Hopes were high for the UN summit last week to settle on a landmark global treaty to address plastic pollution. As it often goes with politics, those hopes were dashed when the negotiations ended without a deal. A key reason the talks didn’t reach fruition was the refusal by Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich nations to accept limits on plastic production.
Yet, that is one of four key policies we need to reduce plastic pollution, according to researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara. Their research shows that these policies could eliminate 91 percent of the world’s plastic waste and almost a third of the related carbon emissions by 2050.
Without any policies in place, mismanaged plastic waste is set to double to 121 million metric tons in that time period, the researchers calculated.
The world creates over 350 million metric tons of plastic waste a year at present. Much of this is mismanaged, and ends up in our soils, waters, and air. In 2021, we mismanaged 68 million metric tons of plastic waste, according to a UCSB press release. Around 10 million tons of the waste finds its way into the oceans, where it can harm marine life in many ways.
The four policies that the UCSB researchers outline in their paper published in the journal Science include: capping plastic production at 2020 levels; requiring that new products be made with 40 percent postconsumer recycled plastic; a small fee on plastic packaging; and investing significantly in waste management, especially in lower-income parts of the world.
Those asks are giant. But so is the scale of the plastic pollution problem. This analysis offers hope that a solution is indeed possible if there is enough political ambition and market forces to drive it.
The international team of researchers developed a novel machine learning model to forecast trends in global plastic production, use and fate. They also used the model to simulate the impact that eight policy interventions may have, separately and when combined.
“One of the most exciting discoveries in this research is that it is actually possible to nearly end plastic pollution with this treaty,” said Douglas McCauley, a professor of marine ecology at UCSB.
Indeed, regulations and policies driven by a global legally-binding treaty offer the only hope to end plastic pollution. For now, the UN plastic treaty talks have been postponed to a later date, as yet unannounced.
Source: A. Samuel Pottinger et al. Pathways to reduce global plastic waste mismanagement and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Science, 2024.
Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine
