Plastic poses pollution problem
OPINION: Summertime at the beach means a chance to commune with sunshine and nature. All too often though, it also involves encountering piles of plastic rubbish that’s been washed up and left behind. The stuff seems indestructible.
Reportedly, an estimated 11 million metric tons or plastic enter the world’s oceans each year. That’s a garbage truck and a half of plastic every minute of every day.
While fish and sea-birds choke on plastic, microplastics are increasingly present in the clothes we wear, the water we drink, and the food chain as well. Bon appetit.
Plastic pollution is central to New Zealand’s wider problem with waste. The research says that the average New Zealander sends 60kg of plastic waste to landfills every year and – just before Christmas – public submissions closed on the Environment Ministry’s Draft National Plastics Action Plan. As the plan readily concedes,
New Zealand is well behind the global curve on this issue.
‘‘Aotearoa is among the highest generators of waste per capita in the developed world. In 2018, we sent 3.7 million tonnes of waste to municipal landfills (approximately 750 kilograms per person.’’
That is 49 per above the OECD per capita average.
As the Action Plan also admits, ‘‘we don’t have adequate planning, regulatory tools, infrastructure and equipment, investment, research or community awareness.’’
To address these festering problems, the plan is proposing a timetable for change that includes improvements to kerbside recycling; the setting up a payment scheme for plastic container recycling; a major investment in sorting and recycling; the promotion of compostable packaging; market development assistance and targeted investment support for community and iwi based ventures in recycling and in the innovative end uses of such products; and lastly, a timetable for phasing out/reducing certain types of plastic items, from single use items to hard-torecycle polymers.
Ambitiously, the plan hopes and believes that by 2030, New Zealand will have undergone a major attitudinal change in the ways that society, business, and agriculture treat the ownership of plastics throughout the entire life cycle of such products. Depending on the type of plastic, the phase-out timetables envisaged vary from the end of 2022 to early in 2025.
Since plastics pollution is a global problem, it demands an international response.
In late February, a UN conference in Nairobi, Kenya will aim to devise an international treaty to limit plastics pollution.
Currently, it looks as though two main options will be up for debate at Nairobi. Rwanda,
Peru and the European Union are proposing a treaty that would regulate the entire cycle of plastics production and trade, while Japan and Ecuador are leading a more narrow approach based on strategies for marine clean-ups. Obviously, both approaches have their merits.
Here at home, it can only be hoped that the business and farming sectors will not drag their feet in ways opposed to what New Zealand will be trying to achieve in Nairobi.
Yes, dealing with waste is both an individual and a community responsibility.
However, significant progress won’t be possible unless business also treats plastic waste as a design flaw in the production chain, and embraces the steps required to help fix it.