By 2025, 143 million tons of plastic is infiltrating the environment each year, according to a report published Wednesday by the Pew Charitable Trusts and institutional partners. Without ambitious global intervention, this figure will rise to 309 million tonnes over the next 15 years. This is equivalent to approximately one garbage truck’s worth of plastic being dumped every second, the report said.
Plastic use and production is increasing so rapidly that current waste management systems cannot keep up. The report warns that without intervention, this would lead to a 58% increase in annual greenhouse gas emissions from the global plastics system, a 75% increase in plastic-related health problems, and that hundreds of billions of dollars would be spent to prevent these impacts.
Now for the good news: The largest source of plastic waste, packaging, can be “virtually eliminated” by 2040 through ambitious global action – primarily reuse and return strategies. The report outlines a way forward that offers a ray of hope for tackling this crisis.
Humanity’s addiction to plastic packaging
According to the report, annual production of primary plastics – tiny pellets used to make larger plastic products – is on track to increase 52% by 2040, twice as fast as waste management. This growth is primarily driven by the packaging sector, a trillion-dollar market that makes plastic bags, bottles, containers and films.
Most of these items are thrown away after one use, and recycling can only help so much. The report shows that plastic recycling is still technically and economically viable for a small subset of plastics, and is limited by the number of times they can be recycled.
“Recycling alone could slow, but not stop, the rapid growth of primary plastics production,” the authors say.
To meaningfully reduce plastic pollution over the next 15 years, they propose focusing on deposit return schemes and reuse, in which consumers return empty plastic containers to a collection point for a small refund or fill them with other products.
solution possible
According to the report, reuse alone could reduce plastic packaging pollution by 97% by 2040. This would require shifting approximately $570 billion in annual private sector spending away from single-use plastics toward reuse.
Achieving a 97% reduction will also require complementary actions to ban the most problematic plastics, redesign packaging to improve recyclability and reusability, and streamline collection, sorting and recycling. The authors say that investing in this transition would also yield other important benefits, such as a 48% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
Although the scale of the challenge is huge, tools already exist to virtually eliminate plastic packaging. Through bold action and global collaboration, these measures can help overcome plastic pollution within a single generation.
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