Extracted/ English Version - February 2024 : Plastic Planet ?
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Yesterday, a large majority in the European Parliament came together to vote a law regulating the export of waste to non-OECD countries. In 2022, member states exported 32 million tonnes of waste, mainly to Turkey. According to the text's rapporteur, this agreement encourages the EU to "finally take responsibility for its waste".
At a time when plastic is invading our oceans, soils and clouds, is there a glimmer of hope through public policy? And can we take action at our own level? These are some of the questions we are covering in this month’s edition.
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In-depth💡: Plastic: why is recycling all the rage?
By Carole
Not unlike carbon emissions, plastic pollution seems to be one of those unsolvable problems of the current day: increasing efforts, decreasing returns. What happens, though, if the parallel continues? What part, if any, do businesses, manufacturers, and consumer communications play in this ecological and health catastrophe?
It once amounted to nothing... 🫣
Global plastic production has experienced exponential growth, rising from 2 million tonnes in 1950 to 162 million in 1993, then 448 million in 2015, with 40% of this plastic being single-use. Production capacities continue to expand to meet ever-growing demand, particularly driven by the packaging sector. Today, plastic is the third most produced material in the world after cement and steel.
The plastic industry is relatively concentrated: the top 20 global producers (including Exxon, Total, Saudi Aramco, and Dow) account for over 55% of single-use polymers.1
Since 2015, of the 7 billion tons of plastic waste produced, approximately 9% have been recycled, 12% incinerated, and 79% accumulated in landfills or in nature. Today, plastic accounts for three-quarters of the waste found on beaches.
Impacts are even more insidious than for climate change 🐢
In 2023, the "Plastic Overshoot Day" (the date when plastic usage exceeds our capacity to manage waste) was calculated to be July 23rd. There are now four times more plastic waste in the biosphere than total animal biomass (9 vs. 2 billion tonnes). While we all have in mind the turtles and birds trapped in plastic nets, many marine animals perish from ingestion, microfragments also contribute to the spread of invasive species and the transfer of heavy metals to other highly hazardous compounds (e.g., DDT, PCBs, etc.).
This waste also poses a danger to human health. Beyond food, the degradation into microfragments also affects the air we breathe. Research is still in its infancy, but a recent publication from the University of Auckland revealed that by measuring smaller particles, the rate reached 4,885 microplastics per square meter in the New Zealand city - equivalent to over 3 million plastic bottles in the sky.2 These micro and nanoplastics, also carried by rainwater and present in our diet, are vectors of lung cancer and disruptions to our endocrine glands, notably increasing rates of diabetes, obesity, and infertility. Every week, we ingest the equivalent of a credit card (5g).
The sweet lullaby of recycling 🪈
Why, despite the rise of recycling, do we continue to consume more virgin plastic? Two key takeaways: collection and recycling capacities are progressing slower than production3, due to lack of resources (insufficient infrastructure, especially in developing countries) and research (recycling solutions are limited). What we call recycling is actually downcycling. Even in the case of PET bottles (with the best recycling ratio), each cycle results in a loss of material of about 30%.
Recycling thus appears as a necessary but temporary solution, yet it is the one that attracts the most attention from private actors.
A case study of greenwashing ♻️
The myths perpetuated by major producers over the past decades have only worsened the problem. Thus, Planet Tracker4 has pinpointed particularly sophisticated techniques including:
Greencrowding: hiding within a group with low ambitions and progressing at the pace of the least demanding. The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which brings together 65 large companies (petrochemicals but also packaging production and especially food and beverages groups), was created in 2019, saw its budget decline by 56% over the first three years and failed to reach the recycling targets set.5
Greenrinsing: altering environmental goals along the way as they are not met. Coca-Cola and Pepsi, among the largest contributors to global plastic waste, may be involved in this practice.
Greenshifting: transferring the responsibility to consumers. Who has never felt guilty for putting the wrong item in the recycling bin raises their hand! While recycling is of course important to limit waste, it is now evident that it only solves a small part of the problem. What few producers or agri-food giants seem to admit is that the problem will be solved at its source by replacing plastic uses as much as possible.
Timid political attempts 🇺🇳
Last month, the World Bank announced the launch of the first bond issue for recycling. While this initiative has the merit of proposing an innovative financing mechanism for the proven problem of untreated waste6, one may also wonder to what extent it will not divert attention from the fundamental problem: the explosion of production.
In November 2023, the third meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for Plastics (INCP) tasked by the UN to develop a legally binding international instrument to end plastic pollution ended with no agreement. On one side, a coalition of countries led by Norway and Rwanda (also including France) proposes to reduce production, while another alliance led by Iran and Saudi Arabia and supported by many industrial lobby groups considers plastics not to be pollutants and that efforts should focus solely on downstream activities.
A paradigm shift ⤵️
Faced with failures in public policy advances, two solutions are highlighted by environmental NGOs7 :
Tackle the problem at its source: concentrate as much funding as possible on innovation to replace plastic rather than valorize it
A significant polluter-pay tax proportional to weight
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💚 Video of the month : Cutting Food Waste
Did you know? 1/3 of the food produced in the world every year goes to waste.
Listen to this fascinating Ted Talk by Jamie Crummie, co-founder of Too Good To Go, the world's largest marketplace for surplus food. The app (available in 17 countries including France, the UK, and the US) lets consumers buy unsold food from restaurants and retailers so that it doesn't go to waste.
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Only 9% of plastic waste is recycled worldwide - 15% is collected to be recycled, but 40% of them end up as recycling residues.
According to estimates, there will be a $40 billion shortfall to finance the collection and management of plastic waste globally by 2040. The World Bank's bond issue finances two recycling projects in Indonesia and Ghana that aim to collect 230,000 tons of plastic over the next ten years. The projects can generate revenue by selling a portion of the recovered waste and by obtaining and reselling plastic credits.