Earth Today | ‘Reuse, recycle, reorient and diversify’

A NEW report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is proposing a reimagined approach to end plastic pollution, including the adoption of key market shifts.

According to the report, titled Turning off the Tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy – the current plastics economy has structural flaws with some 95 per cent of the aggregate value of plastic packaging lost to the economy after a single use cycle.

This is in addition to weak waste management systems; a lack of incentives to encourage the adoption of new solutions; as well as design and packaging choices that do not account for local capacities to handle the waste.

Together with insufficient data and reporting that reflect consistent definitions and standards for plastic data, these are things the report said must be addressed.

The solution, it proposes, rests in circularity characterised by market shifts including accelerating the market for reusable products; accelerating the market for plastics recycling; and then reorienting and diversifying the market for sustainable plastic alternatives.

“The vision of a circular, zero-pollution plastics economy is one that eliminates unnecessary production and consumption, avoids negative impacts on ecosystems and human health, keeps products and materials in the economy and safely collects and disposes waste that cannot be economically processed,” the report explained.

“This results in permanently increasing material circularity, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and stopping plastic pollution,” added the report, which is intended to provide stakeholders a compass to implement change.

“Achieving this vision requires a fundamental shift to ensure that people responsibly consume, produce and manage plastic globally. This can be achieved with a systems change,” the report said further.

That systems change takes account of actions across the life cycle that trigger change and include, for example, investments in increased recycling together with incentives to use recycled plastics in new products. It said it also includes “international action to create a flourishing circular plastics economy globally that benefits all countries”.

“For instance, eliminating the manufacture of a problematic product in one country is less effective if that product can still be exported to a neighbouring country,” the report noted.

Of course, the report said, collaboration is key, as is the need to act with urgency.

“The next three to five years present a critical window for action to set the world on the path towards implementing the systems change scenario by 2040. If it takes longer to apply these same solutions, the model used indicates that an additional 80 million metric tons of plastic pollution will be entering the environment,” the report said.

Also required are policy and legislative changes that require establishing a knowledge baseline together with considering objectives and policymaking principles, settling on the regulatory approach and safeguarding participation, information and access to justice.

“Governments and lawmakers should actively explore and ensure opportunities for facilitating effective access to information, access to public participation and access to justice, as key pillars of sound environmental governance of plastics. Active engagement with stakeholders would include, but would not be limited to, civil society, academia, consumers organisations, industry and private sector in general and any individuals or interest groups and communities whose lives and activities may be affected by the government decision making,” the report said.

pwr.gleaner@gmail.com