The image of smoldering plastic in a little pit on the side of the street, white wisps of smoke dancing up, burned forever in my brain. I saw it, and many other pits like it, when doing moral educational research in Bangalore, India back in 1998. So the recent Nature study on how much plastic is open burned around the world1—with India in the #1 spot globally—brought that image flooding back to my consciousness. Only now though, do I attempt to do the math. I visited 26 years ago. Over those two and a half decades, how much countless plastic has been burned on the streets of Delhi, Kolkata, Mysore, etc.? In 2020, Bangalore open burned 55,000 tons and Delhi, 144,000 tons. Year after year, India is burning millions of tons—5.8 million in 2020—and that’s just one country. In total, the world open burned about 22 million tons of plastic in 2020, while another 30 million tons ended up wild in the landscape (like this proverbial plastic bag).
Only the voice of Jeremy Irons can take this from depressing to majestic.
And with all this plastic waste spewn across the land, water, and air over the decades, it begs the question: how much plastic has gone into lungs, not just of humans but countless creatures big and small?
There have been several recent studies finding that plastics have now invaded everywhere. Humans breathe in about 74,000-121,000 microplastic particles a year, according to this study. Plastic is in our brains (possibly contributing to dementia); it’s in our blood vessels, increasing the odds of heart attacks and strokes, and in other organs, potentially doing all sorts of bad things there like increasing cancer rates and perhaps causing a brand new disease, plasticosis.2
Worse, this is one of those problems that has become almost invisible, or so embedded in the cultural and economic systems we’re part of that we can no longer even see it. There was an article back in June about the widespread plastic use in agriculture—so much is being used there that plastic is becoming a permanent part of the soil, leading scientists to rename agriculture as “plasticulture.” This brings with it all sorts of problems, including causing changes in the soil—from shifts in flora and fauna, retention of toxins, and reduction of nutrient availability.3
Not only are we drowning in accidental microplastics, we’re intentionally creating microplastics just for fun, like this microscopic handbag smaller than a grain of salt! (Images from MSCHF via Instagram)
Is this the end?
Does this plastic orgy simply continue until we’re all reproductively compromised and the problem solves itself? Or is there a solution to the plastic world we’re entombing ourselves in?
One current attempt is the effort to pass a global treaty to address plastic pollution (including its design, production, and disposal) started in 2022 and supposed to conclude this November. However, there is stiff resistance by the fossil fuel and chemical industries (who sent nearly 200 lobbyists to the most recent negotiations in April, up 37% from the previous meeting). And the odds are this process will either be delayed or the treaty will not be strong enough to make a dent in the 462 million tons of plastic the world produces each year.
In fact, looking at industry research, plastic is here to stay for the foreseeable future. A recent consultant case study of “a large unnamed sports equipment producer” that uses lots of plastic in its products and packaging found that even in the best case scenario (where plastic waste reduction and circular economy programs are integrated into its business model) its plastic pollution only goes down from 83,000 tons in 2023 to 75,000 tons by 2040. Yes, that’s 8,000 tons less, and 46,000 tons less than its business as usual path (if it implements no programs), but multiply that by hundreds of thousands of plastic dependent companies and the end of the plastic problem seems to be nowhere in sight.
A brand new report from the OECD reinforces these industry analyses, finding that the world is on track to produce 736 million tons of plastics each year by 2040—that’s 70% more than 2020 levels. The report projects that mismanaged plastic waste will also increase, unless the world implements “stringent policies” like limiting plastic demand to 508 million tons per year and quadrupling plastic recycling rates. While that scenario reduces “plastic leakage into the environment” by 96%, what’s more telling is that the world is still producing 508 million tons of plastic per year—that’s more than today!
Since at least the 1970s, there have been great policy ideas to deal with plastic pollution bouncing around. In A Blueprint for Survival, Edward Goldsmith suggested a differential tax for single-use plastics versus durable plastics. That alone could help reduce demand for the less valuable forms of plastic, especially if that tax were ratcheted up year after year.
But in truth, we’re so dependent on plastic at this point—and the producers have spent so long deceiving the public about plastic—that it’s going to be hard to shift directions. That’s not to say it’s impossible. Just this past week, the California Attorney General sued ExxonMobil, the largest producer of plastic polymers in the world, arguing the company has been deceiving consumers about the recyclability of plastic for fifty years, and continues to deceive them with their new claims that “advanced” or chemical recycling will solve the plastic crisis.4
As with PFAS, the more fronts opened against corporate producers, the more they’re put on the defensive, creating space for bigger initiatives—like the global plastics treaty. But in reality, unlike the PFAS problem, which has a relatively small number of producers, plastic is now ubiquitous in everything and I’m not sure the will to transition to a different path is present. And oil producers, which wield significant influence over policymakers around the world, increasingly depend on plastics in their future business models, particularly as oil production is hemmed in by the renewables transition—and thus will fight tooth and nail to defend this revenue stream.
Considering the dual-headed nature of these companies—both spewing toxins—this reinforces the need to nationalize, rein in, and even dismantle these petrochemical companies. But that’s just a piece of the puzzle—as with most environmental problems, a large part of the solution will be found in degrowth: reducing overall production and consumption (and over time, the human population and our dependent species). Shifting from a high-speed disposable culture oriented around growth, supporting farmers to shift to more durable materials and phase out plastics, and drawing plastic out of all industries as much as possible—saving plastic for only the most essential uses—is paramount.5 But that assumes we follow a rational pathway out of this crisis, which may be an irrational hope to have, considering our inability to do this with the climate crisis, not to mention the fact that our increasingly plasticized brains may soon find rational thought increasingly difficult to come by!
Is this a beast that can be tamed, or will it need to be slain? (Image generated with Microsoft Designer, with additions by Erik Assadourian)
Endnotes
1) Open burned means burning in “open uncontrolled fires.”
2) In related news, this new Nature article describes the “plastisphere,” the new ecosystems forming in global plastic waste that are serving as a home for many pathogenic (and even antibiotic-resistant) bacteria and viruses.
3) Working at a small local farm, I can attest to the rampant plasticization of soils—from decaying hoop house walls to plastic sheeting to prevent weeds, to the inevitable plastic contamination found in municipal compost.
4) If you’re not familiar with chemical recycling, here’s a good primer on all its problems.
5) Alternatively, perhaps we can eat our way out of this problem. A 2022 sci-fi movie, Crimes of the Future, starts with a scene of a young human boy chomping on a small pink bathroom garbage pail, having evolved to eat plastic. More realistically, it turns out a new study finds that certain bacteria can eat PET plastic. As the article notes, this is not a solution when we’re producing hundreds of millions of tons of plastic a year, but perhaps part of the solution to clean up lingering microplastic pollution in the environment once the era of producing plastics is over.
