The Oil Age 3, Plastic: Problems vs Solutions
The Oil Age 3: Where some people only see problems, others see opportunities
After the previous posts about fossil fuels and plastic, I’ve had several people ask what is being done regarding solutions for plastic pollution. Numerous ideas and entities are working on this issue, as we shall see. If you missed my previous two installments on The Oil Age, you can find them here: The Oil Age and The Oil Age 2, Plastic.
As part of my most recent job, one of my assignments is to go into classrooms and talk to students about Marine Debris/ Ocean trash. It’s a sobering presentation where we discuss the importance of the ocean and the impacts we humans have on it. I’ve found that most students, from kindergarten to high school, are well aware that most of the marine debris problems in the ocean are caused by plastic. After 30 minutes or so of activities and discussion about animals getting entangled or ingesting plastic and the micro and nanoparticle effects in the food chain, it gets a little depressing.
That’s when I pause and tell them about when I first got this job.
“I was pretty excited to go to schools and teach you kids about trees, composting, worms, water, and recycling. But when they told me I had to come to your class and talk about trash in the ocean I said, “Wait, what? I don’t want to do that. That’s depressing. Nobody wants to see or hear about animals dying because of trash humans let go into the ocean.
Everyone knows it’s bad. I could have walked into this classroom and said to you, “Hey kids, trash in the ocean, is really bad.” You would have looked at me and thought “Uh yeah Dean, duh, we all know that.”So, how about we stop talking about how bad it is. Instead, let’s talk about what can we do about it. How can humans make a difference?”
The students appreciate the candor, and it’s a nice way to conclude the lesson by discussing positive things people can do instead of doom and gloom.
The first step in solving a problem is identifying that there is a problem. I can confidently say there is universal agreement worldwide that there is a problem with plastic waste. As I’ve said before, where some people see problems, others see opportunities.
In a study conducted by entrepreneur/environmentalist Boyan Slat of The Ocean Cleanup, they discovered that 80% of (non-fishing waste) marine debris came from 1/3 of the world’s rivers, primarily in Asia and Africa.
Efforts are underway to clean up the plastic mess in the oceans and rivers. Groups like The Ocean Cleanup and Sungai Watch in Bali are inspiring with their work ridding those rivers and the ocean of plastic waste. However, because this is such a monumental undertaking, it’s hard not to get discouraged. To turn off the tap of plastics flowing into the rivers and then out to sea, we need to help these areas manage their waste and create safe, responsible landfills and recycling programs. This video by Mark Rober details some of the problems starting at the 5:41 mark.
At the same time, we also need to address how we manufacture, use, and dispose of the multitude of plastic products out there. Slowly, too slowly, people are finding solutions to this conundrum. As we learned in our Plastic post, just using less plastic is not a simple solution (at this time). Other avenues need to be explored.
There are efforts to replace plastics with paper, compostable materials, or other materials that are easier to reuse or recycle. Bioplastics made from seaweed or other products that can truly decompose are coming to market.
Research is being done on plastic-eating bacteria that can be incorporated into plastic items. These organisms remain dormant during the plastic's useful lifetime but spring back to life and start digesting the product when exposed to nutrients in compost or saltwater.
In the late ’90s, Norway passed a law that forced companies that make plastic PET containers to pay a new tax if they didn’t collect and recycle their used bottles. If the beverage companies can prove they’re recycling 95 percent as many bottles as they sell, they pay no tax. Otherwise, the less they recycle, the more they owe. It took years to perfect, but in 2023, Norway achieved a total return rate of 92.3% (across both cans and plastic bottles) through this system.
In the European Union’s Directive on single-use plastics, measures are being applied to various plastic products most commonly found on Europe’s beaches. For example, “where sustainable alternatives are easily available and affordable, single-use plastic products cannot be placed on the markets of EU Member States. This applies to cotton bud sticks, cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, and sticks for balloons. It will also apply to cups and food and beverage containers made of expanded polystyrene…” In addition, by 2025, all single-use plastic bottles sold must have their caps or lids attached.
A couple of years ago, Norway, Rwanda, and several other countries organized a meeting of nations to address the plastic waste problem. In late November 2024, two hundred nations met in Busan, South Korea, to develop a landmark plastic pollution treaty that would help solve the problem.
Unfortunately, an agreement failed to materialize at the meeting. Oil-exporting countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia would not sign any agreement advocating for reducing plastic production (oil consumption). They would rather maintain their revenue stream from pumping and selling oil and instead focus on the back end of the problem: recycling and waste disposal.
“If we address plastic pollution, there should be no problem with producing plastics,” said Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz, a Saudi delegate. “The problem is pollution itself, not plastics.”
I agree with Al Gwaiz that the problem most associated with plastic waste is pollution from either non-existent or poor waste management and recycling. However, this leads me back to my previous post. Companies and countries that want to continue producing these products need to take responsibility for the problems they are creating and not expect others to clean up their mess. Let’s see the vaunted free enterprise system, petro-states, and private businesses succeed in solving this problem we all agree exists.
Instead of fossil fuel and plastic manufacturers fighting these changes, denying the evidence, and swimming against the current change, I think they can profit from this inevitable transition. We need their help. We need their knowledge, expertise, and funding to help close the plastic and petroleum product loop. They can be the leaders of a new industry, creating jobs in collection, sorting, refining, reclaiming, and managing the massive amounts of feedstock that could come from recycling more than the measly 10% of plastics we’re doing now.
Consumer giants Mars and Unilever have called on nations to draw up a treaty “that addresses the full life cycle of plastics.” We need to treat plastic as an abundant resource rather than dismissing it as waste.
The rest of nature operates in a zero-waste format, it’s high time we join the party with a circular economy. As the United Nations Development Program explains,
“Our current economic system can be considered a “linear economy”, built on a model of extracting raw materials from nature, turning them into products, and then discarding them as waste. Currently, only 7.2 percent of used materials are cycled back into our economies after use. This has a significant burden on the environment and contributes to the climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises.
A circular economy, on the other hand, aims to minimize waste and promote a sustainable use of natural resources, through smarter product design, longer use, recycling and more, as well as regenerate nature”.
The bright spot I hold onto at this point is that all around the world, many people, organizations, countries, and diplomats across the political spectrum are working to solve this problem. Hopefully, we have reached critical mass to where results will begin to show within our lifetime.