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<h1 class="vjs-social-title">Share: U.N. Officially Recognizes A Safe, Sustainable Environment As A Human Right</h1>
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Nov 11, 2020,05:39am EST|25,902 views
GUESS WHICH TWO COUNTRIES PRODUCE THE MOST PLASTIC TRASH PER PERSON?
David Vetter
Senior Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Sustainability
Climate research, renewables and circularity
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The developed world exports much of its plastic waste to countries such as
Indonesia, which are ill ... [+] equipped to deal with it.
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The scale of the plastic waste problem is almost too large to comprehend, but a
new report has revealed who the biggest culprits are when it comes to
ocean-clogging trash.
In a study published in Science Advances, researchers found that residents of
the U.S. and the U.K. produce more plastic waste per person than any other
nation, with Americans generating an average of 105kg (231lbs) of plastic per
year. The British are close behind, throwing away almost 99kg (218lbs) annually.
The report, which focuses mainly on U.S. waste, shows that people in richer
nations generate more plastic waste than people in less developed countries:
South Korea and Germany take the respective third and fourth spots in the top 10
countries ranked by plastic trash per capita.
On the other hand, China came out as the top producer of plastic for the global
market, even though Chinese people on average use relatively little of the
stuff—just 15kg per person.
Forbes.com graphic / Data from Science Advances
PROMOTED
The report sheds further light on the origins of the 300 million tons of plastic
trash that are produced annually, of which at least 8.8 million tons end up in
the ocean. Once plastics are in the environment, they can harm humans, plants
and animals in many ways, some of which we do not fully understand.
Yet those figures are set to grow even further as plastic production increases,
roughly doubling every 11 years. Production is expected to accelerate as oil
companies, facing falling demand for crude oil, switch to plastic production.
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According to Jennifer Allan, a U.K.-based lecturer in international relations at
Cardiff University’s School of Law and Politics, the news that British and
American consumers throw away the most plastic should surprise no one.
“U.K. and U.S. supermarkets are awash in plastic—it is very difficult to buy
groceries or anything else without it,” she says. “Most media attention to
plastics focuses on the consumer and consumer choice, but that misses the point
entirely, as it’s nearly impossible to avoid. It’s everywhere because it’s cheap
and saves companies transportation costs.”
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Unfortunately, recycling doesn’t seem to be the answer: of the plastic we’re
using, Allan notes, only about 9% is recycled. Indeed, a 2017 paper revealed
that only 9% of all the plastic ever created has been recycled.
“People view recycling as a pro-environment behaviour, and for tin, glass and
aluminum, recycling works very well. But for plastic it doesn’t,” she says.
For one thing, there are many different types of plastic, which get mixed
together in recycling collections and are difficult to sort, which takes money
and time. Even the British Plastics Federation, which represents plastic
manufacturers, admits this is a problem.
But the larger issue is the sheer volume of trash being produced.
“There is absolutely too much plastic in the system,” Allan says. “It’s
overloading global capacity for recycling, but there is little incentive to
recycle it in the first place: it’s difficult to recycle and has low value on
the market. This means there’s little money to be made. It’s a broken system.”
As a result, in Britain, about half of recyclable waste ends up in landfill or
is burned, while two thirds of plastic waste separated for recycling is simply
exported to other countries, including Malaysia, Vietnam and Turkey. Malaysia
has since been overwhelmed by the influx of both legal and illegal British
plastic trash, and has hit back at Western powers saying the nation has no
intention of becoming “the garbage dump of the world.”
MORE FROM FORBESU.K. Spending 32 Times More On Fossil Fuels Than Renewables: New
ReportBy David Vetter
Why rich countries are using so much plastic can be hard to untangle, but there
are some obvious suspects. Research published in September by the
Netherlands-based Changing Markets Foundation claimed that the corporations
responsible for producing the largest quantities of plastic packaging—companies
like Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive CL +0.9% and Danone—use trade associations and
even fake environmental groups to undermine and delay legislation in countries
that attempt to tackle plastic waste.
As well as actively opposing the introduction of measures that might reduce
waste, such as bottle return programs, the report found that among the
corporations, “One of the key tactics has been to saddle ‘litterbug’ consumers
with most of the blame—and public authorities with most of the cost—for a waste
problem created by these corporations.”
The Coca-Cola Company was last year identified as the single largest producer of
single-use plastic ... [+] items in the world.
AFP via Getty Images
Nusa Urbancic, campaigns director at the Changing Markets Foundation, says
corporations “claim to be committed to solutions, but at the same time use a
host of dirty tricks to ensure that they can continue pumping out cheap,
disposable plastic, polluting the planet at a devastating rate.”
In addition to corporations helping to inflate the plastic problem, Jennifer
Allan believes there are systemic reasons why Britain in particular produces so
much waste.
“Some supermarkets believe they need plastic to keep pests out,” she says. “The
UK also imports a lot of its food, which may have a role to play.”
So what is the answer?
Changing Markets offers a raft of recommendations, stating that “voluntary
initiatives and commitments by the industry do not work.” Policymakers, the
foundation says, should begin by instituting deposit return schemes, in which
consumers pay a small fee when they purchase items in single-use containers.
That fee is refunded when the container is returned, for reuse or recycling.
Such schemes are already underway in European nations such as Germany, where
such schemes have seen a 98% return rate, and in Canada, Australia and several
U.S. states, but Britain lags far behind. A motion tabled by a group of British
MPs in July would see the introduction of a deposit return scheme in the U.K. by
2023.
Elsewhere, pressure groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and Resource
Association have suggested a tax on virgin plastics, to level the playing field
for recycled material which tends to be more expensive.
It is notable that the U.K.’s close neighbor France generates just under 44kg
(97lbs) of plastic waste per person—less than half that produced by Brits.
France has taken a proactive stance against single-use plastic, including the
introduction of a penalty system that increases the cost of non-recyclable
plastics.
Beyond policy, Changing Markets says corporations should be expected to make
more ambitious commitments to sustainability, support rather than oppose
plastic-reducing legislation, and publish a “plastic footprint” to show exactly
how much of the material they are producing.
But it is abundantly clear that, despite the mounting urgency of the plastic
crisis, some wealthy nations are stuck in their ways. Underpinning outmoded
national attitudes to plastics in both the U.K. and the U.S., Allan says,
requires a systemic reappraisal and adoption of the waste hierarchy, which can
be defined as “refuse; reduce; reuse; recycle.”
“In countries like the U.S. and the U.K., we skip straight to recycle,” Allan
says. “Refusing plastic is difficult when all the affordable and available
options are plastic; reducing is also difficult, for similar reasons. Re-using
can work, to a point.”
“Without thinking through why we have so much plastic foisted on us, we can’t
start to address the issue overall.”
Follow me on Twitter.
David Vetter
Follow
My key interests are in decarbonization and the development of circular
economies.
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U.N. Officially Recognizes A Safe, Sustainable Environment As A Human Right
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SHARE: U.N. OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZES A SAFE, SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT AS A HUMAN
RIGHT
THE MEASURE PASSED WITH 43 VOTES IN FAVOR AND NONE AGAINST, BUT WITH ABSTENTIONS
FROM CHINA, INDIA, JAPAN AND RUSSIA.
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