The way forward

New Zealand scientists aren’t giving up on bioplastics just yet. But we need to get smarter about how we produce them, and better manage them through their entire lifecycle. “It would be best to design products from the outset with end-of-life in mind,” says Professor Kim Pickering, from the University of Waikato’s School of Engineering. “Consider what additives are used in simple products like biodegradable plastic bags and films and look for ways to add value to waste plastic, taking more account of the environmental cost in their price so things are more likely to be used more than once,” he suggests. It doesn’t help that recycling now has a tainted reputation, particularly since China recused itself as the dumping ground for the world’s used plastic, leaving pallets of bottles and containers piling up in recycling centres the world over.

A solution to all of this is fairly urgent. As I wrote this, associate environment minister Eugenie Sage was mulling over a levy or outright ban on single-use plastic bags.

The bag-stuffed pilot whale dying on a Thai beach, the floating garbage patch of plastic in the Pacific, the pelican with a bag over its head – the evidence of our plastic littering is starting to shame us into action. But it needs to be the right action for the planet.

On that front, science, our government and we as consumers have a lot of work left to do to replace our plastic fetish with something far less destructive.