Plastic pollution has grabbed the world’s attention, and with good cause.
More than 100 years after its invention, we’re addicted. To pass a day without encountering some form of plastic is nearly impossible. We’ve always been eager to embrace the promise of a product that could make life cheaper, faster, easier. Now, after a century of unchecked production and consumption, convenience has turned to crisis.
Beyond a mere material amenity, today you’ll find plastic where you least expect it, including the foods we eat, the water we drink and the environments in which we live. Once in the environment, it enters our food chain where, increasingly, microplastic particles are turning up in our stomachs, blood and lungs. Scientists are only beginning to study the potential health impacts.
That’s why we urgently need consumers, business and governments to step up with urgent, decisive action to halt this crisis of consumption of single-use, throwaway plastics. If we do that, we’ll also help fight climate change, create a new space for innovation and save some species in the process.
Since we began our love affair with this now ubiquitous material, we’ve produced roughly nine billion tonnes of plastic. About one-third of this has been single-use, providing a momentary convenience before being discarded. The straw in your average drink will be used for just a few minutes, but in the environment, it will last beyond our lifetimes. In your shopping trolley, a plastic bag will be used for less than an hour, but when they find their way to the ocean they kill more than 100,000 marine animals a year. Whales have been washed up in Norway and Spain choked with indigestible shopping bags – part of the 13m tonnes of plastic litter that end up in the ocean each year.
Unlike other environmental challenges, sceptics are hard-pressed to refute the reality of what we can see with our own eyes. Instead, the counter-narrative aims to undercut the urgency of efforts to beat plastic pollution – sometimes by painting the problem as a waste management issue, as if we had infinite landfill space.
But let there be no doubt: we are on edge of a plastic calamity. Current projections show that global plastic production will skyrocket in the next 10-15 years. This year alone, manufacturers will produce an estimated 360m tonnes. With a booming population driving demand, production is expected to reach 500m by 2025 and a staggering 619m tonnes by 2030. So the next time you see scenes of plastic choking a river or burying a beach, consider double that impact in just over 10 years.
Avoiding the worst of these outcomes requires more than awareness, it demands a movement. A wholesale rethinking of the way we produce, use and manage plastic. That’s why United Nations Environment is now focusing on a simple yet ambitious goal: beat plastic pollution.
More than 100 years after its invention, we’re addicted. To pass a day without encountering some form of plastic is nearly impossible. We’ve always been eager to embrace the promise of a product that could make life cheaper, faster, easier. Now, after a century of unchecked production and consumption, convenience has turned to crisis.
Beyond a mere material amenity, today you’ll find plastic where you least expect it, including the foods we eat, the water we drink and the environments in which we live. Once in the environment, it enters our food chain where, increasingly, microplastic particles are turning up in our stomachs, blood and lungs. Scientists are only beginning to study the potential health impacts.
That’s why we urgently need consumers, business and governments to step up with urgent, decisive action to halt this crisis of consumption of single-use, throwaway plastics. If we do that, we’ll also help fight climate change, create a new space for innovation and save some species in the process.
Unlike other environmental challenges, sceptics are hard-pressed to refute the reality of what we can see with our own eyes. Instead, the counter-narrative aims to undercut the urgency of efforts to beat plastic pollution – sometimes by painting the problem as a waste management issue, as if we had infinite landfill space.
But let there be no doubt: we are on edge of a plastic calamity. Current projections show that global plastic production will skyrocket in the next 10-15 years. This year alone, manufacturers will produce an estimated 360m tonnes. With a booming population driving demand, production is expected to reach 500m by 2025 and a staggering 619m tonnes by 2030. So the next time you see scenes of plastic choking a river or burying a beach, consider double that impact in just over 10 years.
Avoiding the worst of these outcomes requires more than awareness, it demands a movement. A wholesale rethinking of the way we produce, use and manage plastic. That’s why United Nations Environment is now focusing on a simple yet ambitious goal: beat plastic pollution.
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