It takes a considerable amount of irony, or perhaps cynicism, to hold an emergency conference to save the oceans from plastic pollution in Punta del Este, Uruguay’s spectacular whale city. It sits on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, “part of a stunning 660 km stretch of coastline,” according to one tourist site. It’s nice to be there in early December, the late spring of the Southern Hemisphere.
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At #ONE5nations endorsed a historic resolution to #BeatPlasticPollution & establish an international legally binding agreement by 2024.
This week #PlasticsINC negotiations kick off in Uruguay.https://t.co/PUTorEGqiE pic.twitter.com/K68dYpQepu
– UN Environment Program (@UNEP) November 28, 2022
It was the United Nations Environment Protection Authority (UNEP) that convened this conference, nine months after a “historic decision” at another conference, in Nairobi. The task was to draw up an action plan no later than 2024. 160 countries ordered themselves to start this process before the end This year. But the pristine beaches of Puente del Este failed to inspire the 2,000 on the conference island. While they agreed on the need to save the seas from plastic, they couldn’t say how.
The main reason is that the rich countries, especially the US, are not ready to accept an enforcement regime. Washington prefers something like the Paris Agreements for climate protection: each participating country agrees to do something, but does not have to implement an agreed plan. Progress obviously depends on goodwill. and in agreement Voluntary, but in the absence of standards and in the absence of enforcement the chance of being saved from the plastic is incredibly small.
Year after year, 12 million tons of plastic pollute the seas and oceans. It’s single-use plastic: packaging, cups, bottles, straws and even cigarette filters.
An opinion piece by the British Commonwealth describes the process: “After heavy rain, these plastic products are washed from our streets into our rivers, and from the rivers into the sea, polluting the waters of the beaches and finally piling up on the beaches themselves. There they break down into even smaller pieces, eventually becoming to microplastics, and spread over all the oceans.”
450 years of plastic
A key element in this equation is the accelerated urbanization process of the world’s coasts. 13 of the 20 largest cities in the world (ten million people or more) are located along the coasts. They emit appalling amounts of filth, and plastic is near the top of the list.
Here are some more statistics:
● Between 60% and 90% of marine pollution comes from plastic.
● The lifespan of an average plastic bottle is 450 years.
● The amount of plastic that the human race is going to produce in the next eight years is weighed against the amount that was produced in the entire 20th century.
● Global demand for plastic increased from two million metric tons in 1950 to 348 million metric tons in 2017. The value of the plastic industry is estimated at 520 billion dollars, and it will double in the next 20 years.
● By 2040, the amount of plastic in the depths of the sea will triple and amount to 36 million metric tons. According to a report by the Pew Research Center, this amount would be equivalent to 50 kg of plastic on every meter of beach.
● Plastic pollutes 800 species of animals, including all types of turtles, 40% or more of whales (which also include dolphins) and 44% of seabirds.
● The one-time use of plastic costs the world economy between 80 billion dollars and 120 billion dollars a year.
“unsafe” methods
Plastic recycling is an existing and declared goal in almost every country on earth. In the rich countries, plastic recycling is enshrined in law. Citizens receive regular reminders about the need to separate biodegradable waste from plastic, and local authorities provide them with recycling containers. But all this effort is almost a blessing in disguise. According to the Pew Center data, by 2040, the existing plans, as they are, will reduce plastic pollution by 7% per year. It’s all.
This does not mean that there is no way to improve this state of affairs. According to the Pew Center, global investments in plastic can be reduced from $2.5 trillion to $1.2 trillion, provided that a “paradigm change” is possible. A transition from “safe” production and delivery technologies and methods to “less safe” and less experienced technologies and methods will have to take place. Massive intervention by governments will be required, which will require them to invest hundreds of billions of dollars. There is no evidence that such investments will save money, or even pay off.
Anyone who observes the American right’s harsh criticism of the Biden administration’s green energy initiatives will be able to easily guess the right’s reaction to proposals to treat plastic. The supporters of green energy keep repeating that a “new economy” will grow from it, with new opportunities for investors, employers and employees. Its opponents shrug their shoulders, or scoff. The narrow victory of the Republicans in the elections to the US House of Representatives last month put an end to the possibility of new legislation, who knows for a few years. In the absence of American participation, the chance of a global effort on the plastic front is greatly reduced.
“Thousands of plastics”
A major weakness in the recycling industry is the lack of standards. In the US alone, there are approximately 10,000 companies involved in recycling garbage, including plastic. Each of them has its own standards, and the profitability of recycling decreases accordingly.
According to an American association called ‘Beyond Plastics’ (beyondplastics.org), only 5-6% of the plastic in the US is recycled, seemingly a rather dramatic drop from 9.5% in 2014. But an article in the ‘Atlantic’ magazine shows that data 2014 themselves were farcical, because they involved millions of tons of plastic that the US sent to China, pretending to be “recycled”. The Chinese put an end to this obscene habit, which polluted their environment.
The main problem, according to the authors of the article, is that there is not one plastic, but “thousands of plastics, and each of them has a separate composition and separate properties.” They are not jointly recyclable anyway.
But the recycling industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that runs a PR campaign and lobbies with politicians and legislators. She also spreads half-truths about her successes. One famous case was Dow Chemical’s claim that it was able to produce diesel from plastic sent to it by a city in the state of Idaho, in the western US. A journalistic investigation debunked this story, but recyclers continue to recycle the misinformation about recycling.
“carbons in other clothes”
In March of this year, the United Nations Conference on Environmental Affairs in Nairobi adopted a decision to “put an end to plastic pollution” through a multinational agreement, at the center of which will be an effort to standardize production and recycling. The language of the decision is convoluted and often implies two sides, especially when it comes to recognizing the rights of individual countries But those who attended the conference thought it was “historic”, and photographs of its participants showed some showing tears of excitement in their eyes.
One major difficulty is to induce a sense of panic. The UN Secretary General does say that “plastic products are carbon in other clothes, and they threaten human rights, the climate and biodiversity.” But for now their share in climate warming is modest, only 3%. It is currently impossible to attribute the hot summer, or the drought, to plastic. This part is guaranteed to come up.
Plastics are fossil fuels in another form & pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate & biodiversity.
As negotiations towards an agreement to #BeatPlasticPollution continue, I call on countries to look beyond waste and turn off the tap on plastic.
– Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) December 2, 2022
According to the United Nations Environment Organization, by 2050, the emission of greenhouse gases related to plastic will reach 15% of what is allowed based on the current goal of the Paris Agreements (limiting warming by more than half a century by the middle of the century). But those who have recently heard Donald Trump joke that the level of the oceans will rise “In a quarter of an inch in 300 years” knows how hard it is to scare the complacent.
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