Single use plastic packaging is very useful stuff. It makes our modern lives easier. There are two key issues with plastic packaging that we need to focus on – litter (pollution) and recycling. In that order. Unfortunately, most of the discussion about plastic packaging is about how much is or is not being recycled or how much recycled content is being added into packaging manufacture.
These are interesting but largely misplaced arguments. Why? Because we don’t have a resource scarcity for plastic.
Improving the recycling of plastic (RR Recycling Rate) and improving the recycled content (RC Recycled Content) of the next plastic bottle, both reduce consumption of oil. That is all they do. They don’t reduce pollution. They also don’t reduce the production of plastic or its use in the economy. They just replace one form of plastic with another.
There is plenty of oil to make the next plastic bottle. Making plastic only uses seven per cent of the crude oil we drill each year globally. Even if we doubled recycling rates of plastic it would have a near trivial impact on oil consumption. Sure, it is a waste of resources to not recycle what we have, but it is not nearly as high a priority as stopping plastic pollution.
Read more: Composting our way to sustainability
Put another way, we could landfill all of the 1.2 MT of plastic packaging we place on market in Australia each year and the most significant environmental impact would be we fill up our landfills too quickly. Controversial? Probably, but it shouldn’t be. The point is recycling is good, improving recycled content is good but by far the biggest impact of plastic is littering, the pollution it causes.
In other words, the real problem with single-use plastic packaging is that it escapes our waste management systems (collection, landfill, energy from waste and recycling) and causes lasting pollution, particularly in the oceans. Hence, our outrage about plastic killing seabirds, turtles and coral reefs etc should be focussed on how plastic escapes to the environment.
I am not saying the currently pathetic recycling rates for plastic (18 per cent) should not be improved. But we need to make sure we don’t conflate improving recycling with stopping killing fish and seabirds. The two issues are completely independent of each other.
The solutions:
1. Reduce/eliminate plastic packaging where possible;
2. substitute plastic packaging for cardboard, glass and other inert (non-harmful) packaging types;
3. improve enforcement for litter and illegal dumping;
4. educate on the environmental impacts of plastic pollution;
5. improve foreign aid funding for the establishment of waste management systems in the developing world; and
6. ocean up of existing plastic pollution.
Better plastic recycling will not fix these issues. Worth doing? Yes of course, but it is not to be mistaken for directly addressing plastic pollution.
Mike Ritchie is the managing director, MRA Consulting Group