Counting plastics – citizen science and scientist science
For one week in March, households across the UK were asked to count the number of items of single use plastic that they discarded, and report the numbers for consolidation by Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic. The results of the Big Plastic count are just out, and they are staggering. Based on this citizen science survey, which involved over 200,000 people in almost 78,000 households, they concluded that over 90 BILLION pieces of plastic are used and immediately discarded in the UK each year, just by domestic users. Not hospitals, not industry, not retailers, just us.
Where does all this come from? The vast majority, 81%, was from food and drink wrapping. This will come as no surprise to those of us who use supermarkets. Cleaning and toiletry-related plastic comprised 9%, and the rest was ‘other’, plastic bags and the like.
And where does it go to, once we’ve thrown it ‘away? Incinerators burn 58% of it. 11% goes to landfill, leaving the rest to be recycled (17%) or exported (14%). There are really no ‘good’ ways to dispose of these plastics. Incinerating can produce more carbon dioxide per tonne than burning coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels. In landfill plastic slowly degrades, releasing polluting toxins and microplastics, with inevitable consequences for local communities and natural environments. Recycling is certainly the best route of the four, and many of us spend considerable effort trying to sort our various plastic wastes to recycle in various places, aside from the kerbside collection route. In Hampshire, only bottle shaped plastics are even collected kerbside, as the county has a policy of collecting for recycling only those materials that it knows can be recycled within the UK, which means higher quality, higher value items. In West Sussex, there’s a plastic recycling facility which takes plastic waste of many more kinds, baling it and selling it onto recycling companies, almost all of which are UK based. A second life, certainly, but it’s only a temporary staging post on the way to the incinerator or landfill. Plastic is not like metal or glass: the recycled product is generally very poor quality, with further degradation every time it’s recycled. And ‘export’, it is becoming increasingly clear, is a route to exporting a polluting problem to countries that don’t have the facilities to deal with it, such that our waste ends up dumped or burned with no safeguards for local populations or their environments.
If the waste ‘solutions’ are so flawed, the answer must be to look closer to the source. How can we reduce the amount of plastic that enters the waste stream? The onus is often put on us, as consumers, to dispose sensibly, not littering because ‘the sea starts here’ and any litter entering our sewage system is in danger of adding to marine plastic pollution. There are guides aplenty on how to reduce your own personal plastic footprint, using a refill shop, a reusable water bottle and so on. But what about the top of the supply chain? Who produces all this single-use plastic that finds its way into our homes and out again?
From ‘citizen’ science to ‘scientist’ science: another survey published in April demonstrated that fewer than 60 multinational companies were responsible for more than half of the world’s branded plastic pollution, with just six responsible for the lion’s share. Those six included of course, Coca-Cola, plus Danone, Nestle, Pepsi-Co and tobacco companies Philip Morris International and Altria. The branded plastic accounted for just over half of all the plastic recorded – for the rest the plastic was too weathered for any identification to be made.
The UK produces more plastic waste per person than almost any other nation in the world, just shy of 100kg per person per year and second only to the US. But the ‘per person’ count doesn’t mean that we each bear full personal responsibility for that 100kg. Turning off the plastic tap by producers would far outweigh our consumer efforts at recycling, and there are currently UN negotiations in train in Canada to create an internationally binding plastics reduction treaty that cuts virgin plastic production. This could be the plastic equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate in 2015, binding 175 countries to find ways of cutting plastic production, perhaps through ending fossil fuel subsidies or banning specific products, as the UK has already done in banning wet wipes containing plastic.
There’s much corporate opposition of course: the global plastics industry has a lot of lobbying power. We may all have to step up and pressure our own politicians to support such a treaty. But with such a treaty in force, imagine the Big Plastic Count in future years. In fact, imagine the cleaner beaches, the lack of plastic litter swirling around our streets and open spaces, the reduction in pollution both physical and atmospheric. Worth it? I think so.