toxins from the plastics are getting into their bodies. It doesn’t stop with the toys however, “ vinyl IV bags used in neo-natal intensive care units have also been shown to leach DEHP, a phthatlate additive”. Dioxins released from both the making and burning of PVC are also being passed to children through breast milk. Luckily some progress is being made to change things, because “in Europe, phthatlate additives in PVC toys for children under the age of three have been banned and in the USA, most companies have voluntarily stopped manufacturing PVC for this age group or have eliminated the phthalates.” These are small steps, but they are a start.
Unfortunately, Vinyl products show up in other places in our daily lives. According the “Blue Vinyl” website, “brand new shower curtains, car interiors, and flooring” are all vinyl products that release chemical gases into the air. These gases have the potential to be hazardous to both adults and children, and yet they exists as part of our everyday lives.
Vinyl is not only hazardous during its creation or use, it is also impossible to find a non-harmful disposal of the product. Recycling Vinyl is complicated because, according to the “Blue Vinyl” website, “there are countless varieties of additives in different vinyl products, the recycler is faced with the headache of mixing too many unknown chemicals together and not being able to control the final content of the recycled product. Because of the variety of PVC ingredients in different products, PVC – when recycled – ends up being used to make cheap, low quality products.” Since there are so many different ways to manipulate the plastic on a chemical level, it is hard to actually recycle it, and therefore most places end up creating more potentially harmful vinyl products to put back into the hands of consumers at a cheaper price. On top of this, recycling vinyl is also tricky because, according to the “Blue Vinyl” website, “if even a small amount of PVC mistakenly finds its way into a non-chlorine based plastic recycling process, the hydrogen chloride can contaminate the entire batch of recyclables, damage the equipment and make it unfit for recycling.” Therefore the process gets even more complex because recycling of other materials can be hindered by PVC as well.
Burning PVC is considered by a lot of people to be another alternative for disposal, but it seems to have just as many draw backs, if not more. Burning PVC releases dioxins into the air, which according to www.myhouseisyourhouse.org, “as a persistent bioaccumulative toxin (PBT), [dioxins] do not breakdown rapidly and travel around the globe, accumulating in fatty tissue and concentrating as it goes up the food chain. Dioxins from Louisiana manufacturing plants migrate on the winds and concentrate in the Great Lakes fish. Dioxins are even found in hazardous concentration in the tissues of whales and arctic polar bears”. These dioxins are destroying the health of both people and animals around the globe. They are not concentrated in one area, and effect more than the one person or group who decided to burn them, which makes the way they choose to dispose of their PVC the concern of everyone.
Luckily there are groups providing resources for people to live lives that are not dependant on polluting the environment through the use of PVC. There are alternatives to using vinyl in for construction, as pointed out in “Blue Vinyl” that include stucco, recycled wood, and straw, as well as alternatives to using it in our everyday lives. The website www.besafenet.com offers alternative options to vinyl when shopping for everything from school supplies to electronics. These options may not completely eliminate the use of vinyl in your everyday life, but they can drastically reduce it.
There are also filmmaking companies that have been established to encourage films like “Blue Vinyl” that attempt to make the world a better place to live, that offer funding to filmmakers who can make a film about a subject and then combine it with an online effort to further educate people. Companies like Judith Helfand’s Chicken and Egg Pictures and Working Films offers monetary and social support to filmmakers trying to make a difference. The Chicken and Egg Pictures website describes their driving force best when it says “we operate from a basic belief that people respond to stories, not issues”. “Blue Vinyl”, just like many other films, would not have been as powerful without the personal story that accompanied the issue, and the humanity provided by the filmmaker through voice over and on screen prescience as well as complete honesty. All it takes is one squeaky wheel to make a difference, and film is the perfect vehicle for a squeaky wheel.
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