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Plastic pollution is surging, so what are governments doing?

UN plastics treaty negotiations resume in Paris to protect the environment from worsening impacts of waste worldwide.

Plastic_Recycling_Bin — Between 400,000 and 1 million people are estimated to die each year in developing countries because of diseases such as diarrhoea and cancer-related to plastics and other mismanaged waste, according to a 2019 report by the charity Tearfund. Image: Ivan Radic, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Flickr.

Thomson Reuters Foundation

4 minit pembacaan May 30, 2023

Governments are meeting in Paris this week to negotiate a global treaty on plastic pollution, as alarm grows over the environmental damage caused by surging amounts of waste.

Producing plastics causes major planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, while the accumulation of plastic products in the environment pollutes lands and oceans.

In a recent report, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said countries can reduce plastic pollution by 80 per cent by 2040 through major policy changes using existing technologies.

Negotiations began in November over the UN treaty, which aims to create the world’s first legally binding agreement on plastic pollution by the end of 2024.

Experts say it is urgently needed, with plastic consumption projected to nearly double by 2050 in G20 nations unless major global action is taken, causing even greater environmental damage, according to Back to Blue, a research initiative.

So, what environmental impacts are caused by plastic, and how can countries address the issue?

Why is plastic a problem?

Plastics are causing widespread pollution on land and at sea, causing harm to human health and damaging vulnerable marine habitats such as coral reefs and mangroves.

Between 400,000 and 1 million people are estimated to die each year in developing countries because of diseases such as diarrhoea and cancer related to plastics and other mismanaged waste, according to a 2019 report by the charity Tearfund.

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When a country puts in some sensible policies, this global supply chain… sidesteps them. Isolated, fragmented policies in individual countries just don’t work.

Steve Fletcher, professor, University of Portsmouth

The production of plastics also has a major impact on climate change, as they are made from fossil fuels such as oil and gas.

“It’s not just about trash in our oceans, it’s a greenhouse gas emission problem as well,” said Gillian Parker, a senior manager at the Economist Impact think tank, which leads the Back to Blue initiative with The Nippon Foundation.

Through their life cycle, plastics emit 3.4 per cent of global planet-warming emissions, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

How much plastic waste is recycled?

Around the world, only 9 per cent of plastic waste is recycled, according to the OECD, which predicts that global plastic waste is on track to almost triple to 1,231 million tonnes in 2060 from 460 million tonnes in 2019.

Parker said the problem is particularly severe in emerging economies which lack sophisticated recycling processes that exist in countries in the European Union.

“The existing infrastructure’s not enough to handle the amount of plastic waste that’s being generated, and that’s a massive blind spot,” she said.

This could be improved through schemes such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), she said, where plastic producers are made responsible for the end of a product’s life cycle, such as by providing funds to cover the costs of recycling.

Should we ban single-use plastics?

The Back to Blue report examined three main ways in which governments have tried to reduce plastic consumption, including EPR schemes, production taxes, and bans on single-use plastics.

It found that single-use bans were the most effective, but said that if these were implemented in G20 countries without any other measures, plastic consumption would still be one-and-a-half times higher by 2050.

The world generated an additional 6 million tonnes of polluting single-use plastic in 2021 compared to 2019, according to recent research by the Minderoo Foundation in Australia.

Steve Fletcher, a leading plastics expert at the University of Portsmouth in Britain, said there is often a “false distinction” between single-use plastics and those which are genuinely multi-use.

“There isn’t actually that much multiple-use plastic out there when you think about it,” he said.

Fletcher said there should be bans on plastics which lack a clear purpose, are toxic and cannot be reused or recycled.

“As a global society, what is the justification for producing this stuff in the first place?” he added.

How can plastic consumption be reduced?

Analysts say one of the challenges when it comes to reducing plastic consumption is how cheap it is to produce, thanks to fossil fuel subsidies.

“At the moment, virgin plastic is massively cheaper than recycled plastic or reusable plastic,” said Fletcher.

He said more financial incentives are needed to “level the playing field” to make recycled plastics more appealing, along with taxes on virgin plastic.

Another way to reduce plastic consumption is to introduce “system-wide shifts” towards reuse, Fletcher said.

This could include making products reusable by design, and creating processes such as a sports stadium reusing cups and cutlery, much like how traditional milkmen reused glass bottles.

Does the world need a plastics treaty?

Given the global nature of supply chains, local schemes alone may be unsuccessful to cut down on plastic.

“When a country puts in some sensible policies, this global supply chain… sidesteps them,” said Fletcher. “Isolated, fragmented policies in individual countries just don’t work.”

Last year, delegates from around 160 nations met in Uruguay for UN plastics treaty negotiations, which resume this week with a second round of talks in Paris.

A UN treaty could create guidance and standards to help countries decide which plastics are unnecessary, assess what they can change and enforce those decisions, said Parker from Economist Impact.

She said the Back to Blue report shows that policies are not impactful enough when implemented alone, and that “a whole suite of solutions” will be needed to make a real dent in plastic consumption.

“There’s just no real, cohesive, harmonised approach to this problem.”

This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit https://www.context.news/.