Earth Day 2024 Healing Our Throwaway Culture: Focus on Plastics

by Mikaela VanMoorleghem, MPA

Today marks the 54th anniversary of Earth Day. This year, the theme is Planet vs. Plastics. Earthday.org is working toward a 60 percent reduction in the production of plastics by 2040.

Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the production of plastic products accounts for a 4-8 percent of global oil production. A 2023 report from Pacific Environment called for a 75 percent reduction in plastic production by 2050 to avoid a disastrous increase in global temperatures. It is critical to deal with the plastic crisis if we are to control the climate crisis, to improve the health of our air and oceans, and to protect the earth’s biodiversity and human health. This Earth Day, we focus on the plastics crisis, its impacts, and how we are called to respond and heal “our throwaway culture,” a refrain of Pope Francis’ to describe a pervasive mentality of material wastefulness.

More words from Pope Francis:

There is need for an effective cooperation between men and women of goodwill in assisting the ongoing work of the Creator…We cannot allow our seas and oceans to be littered by endless fields of floating plastic. Here too, our active commitment is needed to confront this emergency. We need to pray as if everything depended on God’s providence and work as if everything depended on us.
~Message of his Holiness Pope Francis for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, September 1, 2018

I would like us all to make a serious commitment to respect and protect creation, to be attentive to every person, to counter the culture of waste and disposable, to promote a culture of solidarity and of encounter.
~Pope Francis. General Audience June 5th, 2013

After reading Pope Francis’s words, we invite you to pause and silenty reflect on the questions below:

1. How are you called to “assist the ongoing work of the creator?”
2. How could you act “to counter and heal the culture of waste?”
3. How could you act to “promote a culture of solidarity and encounter?

Watch the Earth Day 2024 Video: https://youtu.be/euSqO5tW6aY?si=2gYYzOmXbL5jdZn5

Earth Day Prayer by Jessica Bwali from Zambia
(used and adpated with permission)

Thank you for the many good gifts you have given us – so much beauty and abundance in creation all
around us.

And yet we hear creation groaning and we have heavy hearts because we know so much of creation’s
pain is due to our actions. Forgive us for polluting the environment through our selfish deeds, without
considering the impacts on people and creation.

Help us fulfill Jesus’ call to love our neighbors and take action to look out for one another. We remember
the people on the frontline of plastic pollution. We pray to you, Lord, that you protect them from the
diseases and flooding that come with plastic pollution and that they may find comfort in you.

We pray that world leaders would act on plastic pollution, coming together to agree on an ambitious
and binding plastics treaty. Give wisdom and soft hearts to those involved in the negotiations. We pray for
each of the 20 million waste pickers around the world who do vital work. They collect plastics for recycling,
and yet are often overlooked and underpaid. Let their voices be listened to at the UN treaty negotiations
and their human rights and livelihoods protected. Oh, God, help us not to throw this opportunity away.
All: The earth is yours, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.

Dear God, we pray for the global church, for all the communities and people affected by plastic
pollution, that you may keep them close to you. Help us to restore and care for this beautiful earth you
blessed us with. Amen!