Earth Today | The problem with plastics
Published:Thursday | August 7, 2025 | 12:07 AM
FROM STRUCTURAL flaws that see some 95 per cent of the total value of plastic packaging lost to the economy after a single use to weak waste management systems, there is a range of problems that plagues the current plastics economy.
“Capacities for the control of transboundary movements, environmentally sound management of plastic waste, including the necessary infrastructure, are often lacking and have not kept pace with the sharp rise in plastic consumption, particularly in low- and middle-income countries,” reveals the 2023 report titled Turning off the Tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy and published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
“Collection of waste is chronically underfunded and, despite often being the single highest item in the budgets of municipalities, formal collection coverage remains patchy. A significant share of plastic waste collection is carried out by the informal recycling sector, involving exposure to undignified labour conditions and significant health risks (UN-Habitat and Norwegian Institute for Water Research [NIVA] 2022). Scaling this as plastic consumption grows is difficult as the informal sector typically only collects high-value plastics,” it added.
At the same time, the report noted that also to be considered are the gender dimensions to waste management “because when jobs become formalised they are often taken up by men thus leaving local women without a source of income”.
Another feature of the plastics problem is design and packaging choices that fail to account for local infrastructure, informed by marketing and sales instead of local capacities within countries to address the waste.
This is exacerbated by the lack of incentives to encourage a transition to new solutions, though there exist new business models that have proven effective and with limited environmental impacts.
“There are currently few policy incentives for new business models or to promote the adoption of safe and sustainable alternative materials, or new delivery models such as reusable or refillable packaging,” the report revealed.
Punctuating these pervasive challenges is the lack of adequate data and reporting, with “insufficient transparency regarding the plastic being placed on the global market, including its composition (polymers, chemicals and additives), demand and what drives it, trade flows, waste production, consumption, post-use patterns and impacts on human health and marine life”.
“This lack of data and transparency currently limits effective and safe management of plastics throughout their life cycle. In addition, there is a lack of field data measuring plastic stocks and flows throughout the value chain, and many parameters have high uncertainty,” the report added.
Against this background, the report suggested a range of interventions to support a shift to a new plastics economy – among them policy and legislative changes.
“At one end, governments may employ regulatory interventions that are non-binding but seek to persuade actors to change behaviour. For example, this may include voluntary agreements or codes of conduct with or for plastics industry participants, or a policy to implement a plastic use public behaviour change communication campaign,” the report said.
“At the other end, governments may employ binding and enforceable regulatory instruments that have ‘teeth’, such as virgin-plastic taxation legislation or a legislative ban on single-use plastic products. Combinations of such approaches are often used. In most cases, legislation ‘gives life’ to non-binding instruments and policies by codifying them; that is, a policy or other instrument has more chance of succeeding if it is implemented and supported by legislation that is clear, coherent, flexible and enforceable. Similarly, a government’s policies will be materially facilitated if they are mandated by legislation,” it added.
Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2) – convened by the executive director of the UNEP in 2022, on the basis of a United Nations Environment Assembly resolution – is in Geneva continuing their negotiations for a global treaty on plastics pollution that should inform global as well as individual country efforts to arrest plastics pollution.
This second part of INC-5 comes on the heels of negotiations in Busan, The Republic of Korea last year, which resulted in a president’s text for an agreement with options for both binding and voluntary approaches – and with implications for policy and legislative changes to effectively rein in plastics pollution.