As Plastic Treaty Talks Near, Study Shows How to Cut Waste Clogging Oceans

A study published today in the weekly journal Science projects that at present rates the world's plastic waste will nearly double by 2050, imperiling waterways and seas already under threat. But researchers using a sophisticated AI model found that a mix of just four policy interventions could cut plastic pollution by 90 percent and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production. The findings have implications for international talks slated to begin later this month in Busan, South Korea, where negotiators from more than 190 countries will attempt to finalize a global treaty to reduce plastic waste. "This is our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix this problem," marine scientist and study coauthor Douglas McCauley told Newsweek. McCauley is a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and an adjunct professor at U.C. Berkeley, the two institutions that collaborated on the research. With no action on a global treaty, the study said, the world's increasing plastic production will generate enough trash by 2050 to "cover Manhattan in a heap of plastic ten times the height of the Empire State Building."

Further, because most plastics are made from petrochemicals, the additional plastics would add greatly to greenhouse gases warming the atmosphere to dangerous levels. Without action, the scientists said, greenhouse gas emissions from plastics would increase 37 percent by 2050, roughly the same as what would come from 9,000 natural gas-fired power plants over a year, making it much harder to meet international climate targets. The treaty talks convened by the United Nations have made halting progress over the past two years, and a range of policy options for controlling plastic waste is under consideration. Because no single "silver bullet" solution works, McCauley said, he and his colleagues developed a machine learning model that can predict the likely effects that different policy combinations would have on reducing the wave of plastic waste. The study determined that four policies to improve the economics of plastic recycling, better fund waste management around the world and limit the production of new, or virgin, plastics could together cut most of the waste within the coming 25 years. Greenhouse gases from plastics would fall by about a third, although the authors note that even with these measures "plastic industry emissions would remain high." A woefully small amount of plastic waste is currently recycled. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency puts the recycling rate in this country at just 9 percent. Recycling companies are hampered by underfunding, poor waste collection systems and a weak market for recycled plastics, and several recent lawsuits by cities and states claim that some companies have misled the public about their ability to recycle plastics. The study found that a global mandate that new products be made with at least 40 percent recycled plastic would greatly improve the market appeal for recycling. "What that does is create value for that feedstock and incentives for folks to collect and recycle that material," McCauley said. "That value translates into investment opportunities in recycling infrastructure, and it also displaces virgin plastic production." The study also recommends capping the production of new plastic at 2020 levels to stem the flow of plastic entering an already stressed global system of waste management. "The best way to flatten that curve is to put some sensible limits on production," McCauley said. The final two policies provide financing for plastic waste management such as better landfills and more robust waste collection through direct investment in global waste systems and a modest fee on plastic packaging. McCauley said the scale of the plastic problem would require a proportionately large investment. "We don't test millions of dollars," he said of the model inputs. "Because the problem is so large, we test billions of dollars investment." The authors concede that the policies they propose would be difficult to implement, saying it is "sobering and instructive to consider the robustness of the policy package required." The payoff, McCauley said, would be a dramatic drop in the plastic waste that's harming ocean wildlife, threatening human health and magnifying the climate crisis. He said the U.N. treaty is a rare opportunity to launch worldwide action. "It's the only chance I think we'll have in our lifetime to actually start off on this journey to fixing the issues of plastic pollution," McCauley said. The U.S. Plastics Pact, a group representing companies in the plastics industry working to reduce waste, said the proposals in the study "can truly change the trajectory of plastic waste" if implemented in the treaty. "This report is a call to action for global leaders heading into the Busan negotiations," U.S. Plastics Pact CEO Jonathan Quinn told Newsweek via email. The plastics treaty talks are scheduled for November 25 through December 1. Shortly after the talks conclude, Newsweek will host a panel discussion event in New York with leaders from business, environmental organizations and academia to discuss the outcome and describe promising solutions that many companies and communities are already implementing. The Newsweek Horizons series event "The Future of Plastics" takes place Wednesday, December 4. Follow this link to learn more and register for the livestream broadcast.