Public perceptions of plastic pollution

Each year the world produces about 350 million tonnes of plastic. In total we’ve made about 8.3 billion tonnes: one tonne for every person alive today. Although some is recycled, there are limits, and most of it ends up in landfill, the wider environment, and the oceans, where the health impacts are only just beginning to become apparent. But what do members of the public think about plastic pollution, and does public sentiment have any leverage to address the problem. Inspired by a recent session he chaired at a conference on this topic, these are some of the issues that Tony Walker, who is at Dalhousie University in Canada, has been exploring, as he explains to Chris Smith…

Tony - In terms of you know, the, the public's ability to do anything about it many members and, and, and results really from this study, it, you know, a lot of people feel powerless because its corporations and governments and, and you know, consumerism: we're part of the problem, we like convenience. Producers are producing this stuff. We don't really have the decision-making powers in order to curb that. Governments do. Next week, coincidentally, the fourth intergovernmental panel negotiating committee meets in Ottawa to come together to develop a legally binding plastics treaty. So governments are aware of this now, but it seems public opinion and public perception has, has been on the increase since around 2015.

Chris - What has driven the massive explosion in all of this consumption though, because I just looked at my shopping that I did last week, and to be perfectly frank, after I'd cooked an evening meal, the bin was overflowing. And I don't eat loads of ready meals and that kind of thing. I was cooking reasonable food, but it's all coming almost obligatorily in huge amounts of plastic, and you end up throwing equivalent volume to what you bought in the bin.

Tony - That's absolutely right. And even with your best efforts, it's really hard to avoid plastic and plastic packaging. And the material you are talking about is exactly the kind of things we were asking our general public across these different countries. And it relates to single use plastic packaging, essentially the stuff that we can find alternatives for. And, and in many cases, things we can do without and avoid, but in fact, we can't avoid them because manufacturers, grocers, retailers, they stock their products in these items on the shelf, and it's really difficult to avoid. Even with the best intentions, like you mentioned.

Chris - What's the way to predate this then?

Tony - So we have seen a change in marketing and production, especially a 20-fold increase in plastic production since around the 1950s. And much of that has been driven by convenience and plastic packaging, the sort of, you know, food packaging we're talking about. That's grown and, and we've become to rely on it as convenience. But where we can change is introducing sustainable alternatives. And I would add a word of caution there, because there's no need to switch from one single use item to another single use item because everything really has an, an environmental footprint. But to move towards reuse systems - so reusable bags and reusable packaging - or even dispense with packaging altogether, instead of, for example, bananas wrapped in plastic bags. Why not just have the bananas in bunches and just weigh them they're perfectly packaged in their own their own skins!

Chris - I was gonna make that point, which is not about the bananas, but about bags, because about 20 years ago, supermarket shopping bags, plastic bags that were just given out with abandon whenever you did your shopping. This became a focal point of public disquiet, and a strong campaign was mounted, wasn't it? And we saw supermarkets introduce pricing and charging for those things. There was a shift towards using bags for life, let's say. It seems though that we've, we've been very virtuous on that front, but then supermarkets have instead insisted on force feeding us all our shopping now wrapped up in the plastic. So even though the bags aren't being sold or given away at the checkout, everything else is still plastic wrapped. It's almost like we've robbed Peter to pay Paul!

Tony - Yeah. And again, that's a great marketing ploy behind the scenes with the, the kind of oil and gas companies, the petroleum companies, because 99% of all plastics, consumer plastics, are derived from fossil fuel feedstocks. And of course, with countries and consumers switching to fuel efficient cars and, and fuel efficient homes there is you know, a shift now and a push to market petroleum products in the form of single use plastics. And so here we are, everything is, is wrapped in, in some form of plastic. And what makes it incredibly difficult to recycle at the end of life. You know, you mentioned your bin overflowing, most of that is landfill, and very little of it is recycled because it's complex it, it contains different colored plastics, different chemicals, and indeed, in many cases different types of plastic. So they can't be recycled because they're already mixed. So it is is a very complex issue and it's, it's something which has been forced upon consumers really by by producers and retailers.

Chris - We've talked on this programme before about the health impacts of some forms of plastic. People are very worried about their health, more so than the health of the planet even. So do you think that might be one way to get at this, to say to people, look, this isn't great for the health of the planet, but it it may also have consequences for human health in certain circumstances. Let's try and avoid it. Let's motivate retailers not to do this?

Tony - Exactly. And in fact, that's, that's something that 8 billion people have now recognised, and they've had their own eureka moment, if you will. Because they're recognising it's not just impacting fish and, you know, wildlife that they've seen entangled or ingesting plastic. I mean, that's bad enough. And that raises public awareness in and of itself. But when it really affects people and affects your families, then of course the penny drops. And, in fact, your listeners may or may not be aware, but there was a report released in March and it documented at least 16,000 chemicals, different chemicals, that are used in plastic manufacturer across the entire, you know, various plastics, of which 25% of those are known to be toxic and harmful. And so none of this information is really disclosed by producers, and many manufacturers of food products wouldn't know what the packaging's made of, but the plastic producers do, but it's not released to the general public. And so I think it's important to recognise that whilst we don't know the name of every single unpronounceable chemical compound in those plastics, 25% of them are known to be harmful. And I think we really do need to do something about that.