One of the great inventions of the 20th century has been plastic. If you take the time to study the extraordinary variety of its uses, you will see that much, possibly most, of the technological advances made in the past 50 years would have been impossible without plastic. It is everywhere; it is ubiquitous in so many forms that it is quite hard to contemplate life without it. The fabric of your house, household appliances, clothes, electronics, cars, offices or factories are made with plastic content. In short, it is everywhere.
So why has it become so demonised? This amazing, light, flexible, cheap material is now a byword for pollution and moral and political delinquency. The answer, of course, lies in how we have been disposing of it when it’s past its useful life. Plastic waste has become a major environmental problem, some, including me, would say an environmental catastrophe.
The human race’s significant environmental impact on our globe has now become a very current, and very politicised, modern issue. At the apex of this hierarchy is climate change. Moderating climate change, however, or even fully understanding it, is extremely difficult, extremely expensive, and ultimately, may be impossible to reconcile with human prosperity. By contrast, eliminating plastic waste in our rivers, seas and oceans is easy. I use the term ‘easy’ in a relative sense here; ‘easy’ means we would spend approximately zero (computed on a global scale) on fully completing this task, and the results, unlike those with climate change, would be immediate and visible.
How, you ask?
My suggestion is that the world should study how Sweden disposes of its plastic waste, and then adopt its findings. What does Sweden do? In simple terms, it incinerates all its plastic waste. Technologically this is straightforward, and modern techniques can scrub any toxic gases that result. It also gives plastic waste value, as the incinerators produce heat which can be used for a district heating system, for industry or for power generation.
But politically, this has been made impossible in much of the West because – bizarrely in my view – environmentalists argue that this will increase our CO2 emissions, and hence cannot be allowed. But the mathematics of UK CO2 emissions are as follows. The UK emits about 350 million tonnes (MT) of CO2 a year as a result of burning fossil fuels – natural gas, oil, petrol, diesel and coal. This figure has fallen consistently for the past 20 years, and is likely to continue to fall. Burning all our plastic waste every year would (according to Greenpeace) emit a further 1 MT of CO2. This would amount to a 0.3% increase in our CO2 emissions. This amount of CO2 is lost in the rounding, particularly as China is adding more than 350 MT of CO2 emitting coal-fired power stations every year (China emits about 12,000 MT of CO2 per year).
At the moment, about half of UK plastic is incinerated, the rest is landfilled, recycled domestically or exported for recycling. Recycling is excellent if the economics justifies it, but wasteful of labour, capital and energy if it doesn’t. Without subsidies or regulatory compulsion, it is clear that (with some exceptions) recycling domestic plastic waste does not stand on its own economically. Landfill for plastic is much less attractive than landfilling inert waste (glass; concrete) as it will ultimately degrade into other organic components (some toxic) and methane. But exporting plastic waste for recycling is a complete disaster, and needs to be stopped now.
Numerous studies have shown that a substantial proportion of the plastic found in the rivers and oceans of the world originated in the West. It is exported (mainly) to south-east Asia, where whether through corruption, disorganisation or straight economics, the waste is not recycled (because it’s not profitable), but thrown into landfill or the sea. The regulatory controls in the waste recipient countries are low, and corruption often endemic, and for the West to be blind to this is to be complicit in this ocean-plastic catastrophe.
Recycling has become a ‘good’ word, like green and sustainable. But how words are associated in the minds of the listener, and the reality on the ground, are at their most dissonant in the export of plastic waste for recycling.
UK businesses are under regulatory pressures in the UK to recycle plastic. The Government has put in place a sophisticated regulatory scheme which obliges plastic manufacturers to obtain proof that they are recycling a certain proportion of their plastic production once it becomes waste. These proofs are called Packaging Waste Recycling Notes and Packaging Waste Export Recycling Notes. Because these obligations are onerous, these notes can be traded, and their price has been volatile in the past, creating problems for manufacturers and the recycling industry. It also increases the price of plastic, and hence the price of plastic products.
But the whole regulatory pressure to recycle is in some ways akin to an ideological or religious position. True, the Government is absolutely right to require manufacturers to enforce the correct disposal of the waste of this potentially environmentally damaging product. But is recycling the only answer? It may (marginally) save in the use of fossil fuels, but the economics of domestic plastic recycling (often unprofitable without coercion or subsidies) tells us that a modest raw material saving is not the only input in recycling plastics. Recycling uses labour for sorting and quality control; it requires storage and transport, and energy to power the reprocessing plant. In an efficient but environmentally conscious plastics sector, there would be no subsidies; just a prohibition on disposal other than recycling (if profitable) or incineration. No landfill permitted, and definitely no export of waste for recycling.
So, let’s do what Sweden does, and incinerate (or domestically recycle if profitable) all our plastic waste. Forbid landfill, and forbid (with serious criminal penalties) the export of plastic waste for recycling. Then perhaps we can all feel better about using this wonderful product.
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