Earth faces plastic pollution disaster unless we take drastic action

Earth faces plastic pollution disaster unless we take drastic action

Plastic pollution is ubiquitous and growing, but knowing the best way to stop it has largely been a guessing game so far. Now, a study has found that if the world undertook every feasible action to cut plastic pollution, we would still only manage to get rid of 78 per cent of it by 2040, compared with a business-as-usual scenario.

This momentous effort would still leave us with an extra 710 million metric tonnes of pollution. Does that make the whole thing hopeless?

No, says Richard Bailey at the University of Oxford, who worked on the study. While a complete ban on plastics is unrealistic, there is still much we can do, he says. “The idea we would sit by and do nothing as this problem doubles on an annual basis – just imagine how much that means cumulatively in the ocean. It’s unimaginable we wouldn’t try to do something.”

Pollution aside, a war on plastic makes financial sense. The team found that its ambitious scenario would be about a fifth cheaper than business-as-usual, as the cost of more waste and recycling facilities would be offset by lower plastic production and selling recycled material.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2249621-earth-faces-plastic-pollution-disaster-unless-we-take-drastic-action/#ixzz6UPRYuOJE