I want you to imagine you’re standing at a junction. It’s the year 2020 and ahead of you are six paths leading off in different directions. Each path will take 20 years to travel and each ends – in the year 2040 – at the coast. But the oceans you arrive at – in fact, the worlds you arrive at – are always different. Which path do you choose?
From where you’re standing, it may be tempting to continue down the path we’re already on. But for all its familiarity, this route gets increasingly treacherous – for us, for nature and for our climate. Ultimately, it will take us to an ocean drowning in an unmanageable – an unimaginable – amount of plastic waste. What about the path that allows us to keep using plastic like we are today, just as long as we recycle it? The ocean down that path has 65% more plastic in it than today.
Three of the remaining paths lead to similarly challenging futures, but there is one that takes us somewhere much, much better.
The Report
Breaking the Plastic Wave is a landmark report that explores these six pathways (or scenarios) and shows us there is no single solution for addressing the problem of plastic pollution in our ocean. The only route to clean and healthy seas is to address the problem systemically.
The report was prepared by The Pew Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ, in partnership with Common Seas, the University of Oxford, the University of Leeds and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. It was published in Science on the 23rd July 2020.
Breaking the Plastic Wave tells us more clearly than ever before how much plastic our world is producing, and how much of that is escaping into the environment (see below). Looking ahead to 2040, the report models different scenarios. As you might expect, a business-as-usual approach (where we continue as we are today) takes us to a grim future: a world in which we fail to meet our climate target to stay under 1.5 degree of warming and have an ocean full of plastic.But perhaps more shocking is that, even if all the commitments that have been made by industry and governments today were delivered, they would only achieve a mere 7% reduction in plastic leaking into the ocean by 2040 compared to business-as-usual.
This gets to the crux of what this report is about: to achieve change on the scale required, we need to disrupt the system, not perpetuate it.
Breaking the Plastic Wave represents the most significant modelling of ocean plastic pollution to date, and it provides irrefutable evidence that we need to radically rethink how we make, use and dispose of plastic. Fortunately, as well as sounding a warning klaxon, the report offers both hope and a clear plan. In its own words:
“The report’s most important message is that, with the right level of action, tackling the problem of plastics pollution may be remembered as a success story on the human ability to rethink and rebuild systems that can sustainably support lives and livelihoods while the environment thrives.”
We can solve the plastic pollution crisis, and this report tells us how.
System Change
We believe tackling plastic pollution involves driving policy change, investing in the circular economy and shifting cultural norms.
As Breaking the Plastic Wave makes clear:
“The problem of ocean plastic pollution was created in a lifetime, and we have reason to believe that it can be solved within a generation, or sooner. But such a solution requires political leaders, policymakers, business executives, and investors to shift from incremental to systemic change.”
As an organisation dedicated to ending plastic pollution, we strive to gain a holistic understanding of the problem, by working deeply across the plastics ecosystem and connecting with government, businesses, health, education, tourism and more.
Because system change is so deeply rooted in our work, Common Seas was delighted to support Pew in the conception and creation of Breaking the Plastic Wave. And, around the world, our on-the-ground teams are busy delivering the solutions that this report calls for.
Plastic Drawdown is a great example of this. It’s a tool to help governments understand their own plastic eco-system – helping them identify which plastics to target, where they’re leaking into the environment and – given the resources they have available – how best to tackle them. Through Clean Blue Alliance, as well as our role as Technical Advisor for the Commonwealth Clean Ocean Alliance, Plastic Drawdown is supporting governments of all shapes and sizes around the world.
Plastic Drawdown’s usefulness is further exemplified by the following insight from the report: governments often fail to focus on the right problem or implement the right combination of policies to tackle plastic pollution. This occurs more frequently in countries with limited resources – typically the same countries that have the most plastic pollution
Plastic Drawdown is designed to meet the needs of countries with limited capacity; compared to similar tools, it’s cheap and easy to use. Our vision is for any government to be able to use Plastic Drawdown as a rapid response tool to respond quickly and effectively to the findings of this report.
Beating plastic pollution
How bad is it?
If we continue along the path we’re on, the amount of plastics flowing into the ocean every year will nearly triple by 2040, which will mean there is four times more plastic in the sea than today. This is the equivalent of 50kg of plastic for every metre of coastline on the planet. Despite recent progress in attempts to address plastic pollution, if government and industry meet the commitments they’ve made, we’ll still only achieve a 7% reduction in the amount of plastic flowing into the ocean over the next twenty years (compared to business as usual).
Similarly, in a business-as-usual world, 4.3 billion people will lack organised waste collection services by 2040, contributing significantly to the flow of plastic into the ocean. To fix that shortfall, we would need to connect half a million people to waste collection services every single day from now until 2040. That will cost a lot of money – a cost that governments are likely to pass on to businesses by demanding they pay for the pollution they’re currently profiting from. If that happens, businesses face a $100 billion annual financial risk. Any solution that’s only based on collecting an ever-increasing amount of plastic waste is extremely unlikely to succeed.
If that’s not enough reason for us to slam the brakes on plastic production, remember that the plastic industry is also extremely carbon intensive. As you know, we need to emit a lot less carbon to stay under 1.5C of warming over the next 20 years. In a business-as-usual scenario, the plastic industry will make up 19% of our global carbon budget by 2040. In other words, we will be using almost a fifth of our total allowable carbon spend to make plastic – much of which is nonessential and designed to be used just once.
Solutions to plastic pollution
The secret to system change is that it tackles plastic pollution both upstream (i.e. How much we’re making, how we design products) and downstream (i.e. How we dispose of plastic). But what does success actually look like?
Upstream solutions to plastic pollution
- We can avoid nearly one-third of projected plastic waste by decelerating growth in plastic production and consumption. This means eliminating single-use plastic, while mainstreaming reuse models and new delivery models that design out plastic waste.
- We can avoid another sixth of projected plastic waste by substituting plastic with paper and compostable materials. We must make sure these alternatives don’t create new problems for people or the environment.
- We can increase the amount of plastic that is economically worth recycling from 21% to 54% by simply designing better products and packaging.
Downstream solutions to plastic pollution
- We must double recycling rates around the world.
- We need to improve waste collection, particularly in middle- and low-income countries, making sure that unrecognised and underpaid informal waste workers can operate in safe and healthy conditions.
- Even though disposal is a last resort, we still need safe and secure waste facilities to manage the mountains of low-value plastic waste in the system.
We must stop shipping our problem abroad by putting a stop to plastic waste trade with countries that can’t deal with it safely.
If we commit to system change, we can reduce the plastic flowing into the ocean by 80% (compared to business as usual) using technologies and approaches that are already available to us. As well as reducing the impact on our ocean, system change generates savings of $70 billion for governments over the next twenty years. It also reduces projected greenhouse gases by 30% and creates at least 700,000 jobs. In the report’s own words:
“Addressing plastic leakage into the ocean under the System Change Scenario has many co-benefits for climate, health, jobs, working conditions, and the environment, thus contributing to many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”
Changing the system doesn’t mean we lose all the important and useful products and services plastic provides. In fact, we can meet 2040’s anticipated global demand for ‘plastic utility’ with about the same amount of plastic that’s being used today. This means we can decouple plastic growth from economic growth, which is vital for a sustainable future.
Time is of the essence. A delay of five years will result in another ~80 million metric tons of plastic going into the ocean by 2040.