An article published during November in UNIDO discusses marine plastic pollution, or marine litter, and how we can help this global problem by using a circular economy solution. Plastics take anywhere from 400 to 1,000 years to break down.
As many readers are aware, plastic is a major problem for the natural environment. Nearly 90% of all marine pollution is plastic, this harms every part of marine life. From plastic bags to microplastics, there are no seas on Earth without these pollutants.
It’s estimated that plastic costs humanity over $2.2 trillion per year in social and environmental damage. These estimates are most likely conservative, we have yet to know how much cost plastics have on human health.
Of the approximately 6.3 billion tons of fossil fuel-derived plastic (FFP) waste produced to date, only 9% has been recycled, with 12% incinerated, while the other 79% gets dumped into the environment.
For too long the disposal of plastic waste has been disregarded as important. We throw away plastic bags, plastic to-go containers, plastic packaging, plastic straws and cutlery just to name a few.
These items are blown by the wind or carried by rivers into the world’s oceans.
In this video from Plastic Pollution Coalition you can learn more about the problem, and how we can make a difference on an individual level by the choices we make every day. The more people that care the greater the impact.
The idea of a circular economy approach is to focus on plastic from the design stage rather than waiting to deal with the problem afterward. We need to have a better system for remanufacturing the large amounts of plastic we already have.
As stated in the original article the following considerations can be looked at from the design stage.
- Is plastic packaging even necessary? For example fruits and vegetables
- Use renewable, bio-degradable, or compostable materials without toxic materials
- Design products that use fewer materials to decrease the amount of waste produced
- Design packaging that limits the number of polymers or uses a single polymer making for easier separation for recycling.
Currently, FFP’s are and have been extremely low-cost for producers to keep making them. Initiatives such as Extended Producer Responsibility (ERP) and plastics related legislations are helping to try and level the playing field.
The idea is to raise the cost of FFP’s and make recycled polymers more affordable, thus increasing the demand for the recycled high-purity polymers. Incentivizing recovery and recycling rates will encourage more people to care about plastic, making it more precious than just throwing it in a garbage can or dumping it in the sea.
Along with these initiatives, stricter measures must be taken to help reduce our impact on the environment, including new filters for washing machines, upgrades to wastewater treatment plants, and placing bans on toxic plastic additives to name a few.
Individuals can also make a difference by supporting start-up companies who are looking to make a difference through innovation and the reuse of plastics. In particular, companies and projects that are engineering biodegradable and compostable plastics.
