Plastic pollution is a fight we can win if we act now

What can be done

Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom, and there are steps we can take as outlined by the study to get the plastic situation under control.

The volume of plastic ending up as waste in the environment could potentially be cut down by as much as 80% by reducing the growth of the virgin plastic industry, improving waste collection systems across the globe, and investing in plastic materials that are easier to recycle.

‘There is a path where we can have substantial reduction’ said Lau. ‘We picked numbers that were realistic to achieve but not easy’.

Some of the simplest actions countries can take include improving waste disposal facilities and investing in robust recycling programs, which could account for a 20% reduction in plastic waste. Businesses adopting materials to replace plastic, like compostable polymers, could make a further dent of 17%. And then of course there are the behavioural changes we can make as consumers that we should by now be very cognisant of – replacing plastic water bottles with re-useable metal ones, not accepting plastic straws, minimising takeaway meals – which, according to the study, could potentially reduce projected figures by 30%.

But, even if the world came together on an industrial scale to implement these changes, plastic would still be a major problem. ‘By feasibly doing everything we possibly think we can, as much as we possibly can, we’re still left with 5 million tons flowing to the sea’, says Bailey. ‘It’s a vast improvement in 29 million tons, but there’s still an innovation gap. We still don’t have the technology of the materials we need to reduce that down to zero.’

The greatest problem facing nations both rich and poor when it comes to plastic is the broken economics of the recycling industry. Both companies selling recycled products, and even recycling plants themselves, work to a bottom line. As soon as it becomes cheaper to produce virgin plastic than it does to buy and sell recycled materials, companies opt for the more economic option.

The price of plastic is inherently tied to the oil industry – the central material of virgin plastic is oil. When the price of oil craters, like it has during the pandemic, the cost of producing plastic plummets, and it no longer makes sense for companies to process and sell recycled materials.

Like everything else, plastic is a business model, and business models don’t often regard their environmental impact.

Another blow to the profitability of recycling came in 2018, when China banned imports of plastic and mixed paper. Previously, China has been a dumping ground for the unused but recyclable plastic of other nations, which it processed in its own facilities. China’s decision to end this practice was part of its bid to become more self-sustaining and to not become overrun with waste, and left many countries, particularly the USA, with massive stockpiles of recyclable material.

Something else that hamstrings the effectiveness of recycling is ‘lightweighting’, a corporate shortcut that existed long before the pandemic introduced more plastic into our lives and decimated waste industries. By making the plastic products they produce thinner, manufacturers use less of the material and hence save money. The quality of the plastic waste that’s being fed into the recycling machine is therefore going down – companies that would otherwise make products with recycled materials can’t make use of the flimsy supplies ending up in waste facilities.

Recycling is not, cannot, and has never been a holistic solution to the plastic waste problem. The idea that the responsibility for plastic-filled oceans lies with the consumer (‘it’s not our fault’, cry Coca Cola, ‘we made them recyclable’!) is a fiction pushed by big corporations to get themselves off the hook. Creating ‘recyclable’ plastic products is a bandaid solution; manufacturers know full well that any product they produce with a triangle contoured on it has only a negligible chance of going back into the system.

Whilst investment in better waste management and the capacity of recycling plants to handle materials is a must, and has the added benefit of creating more jobs in the environmental sector, what’s really needed is for companies to stop making products that use plastic.

Whilst the consumer can play a large part in incentivising companies to nullify their plastic use by simply not buying plastic products, this alone won’t be enough. According to Bailey and his associates, what is really needed is a manufacturing tax on plastic similar to those governments are slapping on carbon.

The idea behind such a tax is that governments would charge large-scale plastic polluters, like McDonalds, for each bit of virgin plastic they produce, disincentivizing them from relying on it for their manufacturing. The government would use the proceeds to fund investment in climate mitigation projects, like green energy infrastructure.

The only way to connect with corporations who are the real culprits is to make it profitable for them to switch to fully recyclable materials or alternative paper-based products.

There are already movements fighting to make this plastic tax a reality: backers of the California Recycling and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act are collecting signatures currently to implement a plastic tax on the 2022 US federal ballot. But to really make a difference, the idea would need to be scaled up nationally, and then internationally.

We’re in danger of hitting a point of no return. Without drastic and immediate measures, our fight to keep our oceans and land free of plastic will go the same direction as our fight to keep our atmosphere free of CO2.