Paris: Plastic production and pollution show no signs of letting up, even though solutions that could mitigate the material’s harmful environmental impact are emerging.
Here are the key issues, ahead of a UN conference in Nairobi next week that has its sights on a future treaty to curb plastic waste:
– How much plastic does the world produce?
Global plastic production almost doubled between 2000 and 2019, from 234 million tonnes to 460 million tonnes, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Plastic waste more than doubled in that time, reaching 353 million tonnes in 2019.
But global production fell slightly in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic for only the third time in the history of modern industry, according to trade association Plastics Europe.
The other occasions were the 1973 oil crisis and the financial crisis of 2008.
The OECD said 22 million tonnes of plastic were discarded in the environment in 2019 alone, with six million tonnes ending up in waterways, lakes and oceans.
Plastic makes up at least 85 percent of total marine waste, according to the UN Environment Assembly.
The sheer volume of plastic produced annually would weigh as much as 45,500 Eiffel Towers, according to OECD calculations, and annual plastic waste would equal the weight of 35,000 Eiffel Towers.
– Where is plastic produced?
More than half of the plastic came from Asia in 2020, with China representing almost one-third of the global total.
Plastic production in the world’s second-largest economy jumped by 82 percent between 2010 and 2020, well above the global growth average of 30 percent, according to a Plastics Europe report.
Europe’s production in 2020 was 55 million tonnes, a five-percent fall on 2019 levels.
The growth mostly came from the United States and the Middle East as primary materials there are much cheaper, and from China because its demand is growing more strongly, said Jean-Yves Daclin, Plastics Europe’s director general for France.
– What about the future? –
A 2021 report by the World Wildlife Fund estimated that global plastic production would double by 2040.
IFP (French Institute of Petroleum) New Energies, a Paris-based public research organisation, has predicted that production will reach a billion tonnes per year around 2050.
Industry leaders have rejected the figures.
“Taking into account policies decided worldwide to limit the use of single-use plastics, this growth is likely to diminish and production will not double again by 2040,” said Daclin.
Recycling is the main solution to halt the relentless march of plastic production.
Although Europe recycles more than one-third of its plastic waste, globally only around nine percent of plastic waste was recycled in 2019, according to the OECD.
NGOs including Zero Waste say recycling is not a silver bullet and advocate using less plastic to reduce global production.
Other solutions they propose include developing packaging-free products, returnable items and eco-friendly designs so that products have “a longer lifespan”, said Zero Waste’s Juliette Franquet.
UN Environment Programme chief Inger Andersen believes designing products for reuse and recycling and removing dangerous additives could reduce the amount of plastic in the oceans by more than 80 percent by 2040.
The production of virgin plastic could also tumble by 55 percent with these measures, she wrote in The Times newspaper earlier this month.
– Oil-free plastic? –
Plastic made from bio-friendly sources — such as sugar, starch, corn and wheat — represents less than one percent of global production.
The use of agricultural land and water resources limits their development as a way of reducing oil consumption in plastic production.
Even worse, these plastics are rarely completely biodegradable or compostable and “in reality only dodge the issue”, according to the Heinrich Boell Foundation, an environmental think tank in Germany.
The problem has spurred the development of second- and third-generation plastics sourced from vegetable waste or algae.
In France, start-up Eranova earlier this month organised a demonstration near the southern city of Marseille that transformed algae from a pond into bioplastic granules.
Another promising technique is making plastic from the carbon dioxide belched out into the atmosphere by industry.
Factories have started to emerge, including in Austria, where the company Covestro manufactures polyurethane.