Less than 10% of plastic is recycled globally. There is a problem with plastic recycling: if plastic is recycled, it is a good thing in the short term, but in the long term it leads to a lack of efforts to get rid of plastic. Plastic recycling reduces waste, but maintains the use of the material and the entire infrastructure is optimized and built to recycle plastic instead of trying to get rid of it. This phenomenon is known in science as path dependency or technological lock-in.

Plastic is a big problem. There is now more plastic in the world’s oceans than fish. Since its invention in the 1950s, so much plastic has been produced in the world that the entire world could be wrapped in plastic wrap. In tons, 9 GB of plastic has been produced, or 9 billion tons, and its use is growing so that another 9 GB will be produced in the coming decades. An additional 450 million tons of plastic are produced annually.

Approximately 0.5% of plastic ends up in the oceans, or 22.5 million tons per year. There is a plastic waste raft floating in the Pacific Ocean that is larger than Western Europe. The biggest problem is especially in many countries in Asia and the rest of the Global South, where plastic is thrown into rivers as if it were a waste service. In the Global South, another option is to burn plastic or use illegal landfills. Western countries export a lot of plastic waste to the Global South. We can talk about waste colonialism. Germany alone ships a million tons of plastic waste a year, mainly to Asia. 61% of British plastic is shipped to the Global South.

Plastic was initially considered a miracle substance that could be used for almost anything when it was invented in the 1950s. However, it was an unnatural substance that caused numerous problems and endangered the health of humans and other species.

Why is plastic harmful? Plastic is something that does not belong to the natural ecosystem, and nature cannot process it. Nature cannot recycle plastic, like many other substances. Evolution was not prepared for humans to suddenly invent plastic. That is why it can be seen as an environmental poison. It is especially harmful in aquatic ecosystems: fish, dolphins and turtles choke on plastic. So are many land animals, such as hedgehogs and rodents. Plastic is made from petroleum, and its manufacture and burning in waste incineration produces enormous carbon emissions. In many countries, waste is burned in backyards, where toxic fumes pollute the air quality.

In landfills, plastic waste takes up space from nature. Landfills are a way of sweeping the problem under the rug. Plastic remains in place for thousands of years and even then breaks down in nature into non-degradable microplastics. Pumping and transporting oil pollutes, exposing people to, among other things, cancer, and the risk of an oil spill is always present. Plastic breaks down into microplastics in the ecosystem, which, among other things, disrupts the function of hormones and microbes in the human and animal bodies.

Recycling plastic is not a solution. It creates a path dependency, where plastic is not replaced with better raw materials, and it does not solve many of the problems of plastic. Only 9% of plastic is recycled and 70% ends up in landfills, nature or the sea. Plastic can only be recycled 3-5 times, plastic bottles usually only 2 times. Ultimately, plastic is placed as thermal insulation in houses, etc.

Hazardous chemicals are created in the recycling of plastic. Replacing plastic with cardboard and paper would again destroy forests and biodiversity on a large scale. Therefore, the solution would be bioplastics, the oil required for which is obtained as a by-product of agricultural production from biomass, such as cellulose, for example from the stalks, leaves and straw of corn, cereals and sugar cane, or from biowaste. Bioplastics can be used like conventional plastic in all packaging, etc. Bioplastics are compostable and biodegradable and their carbon footprint is minimal compared to petroleum-based plastics. Bioplastics can be used to make almost anything that can be made from petroleum-based plastics.

Reducing plastic waste is of paramount importance. The so-called three Rs principle is “reduce, reuse, recycle”. So first we need to reduce the use of materials, because recycling is not a miracle solution, but has an environmental footprint. The use of plastic is increasing, and it is unlikely to decrease on a global scale in the near future. Therefore, bioplastics are a good solution to the problem. They can be seen as a more natural alternative in the industrial ecosystem.

Daniel Elkama