We have a plastics problem, but a green recovery could solve it
Plastic pollution is more than entangled sea turtles, just like climate change is more than polar bears.
Plastic pollution is more than entangled sea turtles, just like climate change is more than polar bears. These animals stir up public concern but are only parts of much larger issues.
Plastics exist virtually everywhere on Earth — in the food we eat, the water we drink, and even in the most remote parts of the Arctic. And all that plastic is endangering human and ecosystem health.
New research published in Science shows the scope of the problem: Even with immediate action, we’re on pace to add 710 million metric tons (782 million tons) of plastic to the environment by 2040. But that isn’t an excuse for doing nothing.
Without any action, that figure nearly doubles — another 1.3 billion metric tons of plastic could enter the environment in the next two decades. We already dump the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean each minute, totaling 31 million tons per year. By 2040, as the research shows, that could nearly triple.
“The biggest takeaway from our work is that if we don’t do anything, the plastic pollution problem is going to become unmanageable,” Winnie Lau, co-author of the study, told CNN. “Doing nothing is not an option.”
Historically, we’ve been pretty lousy at cleaning up after ourselves. Of the nearly 8.3 billion metric tons (9.1 billion tons) of plastic we’ve produced since 1950, only 9% of that has been recycled.
The rest has gone into landfills or into the environment, releasing toxic chemicals that harm plants, animals, and us. And like climate change, plastic pollution disproportionately affects low income neighborhoods and communities of color.
But in recent years, as people become more aware of these dangers, global efforts to curb plastic pollution have ramped up. Last year, Canada announced plans to ban single-use plastics by 2021, and Peru barred tourists from bringing single-use plastics into any protected or cultural areas. In the United States, at least 400 U.S. cities have adopted a tax or ban on plastic bags.
COVID-19 threatens to undo a lot of the progress we’ve made, though. Amid fears of virus transmission on reusable surfaces, single-use plastics have resurged. And with masks and gloves now part of our daily lives, we risk doing even more damage when we improperly throw away our personal protective equipment.
Worldwide, all current efforts and pledges to tackle plastic would cut pollution by only 7%, at most, researchers from the Science study found. But these measures haven’t even come close to managing waste globally, given the scope of the problem.
How we deal (or don’t deal) with waste in the wake of COVID-19 could make things a lot worse, but it could also make things much better. A green recovery that recognizes all this waste could be the solution to our plastics problem.
“Let this moment be a wake-up call for all of us,” said Zac Goldsmith, minister of state for Pacific and the Environment in the U.K., in a World Economic Forum webinar. “As countries emerge from the pandemic, we will all have to find ways to rebuild and to renew. And I think that gives us a one-off huge opportunity to choose a different path — one that ensures environmental sustainability and resilience are the lens through which we make decisions and map out our recovery.”
We must invest in better collection and recycling of plastics around the world and, at the same time, invest in long-term plans that prioritize plastic alternatives. Doing so would not only drastically curb plastic pollution — it would cut greenhouse gas emissions while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. Two things the world desperately needs as we emerge from this pandemic.