Learn About Plastic Pollution

Plastic is polluting every corner of the planet. It has found its way to the depths of our oceans, to remote forest paths, to the ice of the Arctic, and onto the island beaches where turtles nest.

We don’t know exactly how long oil-based plastic will take to degrade (or even if it ever will), but we do know that once it’s in our soil, rivers, and oceans, it is impossible to clean up.

The plastic we see washing up on shores and floating on the water’s surface is only the tip of the trashberg. Over two-thirds of the plastic in our oceans ends up on the sea floor, creating an ever-growing wasteland beneath the waves. To make matters worse, bottles, bags, and other plastic junk gradually break into smaller and smaller pieces known as microplastics, which further damage ecosystems even as they’re invisible to the naked eye.

Globally, only 9% of plastic gets recycled. Even in developed countries, the recycling rate for plastics collected by households is often far less than 50%, with very little of that converted back into packaging. Most “‘recycled”’ packaging waste is downcycled into lower value or unrecycable products, meaning that the process is only delaying the plastic’s inevitable journey to the landfill.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic lifecycle threaten the ability of the global community to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C. More than 90% of plastic is made from fossil fuel, and a recent report by CIEL estimates that in 2019 alone, the pollution from global plastic production and incineration will equal the emissions of 189 coal-fired power plants. The same report estimates that by 2050, the greenhouse gas emissions from plastic could make up as much as 10-13% of the entire remaining carbon budget. If the overproduction and consumption of plastic continues uninterrupted, it could account for 20% of the total global oil consumption by midcentury.

Where do we go from here? Short-term goals could include eliminating unnecessary packaging that is difficult or impossible to recycle, and expanding the use of reusable and refillable systems for transporting and storing goods. In the long term, we’ll need to change our consumption habits. We must, for example, buy fewer of the processed products and ready meals that leave behind so much waste.