Tackling plastic

Global plastic consumption has increased over the years to around 400 million metric tons by 2019 and is expected to quadruple at the current pace by 2050.

The NGO ‘Ellen MacArthur Foundation’ has reported that since the launch of the first-ever recycling symbol, as low as 14 per cent of the plastic packaging used globally is recycled. Around 40 per cent ends up in landfills and 32 per cent in ecosystems, while the remaining 14 per cent is incinerated.

India, China, Brazil, the US, and the Philippines, among others, use high volumes of plastic and generate the most plastic waste. Pakistan’s contribution to plastic consumption remains small at 3.9 million tons in 2020. Approximately 70 per cent of this plastic garbage (2.6 million tons) is mishandled, abandoned in landfills or uncontrolled dumps, or scattered throughout the country’s land and water bodies.

Plastic can be developed to adjust to almost any application one can think. They are highly flexible, durable, and low in cost. As a result, they are being increasingly used for packaging and in the electronics, agriculture, healthcare and energy sectors. The durability of plastic is both their greatest advantage and their biggest consequence as it degrades slowly. Most types of plastic are non-biodegradable, meaning that their polymers do not break down by biological processes, which is why plastic is also an unlikely target for bacteria, making them an excellent material for food packaging, hence largely used by the fast-moving consumer goods sector.

The unhindered and increasing production of these polymers is directly linked to rising population, industrial growth, high urbanization, and global consumption patterns, which will result in even larger amounts of plastic waste in the environment.

To curtail plastic waste, it is essential to achieve a circular economy that is focused on eliminating waste and pollution and circulating products and materials at their highest market values. It is regenerative by design and essentially a model followed to reduce pollution by recycling post-consumer waste by adopting a mindset of reduce, reuse, and recycle.

For a circular economy, an effective global framework is necessary to establish the fundamental concepts of collection, recycling, and reuse with the goal to minimize plastic pollution. The UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) triggered the worldwide framework agreed in Nairobi on March 2, 2022 to establish a legally enforceable agreement by 2024 as concrete steps towards ending plastic pollution. The next round of negotiations is due in Paris during March 2023 to further strengthen legally binding commitments.

For any country’s recycling system to be effective, it is important to not solely rely on one’s ideas, but also take inspiration and ideas from other systems. It requires collective action to address the challenge of plastic waste, and Pakistan is no different.

Learning from global and regional initiatives such as Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Global Plastic Action Partnership and Alliance to End Plastic Waste, a not-for-profit has been formalized as the Collect and Recycle (CoRe) Alliance where leading multinationals, packaging companies, recyclers, multilaterals, and non-government organizations have joined hands to find solutions for a waste-free future and to achieve a circular economy.

One of the policy successes of the alliance is collective advocacy and approval of the national standard on food grade recycled plastic (rPET) by the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA). The same regulation has also been adopted by all provincial food authorities. This revolutionary policy instrument can help reduce use of virgin plastic in food packaging materials.

To successfully achieve a circular economy, Pakistan also needs to adopt a phased approach of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) – a policy under which producers are given shared responsibility over the disposal of post-consumer products. Implementing the EPR can result in a substantial increase in recycling, thus improving the efficiency of many recycling programs.

To implement the EPR, the federal and provincial governments require harmonization of the environmental legislative framework to ensure its equitable impact nationwide. Its success can only be achieved when the government is prepared to provide the necessary collection and recycling infrastructure and by proactively engaging stakeholders including plastic and packaging industry, consumer good companies, municipalities, academia and promoting partnerships and sharing responsibilities.

Also, in any EPR scheme, producers shoulder responsibility by ensuring direct waste management or through a dedicated producers responsibility organization (PRO). A PRO – in a not-for-profit or for-profit setup – operates by facilitating collection and recycling operations through payments paid by the producers based on plastic usage.

With growing debate on plastic ending into our local water streams, rivers and oceans, plastic waste has come under criticism across sections of global society, demanding solutions from governments and the UN to develop plausible frameworks and policies. Large corporations are pushed to invest behind sustainable packaging solutions and commit a road map to reduce the use of virgin plastic by adopting innovative solutions to promote circular economy.

Knowing the importance of plastic and our dependency on them, tackling the plastic issue and creating a circular economy requires thoughtful decision backed by technology and innovative solutions. All stakeholders including the industry, the public sector, and consumers need to collectively do their part to find the right circular economy in a world that heavily relies on plastic to function and progress.

The writer is a student of economics and political science at the University of California, Davis and can be reached at: rafaywaqar2004@gmail.com