It is often only when we lose things, or risk losing them, that we realize how much we value them. As public library budgets have shrunk and doors have closed, people who had not given libraries much thought have been stirred to action. High-profile campaigns against closures have been fought, and in some cases won. Cressida Cowell, the new children’s laureate, is urging that school libraries be made a legal requirement. But the fate of librarians has largely escaped notice.
This is a mistake, because they are the guides and curators without whom a library, whether standalone or in a school or institution, is simply a collection of books. At their best they can reshape not only the skills and knowledge of users, but their whole perspective: “How many times I’ve been told about a librarian who saved a life by offering the right book at the right time,” the American author Judy Blume has said.
Yet 10,000 jobs in council libraries have been lost since 2005. Technology has displaced some, with the creation of unstaffed branches, and has transformed the role of others; computer access is now an important aspect of the service, and librarians routinely help people with online benefits applications.
There is no reason why libraries should not offer this kind of support, as long as staff have sufficient resources and training. The baby and book groups, homework and play clubs hosted by libraries are a positive extension of their role. But such activities must not come at the expense of the librarian’s task of championing books and literacy, which is even more important in an age of information overload and fake news.
Shrunken budgets inevitably make this service harder to deliver: when libraries no longer have budgets to buy new publications, which may in part explain a recent fall in lending. Such cuts affect all sorts of people, but are particularly damaging when children cannot find books to suit them. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Summer Reading Challenge, a scheme offering incentives to children who sign up to read a book a week during the holidays; especially valuable to those who don’t go away or have shelves full of books at home. It is also a reminder of the kind of one-on-one engagement that has become a rarity. The ideal librarian is a skilled maker of recommendations.
Librarians can be much more than book experts. Libraries are community as well as knowledge hubs, and should promote and harness civic activism. Any government with a serious commitment to expanding educational opportunities for young and old would invest, not only in libraries, but in the people who work in them.
The problem of plastic pollution has gotten dramatically worse as production has surged without much thought to what happens once it is discarded. Bans on single use plastic such as bags and straws have become a popular policy around the world to rein in plastic use. Although some of these rules have reduced waste in places, they do not directly address production and can send users to alternatives that are not much friendlier to the environment.
Researchers have learned enough about the flow of plastic waste to know it poses a widespread environmental problem. Plastic causes physical harm to animals and could combine with other threats to endanger vulnerable species. There is also concern about humans inhaling and ingesting microplastic. We must do a better job of stanching the flood. Doing that means tackling two broad goals: considerably reducing the amount of plastic we produce and improving the recycling and reuse of what we make.
The U.S. must be a bigger part of these solutions. Blame is too often laid solely at the feet of rapidly developing Asian countries that lack robust waste management systems, and we forget the role that the U.S. plays not only in producing plastic but by exporting millions of tons of the waste to Asia. With the U.S. local authorities responsible for an overwhelmed recycling system turning to landfills and incinerators, those options can have other environmental impacts and perpetuate the creation of virgin plastic from fossil fuels. Only 9 percent of plastic in the U.S. is now recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Federal and state governments should step up to help streamline and shore up the nation’s disjointed recycling system. Many researchers also say plastic product manufacturers need to be pushed beyond their present voluntary commitments to reduce plastic waste with incentives that will make them bear more of the cost of that waste. Countries are looking at such “extended producer responsibility” programs, which can include taxes on new products that do not have a certain percentage of recycled plastic, along with having producers pay toward the costs of collecting and recycling their products.
Each policy has its proponents and detractors, and it is ultimately up to lawmakers to decide which ones make the most scientific, economic and political sense. In the U.S., Congress has already shown it is willing to step in, with the 2015 Microbead Free Waters Act that banned these extremely small materials in personal care products. However, what we need are comprehensive solutions, not just Band Aids that cover up the symptoms but ignore the roots of the plastic problem.
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