Catching a big blue barrel floating on the ocean surface in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch from the German research vessel SONNE during expedition SO268/3 crossing the North Pacific Ocean from Vancouver to Singapore in summer, 2019.
Photo: Roman Kroke/UFZ
Current rates of plastic emissions globally may trigger effects that we will not be able to reverse, argues a new study by researchers from Sweden, Norway and Germany published on July 2nd in Science. According to the authors, plastic pollution is a global threat, and actions to drastically reduce emissions of plastic to the environment are ”the rational policy response”.
Plastic is found everywhere on the planet: from deserts and mountaintops to deep oceans and Arctic snow. As of 2016, estimates of global emissions of plastic to the world’s lakes, rivers and oceans ranged from 9 to 23 million metric tons per year, with a similar amount emitted onto land yearly. These estimates are expected to almost double by 2025 if business-as-usual scenarios apply.
“Plastic is deeply engrained in our society, and it leaks out into the environment everywhere, even in countries with good waste-handling infrastructure,” says Matthew MacLeod, Professor at Stockholm University and lead author of the study. He says that emissions are trending upward even though awareness about plastic pollution among scientists and the public has increased significantly in recent years.
That discrepancy is not surprising to Mine Tekman, a PhD candidate at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and co-author of the study, because plastic pollution is not just an environmental issue but also a “political and economic” one. She believes that the solutions currently on offer, such as recycling and cleanup technologies, are not sufficient, and that we must tackle the problem at its root.
“The world promotes technological solutions for recycling and to remove plastic from the environment. As consumers, we believe that when we properly separate our plastic trash, all of it will magically be recycled. Technologically, recycling of plastic has many limitations, and countries that have good infrastructures have been exporting their plastic waste to countries with worse facilities. Reducing emissions requires drastic actions, like capping the production of virgin plastic to increase the value of recycled plastic, and banning export of plastic waste unless it is to a country with better recycling” says Tekman.
A poorly reversible pollutant of remote areas of the environment
Plastic accumulates in the environment when amounts emitted exceed those that are removed by cleanup initiatives and natural environmental processes, which occurs by a multi-step process known as weathering.
“Weathering of plastic happens because of many different processes, and we have come a long way in understanding them. But weathering is constantly changing the properties of plastic pollution, which opens new doors to more questions,” says Hans Peter Arp, researcher at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) and Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) who has also co-authored the study. “Degradation is very slow and not effective in stopping accumulation, so exposure to weathered plastic will only increase,” says Arp. Plastic is therefore a “poorly reversible pollutant,” both because of its continuous emissions and environmental persistence.
Remote environments are particularly under threat as co-author Annika Jahnke, researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and Professor at the RWTH Aachen University explains: “In remote environments, plastic debris cannot be removed by cleanups, and weathering of large plastic items will inevitably result in the generation of large numbers of micro- and nanoplastic particles as well as leaching of chemicals that were intentionally added to the plastic and other chemicals that break off the plastic polymer backbone. So, plastic in the environment is a constantly moving target of increasing complexity and mobility. Where it accumulates and what effects it may cause are challenging or maybe even impossible to predict.”
A potential trigger of irreversible environmental damage
On top of the environmental damage that plastic pollution can cause on its own by entanglement of animals and toxic effects, it could also act in conjunction with other environmental stressors in remote areas to trigger wide-ranging or even global effects. The new study lays out a number of hypothetical examples of possible effects, including exacerbation of climate change because of disruption of the global carbon pump, and biodiversity loss in the ocean where plastic pollution acts as additional stressor to overfishing, ongoing habitat loss caused by changes in water temperatures, nutrient supply and chemical exposure.
Taken all together, the authors view the threat that plastic being emitted today may trigger global-scale, poorly reversible impacts in the future as “compelling motivation” for tailored actions to strongly reduce emissions.
“Right now, we are loading up the environment with increasing amounts of poorly reversible plastic pollution. So far, we don’t see widespread evidence of bad consequences, but if weathering plastic triggers a really bad effect we are not likely to be able to reverse it,” cautions MacLeod. “The cost of ignoring the accumulation of persistent plastic pollution in the environment could be enormous. The rational thing to do is to act as quickly as we can to reduce emissions of plastic to the environment.”
More information
The article “The global threat from plastic pollution” is published in Science (2021) and written by Matthew MacLeod, Hans Peter H. Arp, Mine B. Tekman and Annika Jahnke.
Original Article: Is global plastic pollution nearing an irreversible tipping point?
More from: Stockholm University | Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research | Norwegian University of Science and Technology | Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research | RWTH Aachen University
The Latest Updates from Bing News & Google News
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Global plastic pollution
- plastic pollution
UN delegates agree to produce draft treaty to end global plastic pollution Global negotiators have agreed to craft a draft treaty to end plastic pollution, a preliminary but crucial step toward ...
- Business should take these 3 actions to bolster the global plastics treaty
Fresh from the treaty talks in Ottawa, two new reports outline a path forward in the fight against plastic pollution.
- A global plastic treaty will only work if it caps production, modeling shows
An international agreement to end plastic pollution is due to be sealed this year in Busan, South Korea. At the penultimate round of negotiations, held in Ottawa, Canada, Rwanda and Peru proposed a ...
- 5 takeaways from the global negotiations on a treaty to end plastic pollution
Nations finished a round of negotiations early Tuesday on a treaty to end plastic pollution and made more progress than they have in three prior meetings.
- Plastic pollution talks make modest progress but sidestep production curbs
Negotiations on a future global treaty to tackle soaring plastic pollution ran overtime into Tuesday morning amid tense debates over whether the world should seek to limit the amount of plastic being ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Global plastic pollution
[google_news title=”” keyword=”global plastic pollution” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Irreversible environmental damage
- Exploring Technology’s Influence on Dehumidifiers Across Industries
In the realm of modern innovation, dehumidifiers may not immediately come to mind as a groundbreaking technology. However, these devices, designed to remove excess moisture from the air, have ...
- Reclamation projects: Good or bad?
Earlier this month, two environmental groups, Pamalakaya and Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, filed administrative charges against officials of the Philippine Reclamation Authority and ...
- Colorado receives 32.8 million to replace decades-old lead pipes and improve drinking water systems
Lead was once commonly used to build water service lines in communities because it was cheap and flexible but corrosion and high levels of it can cause serious health problems to children and adults ...
- A warning from a new poll: Fewer people are worried about climate change
The number of people who consider climate change a very serious problem should be 100%, but now it's less than half. Meanwhile, most scientists believe global warming is accelerating quickly toward ...
- Deadly fishing methods that destroy the environment
These methods then go unchecked, creating a snowball effect that creates irreversible environmental damage. Sources: (Turtle Island Restoration Network) (4Ocean) (Marine Conservation Institute) (The ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Irreversible environmental damage
[google_news title=”” keyword=”irreversible environmental damage” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]