Accumulating.
Reject virgin, manage waste
before it’s too late.
Global annual emissions of plastic pollution are estimated to be between 22 and 48 million metric tons. If current trends continue then these 2016 estimates will double by 2025, and even current proposals for plastic management still predict emissions increasing annually.
Plastic can take anywhere between decades and centuries for it to be removed from the environment naturally through decomposition. When pollution exceeds removal plastic accumulates in the environment. Active removal of plastic from the environment is often very difficult, meaning that plastic is a “poorly reversible pollutant”.
Yet the damage that plastic can cause to the environment and to humans is vast, from plastics accumulating in food chains to the impact plastic pollution can have on the carbon cycle, and a whole range of other negative effects.
All of this is known. Much has been known for decades.
Yet our reliance on virgin plastic materials and our poor waste management strategies are doing little to stem the problem. Indeed, rich countries frequently send their plastic waste to poorer countries that have worse facilities for recycling plastics.
In a review of research into plastic pollution MacLeod et al. (2021) suggest that it may soon be too late to stop or reverse some of the catastrophic damage that plastic pollution causes. The researchers identify areas that are particularly threatened and demonstrate the complex process that plastic goes through as it degrades and just how far reaching and impactful plastic pollution can be.
Their analysis of the research concludes that plastic pollution is a “planetary boundary threat” and that the only “rational policy response” is to take rapid action to curb plastic emissions and improve global and national waste management.
Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abg5433