Regulating plastic to prevent pollution

Do you remember when Sir David Attenborough highlighted the massive problem of marine plastic pollution when his Blue Planet II programme showed poignant footage of a whale carrying her dead calf, which had in all likelihood been poisoned, he said, by pollution? Millions saw that footage and were appalled to learn that as much as ten million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the oceans every year. But is this “peak plastic”, and how do we predate the problem? Speaking with Chris Smith, Peter Jacques, from Monmouth University, works on environmental politics and global environmental sustainability…

Peter - Plastic pollution is ubiquitous and it's very hard to be able to solve a problem after it has occurred. So while there are projects to go scoop up plastic on the surface of the ocean, that scratches the surface because there's so much plastic pollution, a lot of it's on the bottom of the ocean, a lot of it's being ingested by marine life and it's causing major problems environmentally. And health concerns alone are gigantic and nowhere does it seem to be the case where we're actually regulating it. The petrochemical industry, one executive said, we need to make plastics fantastic again and get the idea of marine plastic pollution out of the minds of people. But right now they're thinking about regulating plastics under an international treaty. But what that looks like is totally up for debate. Is it going to be where as the plastic industry would like us to think simply, "hey, increase and improve recycling"? That means that there's no onus on them, and also most plastic is not recycled at all and cannot be recycled.

Chris - How regulatable then do you think the industry actually is? Because it's, it's global and different jurisdictions, as we know, have different commitments to the welfare of the environment and even to humans?

Peter - I think you'd have to regulate it at the source. So here we're talking about petrochemical plants, and if you're gonna make it an international treaty, then domestically, each country would have to make sure that they're doing their job and keeping tabs on those plants. But it's gonna be tough to regulate it effectively.

Chris - Do you think we're sort of fiddling while Rome burns a bit then when we see COP happening in the Middle East, for example, and we're worrying about carbon emissions, should we not also have COP for plastic? Because arguably there's 8.3 billion tons of the stuff been produced since the Second World War. A very significant proportion we know ends up in the ocean and we think it's gonna be there for a really long time. Those are characteristics which are not that dissimilar to what we're doing with, with carbon emissions...

Peter - Exactly. And so my colleagues have argued that we're essentially creating empty institutions, institutions being rules here, treaties. We're talking about international rules that simply do not regulate, that we get together and agree to do nothing.

Chris - Why have we allowed this to happen? Can you give us a sort of snapshot of, of how this whole situation and the sorry, state of where we are today has evolved and why we've allowed ourselves to get into that position?

Peter - Well, from the perspective that I take in the paper, we've evolved this place because of the way in which capitalism has developed. It's become less and less regulated by social and environmental protections. It's kind of getting more and more free reign. That the way in which the economy works is less and less embedded in these social rules.

Chris - So plastic's a kind of a symptom of, I don't wanna use the word economic success because you're arguing it's actually that that's causing the problem. But you see what I'm saying? So the more the economy grows, the more the plastic problem grows. One would expect that relationship, I suppose?

Peter - Yeah, yeah. In modern capitalism, they're tied together. They've co-evolved so tightly. It is hard to imagine even operating in a single day without using plastic yourself as a, you know, just there's a journalist who tried and he couldn't do it.

Chris - It is a fantastic material though, as that petrochemical company said, plastic. Fantastic. Apart from being a brilliant rhyme, it is an amazing material. It does so many things that are very hard to replace, which is why it's become ubiquitous. But therein lies the Achilles heel, because it's poisoning the environment because of its amazing characteristics that make it very attractive to us.

Peter - Yeah, it's lightweight. It's durable and you can, you can use it to say, protect food and it's certainly essential in the medical field. So there's no denying those things. But the perspective in the paper is that the plastic production needs to be wrapped around social and environmental protections, rules, you know, that has to be regulated. And if it's not, then we're gonna have the problem that we do.

Chris - It does boggle my mind though, because I go shopping and I come home with the ingredients to cook, say Sunday lunch, and I end up with a rubbish bin full of packaging. It didn't used to be like that. So why has this taken off? Why has this happened, and why am I routinely throwing all that plastic away? I would very happily have that stuff - carrots, even <laugh> - not wrapped up in cling film. I'd, I'd much rather not have all the plasticisers and just have a paper bag. Why is this happening? What's driving it and how do we predate it?

Peter - I think that's a great question. I mean, first of all, cost, right? So it's very cheap. And then in the mind of some consumers, your carrots are, are safer to eat because they've been wrapped in plastic, even though that's not the case. But certainly it has grown in use because it's so cheap and effective.

Chris - So is the way to solve it. Then a bit like we're having a sugar tax to deter people from drinking unhealthy pop and cola drinks and so on. We need a plastic tax. And if you are gonna wrap your chicken in plastic, then you need to have a reasonable understanding of microbiology and why it's safer to do that than to just sell your chicken unwrapped and so on.

Peter - I guess that's a option personally, I would think, be more effective to really get at the source instead of the consumer. So the, the industry, I think we need our eyes on the industry,

Chris - But the industry, the petrochemical industry - this is often a byproduct. The things that build plastics are byproducts of making the fuels that go in our cars, aren't they? And so they will argue, well, what are we gonna do with them otherwise, we'll, we'll burn them then. And then you'll say, well, I'm just, I'm just trading one problem to solve another.

Peter - That's right. The byproduct of jet fuel is the source of plastic. And that gets to kind of another issue is that, that fossil fuel needs to be left in the ground. And so we need to switch and decarbonise the economy and change the way your car works.