US should make less plastic to save oceans, report says
America needs to rethink and reduce the way it generates plastics because so much of the material is littering the oceans and other waters, the National Academy of Sciences says in a report.
The United States, the world’s top plastics waste producer, generates more than 46 million tons a year, and about 2.2 billion pounds ends up in the world’s oceans, according to the academy’s report.
If the current rise in plastics pollution continues, the world by 2030 will be putting 58.4 million tons into the oceans each year, or about half the weight of the fish caught in seas, the report said.
Recycling and proper disposal alone aren’t enough and can’t handle the problem, so the “United States should substantially reduce solid waste generation (absolute and per person) to reduce plastic waste in the environment,” said the report by the independent body of scientists founded in 1863 to advise the federal government on big research issues.
“We suggest that one way to reduce plastic waste would be to make less plastic,” said oceanographer Kara Lavender Law, a report co-author who has conducted numerous studies about plastic waste. “Recycling cannot manage the vast majority of the plastic waste that we generate.”
The panel provided a menu of potential ways to fix the plastics problem, starting with “national goals and strategies to cap or reduce virgin plastic production.”
Virgin plastic is plastic that starts from feedstock that hasn’t
been used — namely, nonrecycled material.
The problem, the report said, is that “virgin plastic prices are artificially low due to fossil fuel subsidies, therefore virgin plastics are more profitable to produce” — and U.S. manufacturing of them continues to increase.
“More than 90% of plastics are made from virgin fossil feedstocks, which utilizes roughly 6% of global oil consumption,” the report said.
And this makes virgin plastic a climate issue as well as a pollution problem, said study co-author Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia researcher who focuses on waste issues.
The American Chemistry Council, which represents plastics manufacturers, lauded most of the academy’s report, but it blasted the idea of limiting plastics production.
The report’s figures and recommendations make sense and are grounded in science, said Australian scientist Denise Hardesty who studies the plastics waste issue but wasn’t part of the U.S. report.
“We don’t want to keep doing beach clean-ups for generations,” Hardesty said in an email. “Without a systems change, those (plastic waste) accumulating areas will continue — and will grow.”
The issue is important because plastics cause “devastating impacts on ocean health and marine wildlife,” the report said.
Fish, marine mammals and seabirds get tangled in plastics or eat them, get sick and frequently die, the report said.
And DNA studies show that some plastics contain human and wildlife viruses and bacteria that can spread disease, the report said.