Low-Energy Fridays: How do we cut plastics pollution?
When we consider what the environmental issue of our generation is, climate change is likely to be at the forefront. But another extremely pressing issue is global plastics pollution. The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” (GPGP) is 620,000 square miles, which is twice the size of Texas. Microplastics are now prevalent in aquatic life, and consequently in humans through our consumption of animals. While the health consequences of microplastics are still being debated, plastic pollution is a rapidly rising issue for global environmental health. But most of the policy solutions offered to date have been ineffectual and impractical, leading to some negative press.
When it comes to plastics pollution, the most important thing to keep in mind is that plastic consumption and plastic waste are not the same as plastic pollution. The United States and other developed economies consume massive amounts of plastic (84.3 million metric tons annually in the United States as of 2019). As a result, such policy discourse often centers around how to reduce plastics consumption through things like bans on plastic bags or straws. But consumption of these plastics in the United States makes up an infinitesimally small component of global plastics pollution.
For plastics, pollution can be defined as plastics leaking into the environment, where they can pollute environments either at a macro level or a micro level (after being weathered down by the elements). Globally, less than 7 percent of ocean plastics pollution will originate from developed economies, with the vast majority of pollution originating from developing economies. The reason for this is that plastics pollution is not caused by consumption but by insufficient waste management.
Plastic pollution in the ocean is often a consequence of mismanaged plastic waste that is then dumped into rivers. Over 70 percent of ocean plastic comes from land-based sources (the remaining comes from fishing and other marine activities). Of the top 10 plastic-emitting rivers, seven are in the Philippines, two are in India, and one is in Malaysia. Mismanaged plastic waste per capita is also heavily skewed toward specific countries and regions, with India having nearly 12 times as much mismanaged plastic waste per capita as the United States, and China having nearly 11 times as much. Fundamentally, the research consistently finds that global plastics pollution is caused by insufficient waste management practices abroad.
The issue is also more pressing when one considers the large anticipated rise of global plastics consumption. While many often correlate plastics consumption with wealthy nations like the United States, emerging economies are on track to achieve parity in per-capita plastic consumption with Americans.
After observing the data, there are two key takeaways. The first is that there is no number of bans on U.S. plastic consumption that could significantly reduce global plastics pollution. This is because most plastic in the United States is properly disposed of, and there isn’t any one use of plastic that can be singled out and easily addressed. The second is that what would stem the rise of global plastics pollution is a focus on improving plastics waste management in developing economies abroad.
R Street has emphasized improvements to recycling policy, especially focusing on measures that could be adopted overseas to reduce the volume of plastic that is improperly disposed of. This could include policies like Deposit Refund Systems (where people get money back from recycling), advanced recycling (which is able to reduce virtually any plastic into its base components), and offering education and technical expertise to foreign countries that have opportunities to improve their waste management.
Waste management is always a tricky issue in economics because, contrary to the old adage, trash isn’t treasure. Policymakers must keep in mind that the valued outcome is reduced environmental waste—which carries its own cost to the public—and the best policy solutions are the ones that reduce the most waste at the least cost (improving foreign waste management). The worst solutions, by contrast, are the ones that reduce the least waste (replacing plastic straws with paper ones). Thankfully, when it comes to plastics we do have obvious, implementable solutions to reduce pollution through better municipal waste management—they just aren’t always the ones that get the most publicity.