It’s not all bad news …

The SA Plastics Pact: increasingly, businesses are joining this voluntary pact, the only one in Africa, which has targets for 2025 including that 100% of plastic packaging be reusable, recyclable or compostable, 70% of plastic packaging be effectively recycled and more post-consumer plastic material be used in their packaging;

SA was listed as the 11th-worst plastic offender out of 192 coastal countries in a 2017 report, but it has since dropped out of the top 20;

A regulation gazetted on Thursday will hold producers accountable for what happens to plastics at the end of their lifespan; and

Incentivised projects are showing benefits. Consumers can get R9 back if they return a 2l Coke bottle. This project was piloted successfully in the Eastern Cape and is expanding to provinces inland. Coke works out cheaper in this bottle.

Why lockdown helped

Lockdown boosted online shopping, which offers potential to reduce packaging because — since goods are not competing on shelves — the content has become more important than the container.

Plastic production fuels global warming. Its exponential expansion will push up its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions from 4% in 2015 — the equivalent of emissions by Russia, currently the world’s 5th worst offender — to 15% by 2050.

A newly discovered and tiny species of amphipod was named Eurythenes plasticus. Sadly, this was after it was found to have ingested plastic despite living nearly 7km deep in the Pacific Ocean.