‘Plastic crisis’ causing death and disease from infancy to old age, a peer-reviewed study in the Lancet medical journal finds.
The Lancet review found that plastics endanger human and planetary health at ‘every stage of their lifecycle’, from fossil fuel extraction, production, use, recycling and disposal. Plastics are a ‘grave, growing, and under-recognised danger’ to human and planetary health, the study found.
The world is in a ‘plastic crisis’, it concluded, that is responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding US$1·5 trillion annually with impacts ‘disproportionately’ hitting low-income and at-risk populations.
The study says the principal driver of the crisis is plastic production, which is 200 times higher than in 1950 – increasing from 2 megatonnes (Mt) in 1950, to 475 Mt in 2022.
Plastic pollution has also increased with 8000 Mt of plastic waste now polluting the planet and less than 10% of all the plastic that’s ever been made ever being recycled.
However, the harms caused by plastic can be mitigated, the study says, with evidence-based laws and policies that are supported by enabling measures and facilitated by effective implementation measures.
This week governments from around the world are meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, for what is scheduled to be the final round of global plastic pollution treaty negotiations (INC-5.2).
Countries failed to reach an agreement on tackling plastic pollution last year at what was supposed to be the final round of negotiations in Busan, South Korea.
Over 100 nations wanted to cap plastic production while several oil-producing countries were only prepared to target plastic waste.
Dan Cooke, Director of Policy, Communications and External Affairs at CIWM, said the ‘timely publishing’ of the study highlights the challenges and downsides of plastics in terms of their wider economic, environmental and social impacts.
“Aiming to improve plastics recycling will only ever provide a partial solution and it is imperative that the design, production and consumption of plastic is addressed with new rules and parameters,” Cooke said.
It is imperative that the design, production and consumption of plastic is addressed with new rules and parameters.
“CIWM (the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management) and the Circular Economy Institute have both endorsed the business roundtable statement calling on the UK and global governments to create legally-binding rules, criteria and regulatory frameworks with clear requirements to end plastic pollution, address chemicals of concern used in plastics, and to agree actions and measures to facilitate the transition to a circular economy for plastics.
“The evidence is clear, we must now see clear leadership and action.”
The Lancet says it is launching an independent, indicator-based global monitoring system, ‘the Lancet Countdown on health and plastics’, to coincide with the expected finalisation of the treaty.
The Countdown aims to identify, track, and report on a suite of geographically and temporally representative indicators that monitor progress toward reducing plastic exposures and mitigating plastics’ harms to human and planetary health.
Ahead of the UN negotiations in Geneva last month, a cross-party committee of MPs urged the government to push for legally binding targets to reduce plastic production and ensure protections for scientists and environmental integrity in the treaty process.
Global plastics production and consumption has doubled over the past two decades – and it’s expected to triple by 2060.
The production of plastic is also hugely carbon intensive – globally, plastics were responsible for around 1.7 Gt of greenhouse gas emissions in 2015.