Impact of Single-Use Plastic (S.U.P)
Single-use plastics are a glaring example of the problems with throwaway culture. Instead of investing in quality goods that will last, we often prioritize convenience over durability and consideration of long-term impacts. Our reliance on these plastics means we are accumulating waste at a staggering rate. We produce 300 million tons of plastic each year worldwide, half of which is for single-use items. That’s nearly equivalent to the weight of the entire human population.
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Recycling more plastic, more frequently, reduces its footprint. Polyethylene terephthalate (pet), one of the most commonly recycled plastics and the material that makes up most water and soda bottles, can be turned into everything from polyester fabric to automotive parts. But a whopping 91 percent of all plastic isn’t recycled at all. Instead it ends up in landfills or in the environment. Single-use plastics in particular—especially small items like straws, bags, and cutlery—are traditionally hard to recycle because they fall into the crevices of recycling machinery and therefore are often not accepted by recycling centers.
Left alone, plastics don’t really break down; they just break up. Over time, sun and heat slowly turn plastics into smaller and smaller pieces until they eventually become what are known as micro plastics. These microscopic plastic fragments, no more than 5 millimeters long, are hard to detect—and are just about everywhere. Some micro plastics are even small by design, like the micro beads used in facial scrubs or the microfibers in polyester clothing. They end up in the water, eaten by wildlife, and inside our bodies. They’ve even made their way up to the secluded Pyrenees mountain range and down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. For wildlife, micro plastics can be particularly dangerous; when eaten they can easily accumulate inside an animal’s body and cause health issues, like punctured organs or fatal intestinal blockages.
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Exposure to micro plastics, as well as the chemicals that are added to plastics during processing, harm our health. Many of the chemicals in plastics are known endocrine disruptors, and research has suggested that human exposure could cause health impacts including hormonal imbalances, reproductive problems like infertility, and even cancer. The phthalate DEHP, as just one example from dozens, is often added to plastic goods like shower curtains and garden hoses to make them more flexible—but was also found to be a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Although single-use plastic pollution accumulates most visibly on our streets, in fact our water suffers even more. Litter can be the first stage in a waste stream that enters waterways as plastics tossed on the street are washed away by rain or travel via storm drains into rivers and streams. Our waterway plastic pollution is particularly concentrated: Just ten rivers carry 93 percent of the world’s total amount of plastic that enters the oceans via rivers each year.
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In 2015 researchers from the University of Georgia estimated that between 4.8 million and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic per year make their way into the oceans via people living within 30 miles of a coast. The majority of this pollution—dominated by single-use plastic waste—comes from countries lacking infrastructure to properly manage waste, particularly in Asia. India, for example, generates 25,940 tons of plastic waste every day but collects only 60 percent of it. (It’s also important to remember that waste management is just one part of the global materials cycle. For instance, a lot of the plastic produced in Asian countries is for products that serve U.S. demand—and the United States often sends plastic waste back to these countries for recycling).
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Marine animals bear the burden of this influx of garbage into their habitats. Beached whales have been found with stomachs full of plastic trash. And recent studies found plastic in the guts of 90 percent of the seabirds tested and 100 percent of the turtles. Alarmingly, scientists estimate that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by weight in 2050. Not only is plastic estimated to kill millions of marine animals and seabirds each year, but it’s also contaminating seafood that humans have relied on for millennia, particularly with micro plastics in animals’ guts.
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Our addiction to plastic also has negative impacts on the climate. A recent report showed that plastic production contributes to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions at every point in its life cycle. The process of drilling for plastic’s source materials, oil and gas, leads to methane leaking and flaring and is often combined with clearing forests and wetlands that otherwise would have sequestered carbon. Refineries where crude oil is turned into plastic make up one of the most greenhouse gas–intensive industries in the manufacturing sector. And “cracker plants”—which break, or “crack,” ethane molecules, a component of natural gas, into the chemical building blocks of plastic products—are energy intensive and highly polluting. In 2015 a mere 24 of these ethane cracker facilities in the United States had the combined carbon output of 3.8 million passenger vehicles. And the recent fracking boom, resulting in a surplus of oil, is fueling a subsequent rise in cracker plants, too. That’s bad news for our carbon reduction goals: if plastic production continues unabated, its greenhouse gas emissions could reach 1.34 giga tons per year by 2030—equal to adding nearly 300 new coal-fired power plants—even as the need to curb global climate change becomes more urgent.
Plastic pollution—whether in our oceans, piling up on our coastlines, or contributing to our climate crisis—impacts vulnerable communities first. Even if plastic doesn’t end up in the ocean, recycled plastic is often exported from high-income countries to developing countries to process. But the sheer amount of plastic waste inundates communities until they are drowning under thousands of tons of plastic trash. This is the case particularly in Southeast Asia, which has begun to import much of the plastic that used to go to China for recycling. Not only does the waste destroy the land itself, but when plastic is incinerated (as is the case for unrecyclable plastic at some illegal facilities) its toxic fumes quickly become a health hazard for residents, leading to everything from skin rashes to cancer. Such is the case with many environmental crises: the worst effects are pushed onto overburdened communities with the fewest resources to fight back.
Unfortunately, the Covid 19 pandemic has seen an unprecedented surge in single-use plastics entering production as consumers demand that foodstuffs and other products be protected from the virus by plastic. Medical waste, including disposable masks, and fast food items such as plastic cutlery and single-use plastic straws or bags are some of the biggest contributors to this crisis.
Single-use plastic pollution is a social rights issue as well as an environmental one. Single-use, disposable plastic finds its way into our poor and at-risk communities as large corporations realize massive profits through their use of single-use plastic packaging. As more developed countries start to take a stand and limit the amount of single-use plastic waste entering their borders, it is often developing countries who bear the brunt of the flow of disposable plastic into their rivers, seas and landfills. Vulnerable people make use of the smothering tide of single-use plastic trade to make a meager living. Big business is aware of this but is taking very little real action to stem the tide of single-use plastic that they contribute to the problem.
A recent report by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) has expanded on the disastrous effects of single-use plastic pollution on at-risk communities:
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Plastic production is causing deforestation and contaminating potable water.
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Plastic waste is endangering communities that rely on marine resources to survive.
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Women are at larger risk of health complications due to a higher aggregate of exposure to plastic products.
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Disposable plastic items don’t biodegrade. They just break down into micro particles that contaminate our environment.
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Micro plastics, smaller plastic particles that result from single use plastic breaking down, pollute our water sources and even our food.
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Only 9% of plastic waste gets recycled. The rest is either burned or dumped.
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The single-use plastic trade and resulting plastic pollution disproportionately affects poorer and disadvantaged communities.
Who is responsible for single-use plastic waste?
Big corporations have convinced us for years that single-use plastic is a necessity in this fast-paced, consumer driven culture that they force on us. They offer us false disposable plastic solutions like recycling as an antidote to the massive amounts of disposable plastic waste when most single-use plastic is simply burned and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
Large producers of single-use plastics can make a big environmental impact. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé products were found most often. Coca Cola is one of the world’s biggest producers of single-use packaging.
It said that it alone produces three million tons of plastic packaging each year, equivalent to a terrifying 200,000 plastic bottles per minute. Coca Cola Company contributed a majority percentage (81.38%) of single-use plastic to our environment in the form of PET disposable plastic packaging. This company is also punting false and misleading solutions like recycling that do not effectively deal with the flood of single-use plastic packaging it produces annually.
Coca Cola is supporting the fossil fuels industry through its gas and oil hungry single-use plastic packaging.
Sasol is a fossil fuel giant that manufactures a range of single-use plastic products. Low density polyethylene (LDPE), most commonly used as packaging material and in plastic bags and cling wrap, is one such product. Many millions of tons of single use LDPE is produced each year and much of it ends up in our rivers and oceans since it is non-biodegradable.
Unilever relies heavily on single use packaging for its many consumer products. It produces 610,000 tons of single use plastic packaging annually, and is planning to expand production into Asia. It is also a heavy promoter of green washing to avoid addressing its contribution to the scourge of single-use plastic pollution. Unilever aims to divert attention away from acknowledging that single-use plastic production is outdated and harmful.
Some companies are taking initiative on their own. McDonald’s swapped its plastic straws for paper at its United Kingdom and Ireland restaurants. Disney is eliminating single-use plastic straws and stirrers at all its theme parks, resorts and properties. And Starbucks, which uses an estimated one billion plastic straws per year, is phasing them out in favor of paper ones. These actions are a response to calls for change and shifting consumer habits.