A Landmark treaty on plastic pollution scheduled to be adopted by the end of 2024 must put scientific evidence front and center. In the run-up to the final negotiations, researchers have been publishing more reports, data sets and models about plastics than ever before….Researchers have also organized groups, such as the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty
The treaty was originally conceived as a mechanism to end plastic pollution, which is sometimes taken to mean driving the amount of ‘mismanaged waste’ to zero by 2040. Mismanaged waste is plastic that isn’t recycled or disposed of in a well-managed landfill or incinerator, but rather ends up loose in the environment or burned in an open pit. Annual production of plastics has grown exponentially, from about 2 million tonnes in 1950 to 460 million tonnes in 2019 (current levels are on track to triple by 2060). Mismanaged waste is hard to measure–estimates put it at 74 million tonnes each year., expect to reach, by 2050, 122 million tonnes per year, under business-as-usual projections. Unless policies change, the peak of mismanaged plastic waste “is nowhere yet in sight”, he says.
A new report from environmental-policy researcher Nihan Karali and her colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California concludes that plastic production generated the equivalent of 2.24 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2019, mainly from the energy-intensive process of extracting and refining the fossil fuels used to generate the petrochemicals that make up most virgin plastic.
An individual plastic typically contains hundreds of chemicals — many of which are toxic and can leach out — that make the material more flexible, water repellent, flame retardant or resistant to ultraviolet light. Last month, researchers released a report listing 16,000 chemicals associated with plastics, of which they found at least to be 4,200 hazardous… A study published in February 2024 of some 250 people undergoing surgery showed that nano- and microplastics in carotid-artery blockages were linked to increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and death.
Excerpt from Nicola Jones, Plastic pollution: three numbers that support a crackdown, Nature, April 2024