The 1970s saw the emergence of the issue of marine plastic trash contamination. The problem has expanded more and more over the fifty years that have passed. The enormous amounts of plastic trash produced each year require more than US$32 billion to collect, sift, dispose of, and recycle. Cleanup efforts to eliminate rubbish can cost governments, non-governmental organisations, and concerned people up to $15 billion annually. According to a Dalberg analysis commissioned by WWF, the lifetime cost of plastic production in 2019 alone was US$3.7 trillion, which is more than India’s GDP. If nothing is done, this cost is expected to quadruple for plastic created in 2040.
Currently, almost 200 million tonnes of plastic trash are produced by humans each year. This is equivalent to around 523 trillion plastic straws, which would make over 2.8 million full circumnavigations of the globe if arranged lengthwise. Over 11 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean annually, and over half of this debris is improperly managed—it is burnt in the open, disposed of directly, or leaks into the ecosystem. According to the article “Plastics: The cost to society, environment, and the economy,” plastic contributes 1.8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) annually throughout its existence. That exceeds the total yearly emissions from shipping and aircraft.
With enormous costs to governments and society, these GHG emissions are speeding up the onset of climate change-related adverse effects, including melting glaciers, floods, and crop mortality from increasingly severe droughts. The seas’ capacity to absorb carbon dioxide might be jeopardised by poorly managed plastic garbage, which would exacerbate the climate issue. Therefore, plastic may be causing the climate catastrophe in two ways: first, by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and second, by reducing the ocean’s capacity to absorb this carbon dioxide, which intensifies the effects of the emissions.
From zooplankton to animals and birds, plastic has a detrimental effect on all species. Plastic can only move up to 3,000 km from its original location and can float for decades. As a result, new habitats for bacteria and algae are created, increasing the likelihood that illnesses and invasive species will spread.
Microplastics are less obvious but more widespread; they have been discovered in the deepest ocean depths and all kinds of marine life. Among other things, microplastics can spread chemical poisons in food chains and alter bacterial and viral ecosystems (typically after being consumed by marine creatures). The chemistry of plastics is linked to several of these poisons, including phthalates. Others, on the other hand, such as toxic metals and pesticides, are absorbed by the plastic before it enters the ocean and the food chain. Over the last two years, the Tara Europa expedition has been examining how these dangerous compounds enter the seas and oceans that border Europe in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and over 70 scientific institutes around the continent.
Numerous studies have examined the interactions between these harmful chemicals and plastics. Long chains of polymers are created when monomers like ethylene, styrene, and propylene undergo chemical bonding to generate polyethene, polystyrene, and polypropylene. However, the polymerisation process is frequently flawed, and some of the unpolymerized monomers that are still present in plastic—such as bisphenol and various forms of styrene—pose serious health and environmental hazards. In order to alter the characteristics of polymer compositions, additional chemical additives such as plasticisers, fillers, colourants, flame retardants, and antioxidants are added. Additionally, contaminants, production raw materials, wastes, and degradation products are examples of non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) that bond to plastics after they are produced.
In the majority of situations, free monomers, additives, and NIAS are more prone to leak out during the manufacture, use, and disposal of plastic, moving into liquids, gases, and solids because they are just stuck inside the maze of polymer chains rather than being chemically linked to them. The effects and toxicity of these compounds, which vary depending on how they are mixed, are still unknown despite the identification of almost 16,000 of them. We are aware that 25% of these 16,000 compounds can harm the environment or human health by interfering with biological processes in living things.
A WEAK DEFENCE AGAINST PLASTIC
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the corporations it represents, including Dow, Exxon, and DuPont, have said unequivocally that they would put profit ahead of people’s welfare. They assert that plastics—of which 99% are derived from fossil fuels—are in some way lowering carbon emissions. However, we are aware that this flagrant untruth is a smoke-and-mirrors tactic used to justify their greenwashing and deceive the public.
In actuality, plastic output might quadruple by 2050 if we do not take immediate action, producing emissions by 2030 that would be equal to over 300 coal-fired power plants. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also cautioned that in order to keep global warming to 1.5°C, we need to reduce emissions by about 50% by 2030. The Global Plastics Treaty calls for a minimum 75% reduction in plastic output by 2040 to guarantee that we do not exceed this planetary limit. But we must remember that this problem is more complex than that. Cheap fracking gas is driving the plastics industry’s development, which is hurting the environment by interfering with our attempts to reduce carbon emissions. It’s also messing with our health and harming our communities.
The industry continuously promotes the advantages of plastics to society. But at what cost, we wonder? Every year, trillions of single-use plastics are created, used for a little period of time, and then either burned, thrown away, or let to fill the oceans. Our bodies suffer from a wide range of illnesses as a result, including hormone imbalance, heart disease, cancer, and diseases of the brain system. Extreme weather phenomena, including heat waves, floods, rising oceans, and increasingly powerful storms, can hurt our communities. With microplastics contaminating human placentas and breast milk and youngsters being exposed to hazardous chemicals in plastics while merely attempting to play with toys, the future of the next generation is also at risk.
Furthermore, these effects are not distributed equally. Marginalised populations disproportionately bear the expense of the plastic lifecycle. The majority of incinerator facilities and oil and gas refineries are located in underprivileged areas, putting their health and finances in danger. The whole plastic waste processing chain exposes informal garbage pickers to serious health concerns. The lifespan of plastics contributes to climate change, which disproportionately impacts underprivileged populations.
It will be essential to mobilise investment and support to decrease the manufacturing of single-use plastics, extend the lifespan of plastic goods through regulation, and encourage reuse and reparability to address this global catastrophe with the requisite haste. Although it may be tempting to depend on temporary solutions, such as substituting disposable materials like paper, cardboard, aluminium, steel, and glass for plastic packaging, the objective must go beyond simply alleviating the symptoms of the underlying condition.
