Plastic menace: Matching solutions with challenge 1

In 2000, some 234 million tons of plastic were produced.

By 2021, annual production roughly doubled, with the trade in plastic and goods containing it estimated to be worth $ 1.2 trillion each year.

Around one million plastic water bottles are sold every minute, and five million plastic bags are used around the world every year.

The world’s annual output of plastic, which is over 400 million tons, is set to reach 1,100 million by 2050, according to the UN’s Environment Programme.

Plastics have made possible a bewildering range of new materials that can replicate the properties of existing ones.

Its structure, made up of repeating molecular units called monomers, which can be combined and arranged in enormous varieties to form polymers, meant that they could be used to replicate almost any other material.

They could also be improved upon, made lighter, more durable, cheaper and easier to manufacture.

Where they replace paper, glass bottles or cans, it significantly makes packaging lighter.

The weight of one little plastic bottle plastic is just five per cent of a glass one.

A paper bag is nearly six times heavier than a plastic one, and it takes three times as much energy to produce.

Using cans or glass bottles for soft drinks results in greenhouse gas emissions, two and three times higher than using plastic, even taking recycling into account.

Plastic has also erased the world’s reliance on older materials and on living beings from which many of them came.

There are, perhaps, a hundred million pianos in the world. If all their white keys were made of ivory, how many elephants would remain?

Concerns

The enormous benefits of plastic to mankind and modern living are completely eclipsed by its potential harm to the natural environment.

The visible sight of plastic waste all over, marring the beauty of landscapes and often to the detriment of wildlife, used to be the principal charge against plastic use.

Now there is growing concern about its offshoot micro-plastic and its potential harm to human health.

Since Australian scientists first began looking for them in people in 2018, microplastics have turned up in the blood, lungs, kidneys, liver, heart and even in the brain.

They have also been detected in the placenta and breast milk.

Though not fully established, people have reportedly linked them to inflammation, the basis for many chronic diseases, speeding the growth of cancer and reducing the efficacy of antibiotics.

Resolve

Dealing with plastic waste is arduous, grubby and not very lucrative, looking at the fact that only nine per cent or so of used plastic globally is ever recycled, up from four per cent in 2000.

his should not frustrate the resolve to tackle the challenge head-on, looking at the enormous benefits of plastic to humanity as already established.

A study in 2023 concluded that with the right mix of policies, it should be possible to reduce the annual volume of plastic that is mismanaged, neither recycled nor disposed of incorrectly by 90 per cent by 2040. Unfortunately, an attempt by 175 countries in 2022 to develop a legally binding treaty to reduce plastic pollution failed to reach a consensus by the end of 2024 as most countries focus more on their individual national interests.

Hope

However all hope is not lost, as some sixty-nine countries, including the European Union (EU), have banded together in a “high ambition coalition.”

These countries are responsible for a significant share of the world’s plastic waste. 

Regardless of what happens elsewhere, they can improve how they manage it at home.

That means expanding recycling, as well as more use of unpopular solutions like landfills and burning plastic waste for energy while capturing the released carbon. 

The writer is with the Institute of Current Affairs and Diplomacy (ICAD).

E-mail: Lawmat2014@gmail.com