Plastic Pollution FAQs

99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels and they are harmful at every stage of the plastics lifecycle. Plastic pollution has flooded our planet – it is harming people’s health, accelerating social injustice, destroying biodiversity and fueling the climate crisis.

Unfortunately, plastic recycling is an ineffective waste management strategy, insufficient to address the scale of plastic produced, and was simply never designed to work in the first place. Scientists have estimated that of all the plastic waste ever produced up until 2015, only 9% has been recycled. Without much tighter standards and controls on the quality, sorting, and destination of plastic waste, there is a very high risk of downcycling, resulting in material that is of lower quality and/or functionality than the original material. In the U.S., plastics recycling rates are at an abysmally low 5%. With plastic production projected to triple by 2060, we will never be able to solve the plastic waste crisis by relying solely on downstream waste management measures like recycling. This is akin to mopping up an overflowing bathtub while the tap is still open – we must start by turning off the tap. It is imperative that we focus upstream and reduce the amount of plastic produced in the first place.

The plastics industry deceptively promoted recycling for more than 50 years, despite their knowing that plastic recycling is not technically or economically viable at scale. We will no longer be misled by industry smokescreens promoting false solutions. As recycling is unable to absorb the existing and expected future growth in plastics produced, efforts to transform plastic recycling should be seen as a complement to the large-scale transformation of production and consumption of plastic. Instead, we call for a reduction in plastic production and investment in proven real solutions such as reuse and refill, deposit return schemes, and alternative delivery systems.

To truly tackle the plastics pollution crisis, companies need to fundamentally rethink how they bring products to people. That could include refill and reuse systems, plastic-free packaging, a combination of approaches or totally new delivery and provisioning systems — but the time has come to stop using throwaway plastic for good. There are plastic alternatives that are becoming more prevalent around the world, but to bring about change at the scale needed, corporations are going to have to innovate as only they can afford to do.

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that are created as plastics shed and degrade. Researchers have found microplastics in human blood, feces, lungs, breast milk, placentas, hearts, and stomachs. While we don’t yet know the exact impact of these microplastics on human health, we do know that plastics are made with more than 16,000 chemicals, over 4,000 of which are known to harm our health.

Pthalates, forever chemicals (PFAS), bisphenols, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and benzotriazoles are some of the well-known harmful chemicals in plastics. They have been linked to endocrine-disrupting effects, certain cancers, reproductive system disturbances, metabolic changes, obesity, premature birth rates, endometriosis, early puberty, neurological disorders, altered immune function, respiratory problems, metabolic issues, diabetes, obesity, heart problems, and learning disabilities.

We would like to see companies innovate beyond single-use packaging altogether and instead come up with alternative delivery systems that minimize waste, such as reuse and refill systems. Single-use glass and aluminum products may have a place in a more sustainable system, but they are still based on a throwaway model that we must change. While the environmental impact may be lower, they also remain in our oceans and the environment for years. It’s time for companies to do better for their customers.

Corporations have tried to avoid responsibility for the plastic pollution crisis they created for decades. In fact, the very concept of faulting consumers rather than producers goes back to a famous 1970’s ad campaign by Keep America Beautiful, an organization created and funded by the single-use packaging industry including The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. This move to shift responsibility onto consumers was a direct response to state legislatures considering laws that would target manufacturers and the packaging industry years before. These efforts proved so successful that we are still unlearning the deceptive advertising years later.

Thankfully, people worldwide now recognize that the majority of single-use plastics are neither recycled or recyclable; it is up to the companies that produce this waste to come up with a better system. We simply cannot solve a structural problem with individual approaches. Individual consumers can certainly make informed decisions about what they buy, try to avoid purchasing plastic packaging and dispose of plastics into recycling bins whenever possible, but this will unfortunately never be enough when companies are not providing enough plastic-free options to consumers and recycling is broken.

Currently, companies are profiting from externalizing the cost of their product packaging by shifting the financial burden onto consumers whose taxes pay for municipal waste systems that simply cannot keep up with the amount of plastic waste they receive. Why should we continue to pay for the mess they created?

There are just a few major corporations who produce the majority of the world’s plastic waste. Since 2018, people around the world involved in the Break Free From Plastic movement have participated in global brand audits, community initiatives in which branded plastic waste is gathered, counted, and documented to identify the companies responsible for plastic pollution. It’s no longer enough to remove this pollution without holding the corporate polluters accountable. The results from these brand audits have shown that the world’s biggest plastic polluters are: The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo, Mondelēz International, Mars, Inc., Procter & Gamble, and Danone. 

No, it is not enough to simply cut down on the amount of fossil or virgin plastic used or add more recycled content at this point – especially since recycling actually increases the toxicity of plastics, posing a threat to the health of consumers, frontline communities, and workers in the recycling sector. We know that over 90 percent of plastics produced have not been recycled. Coca-Cola, for example, has continued to increase its investment in throwaway plastic bottles. This problem is so massive, that it requires massive shifts, not baby steps in the right direction. For Coca-Cola to only commit to recycling efforts for its 110 billion single-use plastic bottles still leaves us with many billions of plastic bottles to pollute our waterways and oceans.

There are many kinds of bioplastics, so each case needs evaluation but generally we believe they should be considered with caution. The definition of the term “bioplastics” varies greatly around the world, but is most commonly used to describe bio-based, biodegradable, and/or compostable plastics (learn more here). 

Bioplastics do not help us to challenge our current throwaway society or move up the waste hierarchy to give priority to prevention and reduction, as bioplastics are mostly designed to substitute petroleum-based plastics and often disposable or single-use products. Greenpeace also has concerns that bioplastics resourced from intensive conventional agriculture do not support the shift toward ecological agriculture.

Simply replacing conventional plastics with bioplastics, including those purporting to be biodegradable, would not offer a sustainable solution to land or marine pollution and can actually increase the tendency for people to litter.

We have lived in a world free of single-use plastics for the vast majority of human history, and we can absolutely do so again. In fact, many places around the world have eliminated plastics already! It will take time, investment, and innovation to phase out all throwaway plastics, but it is time for companies to move toward that goal. New materials and delivery systems are emerging constantly that will make this transition easier. Reduction and ultimately the phasing out of single-use plastics is the only answer to the plastics crisis.

It’s not as simple as just removing the plastics that we can see. It’s estimated that 94% of the plastic that enters the ocean ends up on the seafloor. Barely 1% of marine plastics are found floating at or near the ocean surface and 5% end up on beaches. A single plastic bottle can fragment to pollute our oceans with thousands of pieces of microplastic, which are ingested by marine life and enter our food supply. Simply removing plastics from beaches and the ocean will never tackle the scale of the problem we are facing. It simply doesn’t make sense to focus on cleanup efforts alone without also addressing the overproduction of single-use plastics in the first place.

The only way to deal with this pollution crisis is to stop single-use plastic production at the source. This is why we recommend that any cleanup should also include a brand audit to identify the corporations responsible for ocean pollution.

It depends on the plastic, but most petroleum plastic does not biodegrade — it just fragments. Many bioplastics only biodegrade under very controlled conditions, and very poorly or not at all in the sea. Plastics fragment into tiny pieces of microplastic, which is often ingested by marine life before entering our food supply chain. We will never be able to recycle or even compost our way out of this mess — it’s time to stop producing throwaway plastics.

No. It produces climate impacting greenhouse gasses, persistent pollutants (that can accumulate in land and marine food chains), and can inflict air and ash pollution impacts on local communities. Burning enables poorly designed products to continue being produced, wasting valuable resources that would be better reused or recycled.

Source: http://www.no-burn.org/burning-plastic-incineration-causes-air-pollution-dioxin-emissions-cost-overruns/

No. Despite considerable investment, chemical recycling is expensive, inefficient, and often just a fancy way of saying “plastic burning.” 

Instead of focusing on solutions that protect business as usual, companies need to make significant investments in finding alternative ways to bring their products to people. And while recycling has a limited but important role to play in the short-term, to solve the plastic pollution and overproduction crises we need to create much less single-use plastic in the first place. Plastics that are not easily and simply reused or mechanically recyclable should be eliminated, full stop.

Here is a blog that speaks to this: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/guest-blog-one-in-five/

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a gyre of marine debris particles in the central North Pacific Ocean. Discovered between 1985 and 1988, the patch extends over an indeterminate area of widely varying range depending on the degree of plastic concentration used to define the affected area. The patch is characterized by exceptionally high relative concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge, and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. The Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, most recently traveled through the garbage patch conducting research in 2018.

Plastic pollution impacts everyone, but low-income communities face more health impacts near plastic production sites, have greater exposure to toxins and waste, and bear the brunt of the impacts of improper plastic disposal and incineration. 

Humans are not the only ones impacted by plastic pollution; scientists have documented 700 marine species affected by ocean plastic. Up to 9 of 10 seabirds, 1 in 3 sea turtles, and more than half of whale and dolphin species have ingested plastic.

We need legislation that will dramatically cut the amount of plastic that is being produced. In 2022, negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty began and are set to wrap up in 2024 or 2025. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dramatically reduce the amount of plastic being made and to phase out single-use plastics.