Single-use plastics bans: Confronting the elephant in the water?

21 Aug 2018 --- The recent months have seen a string of food and beverage heavyweights declare war on single-use plastics – such as straws – with bold eradication targets. There are said to be 8.3 million straws littering our coastlines, but this number is rather small in the wider context of there being eight million metric tons of plastic in the oceans – of which straws account for only 0.03 percent, according to media outlet Bloomberg. How much of an impact will such bans have on the plastic waste problem?

Single-use plastics are disposable materials that are typically used only once before being thrown away or recycled. Such items include plastic bags, straws, coffee stirrers, soda and water bottles.

Why now?
PackagingInsights speaks to Julie Andersen, Global Executive Director of the Plastic Oceans Foundation, a US-based non-profit. Plastic Oceans work with businesses around the dangers of perceiving plastic as disposable, as well as spreading knowledge through its documentary feature film: A Plastic Ocean.

“It’s a trending topic, which is fantastic for the globe. Socially, it’s a rethink of plastics which needs to occur,” says Andersen.

A vital component of the surge in corporate pledges is the tangible aspect of the plastic waste issue.

“This is a direct link to how visible plastic is. You cannot deny seeing a certain Coca-Cola product when you go onto the beach and it’s there. [When blaming corporations for obesity] over the inclusion of high levels of sugar, you can blame a lack of exercise for the following obesity too. But the plastic wrap itself is a direct link to the producers.”

In this way, Andersen points out that this link means that producers and manufacturers cannot get around engaging with the plastic issue without risking looking wholly disconnected from the environment and the wishes of consumers. “Plastic Oceans is trying to work with these industries to educate on the topic internally.”

Who is pledging what?
The UK Plastics Pact consists of more than 40 business who have pledged to eradicate single-use plastics. The members include leading UK retailers Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl, M&S and Waitrose. The pact pledges the following by 2025: 

• 100 percent of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable.
• 70 percent of plastic packaging recycled or composted; eliminate problematic or unnecessary single-use packaging items.
• 30 percent average recycled content across all plastic packaging.

McDonald's, Seattle city, Pizza Express, Wagamama, Hyatt, American Airlines and Eurostar are among the business to have banned plastic straws, while McDonald's has a “phased rollout” of paper straws in place from September across all of its UK and Ireland restaurants. 

Starbucks followed suit with a plastic straw ban, thought to eliminate more than one billion straws annually, and a mission to create a sustainable coffee cup following immense pressure from campaigners. The activist pressure came as the coffee heavyweight had pledged to deliver 100 percent recyclable paper cups and sell 25 percent of drinks in reusable cups by 2015 in 2008, but the date came and went without any large-scale change.

Not just businesses but nation-states have jumped aboard too, with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowing to abolish all single-use plastics by 2022 and Costa Rica, Rwanda and Kenya also followed suit. In total, UN Environment states that governments in more than 60 countries have introduced levies and bans to combat single-use plastic waste.

Will they work?
Essentially, Andersen says, “When it comes down to big companies taking away a plastic straw, will it make a quantitative difference to the amount of plastic going into our oceans? No.”

However, one cannot deny the importance of overhauling the rhetoric around plastic waste and the throwaway culture that has become embedded across much of the globe. In this way, “it does highlight that we need to make these changes and how they plant a seed in how our culture is thinking about plastic,” adds Andersen.

“I compare it to smoking. Forty years ago you could smoke in planes and elevators. The small change was putting a no smoking rule in elevators – it did not reduce smoking, but it did start a cultural awareness of smoking not being good. Then this turned to no smoking in the lobby and so on. It’s these small changes that start to create a cultural shift. The same thing applies to plastic.”

What needs to be done?
Gordon Robertson, Packaging expert and consultant, tells PackagingInsights that “still the virtue-signaling from Starbucks, Ikea, McDonald's and others continues with actions that will have no discernable impact on the number of plastics ending up in the oceans. It would be far more effective if these multinationals assisted in efforts to ensure that the 10 rivers no longer discharged plastic marine debris.”

Indeed, it is thought that ten major global rivers – two in Africa and the rest in Asia – discharge 90 percent of all plastic marine debris, Robertson explains, with the Yangtze River alone carrying 1.5 million tons a year.

UN Environment recently published a report outlining guidelines for the management of single-use plastics and sustainability. It essentially concludes that the transition to more eco-friendly alternatives can be a lengthy process, but strengthening circular thinking and waste management systems are crucial to reducing plastics pollution.

Indeed, bans on single-use plastics, whether from business or government, are an essential step within the transition to a more circular economy. But by themselves, they may not be enough.

The elephant in the water
Arguably, single-use plastic bans represent a significant shift in thinking around plastic, and although the dent in ocean waste, as a result, may not be huge, it is a step in the right direction. 

Still, the question hangs that perhaps “straw activism” is better directed elsewhere at times, such as towards pressuring seafood companies to only buy from fishing companies who mark their gear. Why? Because fishing nets make up nearly 50 percent of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – the largest accumulation of ocean plastic located between Hawaii and California – says Robertson.

Furthermore, both manufacturers and consumers play an important role. As businesses pledge to ban single-use plastics and search for alternatives, consumers must also understand that not all single-use plastics must end up in the ocean. Some single-use plastics are recyclable, and it is up to consumers, as well as the appropriate provision of recycling infrastructure for cities, to fulfill this too. Demonizing all plastic packaging need not be the future. 

By Laxmi Haigh