Yearly, 400 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide, and yearly, roughly 57 million tons of plastic air pollution is created. And but in November, the newest spherical of negotiations on the primary legally binding worldwide treaty on plastics air pollution ended with out an settlement.
Oil-producing international locations, together with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and Russia, refused to enroll to a clause calling for the world to scale back its manufacturing of plastics. As clear vitality applied sciences like electrical automobiles acquire traction worldwide, these economies are relying on continued and even elevated plastic manufacturing to buffer them from the financial blow of lowered demand for oil.
So what can we actually do concerning the plastics air pollution drawback? The Dialog Weekly podcast sat down with Mark Miodowonik, professor of supplies and society at UCL within the UK, to know the historical past of plastic, the way it’s formed our lives, and what may be finished to verify extra plastic is recycled and fewer finally ends up polluting the planet.
An advert from the Nineteen Thirties celebrating bakelite as ‘the material of a thousand uses’.
Shawshots / Alamy Inventory Photograph
In 1907 a chemist known as Leo Bakerland invented a brand new sort of inflexible, artificial plastic. He known as it bakelite, and it was shortly seized upon by the modernism motion.
“You can start mass producing items in a particular shape and they’re all the same,” explains Miodowonik, who leads the Plastic Waste Innovation Hub at UCL. First telephones, after which radios are manufactured utilizing bakelite. “It’s a huge revolution in the way people think about themselves, how they communicate with the world, who they are … plastic becomes the material of this new era and everyone goes to town with it.”
As a result of plastic is a giant enterprise, the value comes down and it goes from a considerably luxurious merchandise to an on a regular basis one. Immediately all the things is product of various kinds of plastic, together with disposable packaging for quick meals that individuals are inspired to throw away.
By the Seventies, scientists working in plastic manufacturing corporations had been sounding alarms about all of the plastic making its technique to landfill and the way lengthy it took to degrade. However little motion was taken, says Miodowonik.
“You can see that the companies obviously don’t want to deal with it. It’s going to cost them money. And us people who are buying this stuff, we went along with it, right? We luxuriated in it. We weren’t too bothered either.”
Making polluters pay
Because of environmental activists elevating the alarm within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, governments and corporations slowly began to no less than pay lip service to plastic recycling. And lately, there was a shift in our attitudes towards plastics as individuals are beginning to realise the size of plastic air pollution.
Few plastic producers have confronted penalties for his or her inaction, although lately, there appears to be extra of a collective will to take motion in opposition to them.
In September 2024, the US federal authorities efficiently sued Keurig, the corporate that makes these little plastic pods that produce one cup of espresso or tea, for claiming that these pods are recyclable after they’re not. Keurig paid US$1.5 million (£1.2m) in penalties.
The state of California within the US has additionally introduced an analogous lawsuit in opposition to Exxon Mobil alleging that it knowingly made fraudulent claims concerning the recyclability of its plastic merchandise.
Midowonik doesn’t lay the blame solely on the toes of corporations like these. He says the inaction of plastic producers to scale back plastic waste is a mirrored image of our personal consumerist society and our want for reasonable stuff. He believes there must be a extra concerted effort to make polluters pay.
“I think we need to change the laws so that if you make something, you’re responsible for its end of life. You should not be able to sell any product into a market where there’s not a waste processing system in place which can deal with that material.”
Hearken to the The Dialog Weekly podcast to listen to the complete dialog with Miodowonik.
This episode of The Dialog Weekly was produced by Gemma Ware and Katie Flood. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.
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