New research highlights solutions to eliminate plastic pollution

The amount of plastic trash that flows into the oceans every year is expected to nearly triple by 2040 to 29 million metric tons, new research has found.

The study, which was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Systemiq Ltd., a London-based environmental think tank, essentially calls for a wholesale remaking of the global plastics industry by shifting it to a circular economy that reuses and recycles.

If such a transformation occurs, National Geographic reports that Pew’s experts believe the annual flow of plastic waste into the oceans could be reduced by 80 percent over the next two decades, all by using existing methods and technology.

"The biggest takeaway from our work is that if we don't do anything, the plastic pollution problem is going to become unmanageable. Doing nothing is not an option,” Dr. Winnie Lau, co-author of the study and senior manager for Pew's Preventing Ocean Plastics campaign, told CNN.

Lau called their findings a "bad news, good news situation" because while the plastic pollution problem is set to get worse, we have all the knowledge, technology and tools to make a huge dent.

To figure solutions for solving plastic pollution, researchers created a model that mapped out the entire global plastic system—from production to waste—and developed five scenarios to estimate reductions in plastic pollution between 2016 and 2040.

Steps the researchers called for included:

• reducing growth in plastic production and consumption
• substituting plastic with paper and compostable materials
• designing products and packaging for recycling
• expanding waste collection rates in middle/low-income countries and supporting the "informal collection" sector
• building facilities to dispose of the 23 percent of plastic that cannot be recycled economically, as a transitional measure
• reduce plastic waste exports

According to CNN, one key finding the study identified is that waste mismanagement wasn't necessarily a problem of having the recycling capacity, landfill space or incinerators, but the bottle neck came from the collection gap.

"There are billions of people without collection services right now. When certain groups say we can recycle our way out of it, you can't recycle something you haven't collected. You can’t dispose of something you haven't collected," said Lau.

The team's findings come as waste from COVID-19, such as discarded PPE, masks, gloves, hand sanitizer bottles and take-out boxes, has ended up in landfills or our oceans.

Gary Stokes, director of operations at OceansAsia, was reported by CNN saying that current efforts we are seeing such as beach cleanups were good but what is needed is to turn off the plastic source.

"You go into a bathroom and the bath is overflowing, do you grab a mop or do you turn the tap off?" he said. "Beach clean ups are going and mopping up the floor while the tap is still on. As good as they are, you need to turn off the source."