Plastics plan useless, groups say
Report cites flaws in pollution-targeted production offsets
NAIROBI, Kenya — Two groups that want reduced plastics production published a report Friday highly critical of plastic credits, calling them a flawed tool that will not help with worldwide pollution from the material.
The groups — Break Free From Plastic and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) — said the credits often amount to corporate greenwashing. They issued their report in Nairobi on the sidelines of United Nations-led negotiations for a treaty aimed at cutting plastics pollution.
The report looks at two prominent proponents of plastic credits, Verra and the Plastic Credit Exchange marketplace. Break Free From Plastic analyzed publicly available databases of Verra and shared analysis of the Plastic Credit Exchange (PCX) marketplace by nonprofit investigative journalism organization Source Material.
Their report cited “serious flaws” in financing, transparency and basic auditing and said credits being issued for plastic incinerated in cement kilns were substituting one form of pollution for another.
Verra, the world’s leading certifier of carbon offsets, said at an event alongside the talks that plastic credits can be a tool for mobilizing the money needed to tackle plastic pollution.
“The finance associated with the treaty is near as important as its ambition,” Kristen Linscott, senior program officer for plastics policy and markets at Verra, said in a presentation. “Without the proper funding mechanisms and tools, even the most ambitious treaty won’t deliver its promised impact.”
PCX said in a statement Friday in response to the report that verified plastic credits can help fund collection, transportation and processing of the 8 billion tons of legacy plastic pollution, and it believes reduction in plastic production is absolutely crucial. Its CEO, Sebastian DiGrande, said the report contained “widespread and significant inaccuracies and misrepresentations,” including claims it already refuted.
HOW IT WORKS
Plastic credits, sometimes called offsets, work a bit like the carbon credits that many fossil fuel companies have purchased to try to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. The concept involves companies or people paying for a specified weight of plastic to be collected somewhere in the world, generating a credit that justifies their production or use of the equivalent amount of plastic.
Nina Kelsey, associate professor of public policy and international affairs at George Washington University, said it is tough for some companies to accept producing less plastic from their factories.
“So instead, I’m going to do something that is a bit easier, which is I’m going to pay to have that same amount of plastic removed from the world,” she said.
The exchange is facilitated by accreditors like Verra, marketplaces like the Plastic Credit Exchange or private companies that trade in credits or organize credit-generating activities. When companies buy enough plastic credits to offset their plastic footprint over a set period of time, some may claim plastic neutrality or “net-zero plastic.”
FAULTS FOUND
The report said that Verra has just one project actually issuing credits, and most of the projects on PCX’s database generate credits from sending waste to be burned rather than recycled.
“Often companies are buying credits under the assumption that they are going to be helping the environment and removing plastic, when actually in a lot of cases they are just transforming that pollution from plastic pollution into toxic air pollution,” said Emma Priestland, global corporate campaigns coordinator at Break Free From Plastic.
The Philippines-based PCX said coprocessing in cement kilns with the proper safeguards and monitoring is an environmentally-preferable alternative to landfills and open burning for nonrecyclable plastic waste and is allowed by governments, particularly in places where higher level processing is not available.
The report says some projects are claiming credits for infrastructure built years before, and there are “serious doubts” about the additionality of Verra’s plastic credit program — a key offsetting concept meaning that credits pay for activities, in this case waste collection and recycling that would not happen without the financial programs.
Verra, a nonprofit, said Friday that plastic credits in its program have been issued to more than one project, and its plastic program enables new or scaled-up projects to issue credits for plastic waste collection or recycling activities after completing a robust development and assessment process. Plastic credits are not a substitute for a company’s responsibility to reduce plastic use or continue business-as-usual practices, Verra said in a statement.
“The plastic crisis is too large and imminent to be solved by a single solution or mechanism,” the statement says.
“Businesses that wish to act more sustainably are better served by reducing plastic use across their operations and not attempting to offset it,” the report concludes.
BENEFITS CLAIMED
Verra says there are several benefits of plastic credits, notably how they can help keep plastics out of the environment by enabling the creation of sound plastic waste collection and recycling infrastructure and capacities. The company also says money raised from waste collection and recycling credits can generate income for “the informal waste sector” — people who pick through waste — and give them safer working conditions.
At Verra’s event in Nairobi, Linscott said plastic credits can help low- and middle-income countries get the financing to establish and to scale up waste management infrastructure, and its program helps increase global recycling collection and recycling capacity.
The Plastic Credit Exchange says its mission is to accelerate the transition to a circular economy and to build a future where no plastic waste ends up in nature.
“PCX does not see ‘burning plastic’ as the ‘go-to solution’ to plastic waste,” it said in response to the report. “We advocate for responsible waste management practices that comply with international standards and prioritize higher-order solutions wherever feasible.”
Environmentalists argue that issuing credits for plastic burned in incinerators and cement kilns encourages that burning — thus putting more toxic chemicals into the environment.
Environmental policymakers see plastic credits as a tactic for companies that rely on single-use plastic to avoid changing their business models. “A lot of the knee-jerk reaction or greenwashing assumption comes from an assumption that plastic credits are the perfect solution,” Linscott said. “Plastic credits are just a tool to be there on the transition to this world we hope to live in where there is no plastic pollution.”