Restricting how much plastic the world makes each year will be necessary to curb its harmful presence in the environment, says a University of Leeds academic.
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 target to cut the weight of primary plastics produced worldwide by 40 per cent by 2040, compared with 2025.
This scenario would involve plastic production falling by as much as our research team considered practicable. It would predominantly mean everyone using significantly less plastic and substituting it with paper and materials that are compostable.Cutting production almost in half and using all other strategies, such as ramping up recycling and disposing of plastic waste in landfills or via incineration plants, would still leave residual pollution in 2040.
In it, a cap on production was an essential element alongside 15 other global policy measures which could cut annual mismanaged plastic waste by 90 per cent and virgin plastic use by 30 per cent yearly by 2040, compared with 2019. This would represent a 60 per cent reduction relative to 2040 levels without restrictions on production.
Every year without production caps makes the necessary cut to plastic production in future steeper - and our need to use other measures to address the problem greater.The combination of policy and technical innovation necessary to eliminate plastic pollution is highly debated. But swingeing production cuts feature in all modelled scenarios.
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