Plastic pollution continues to pose a threat to society. What happens to your plastic coffee cup after you finish your coffee? What are the costs? How does it affect the environment—on land, in the oceans, and on biodiversity? Humanity produces over 200 million tons of plastic waste annually, the equivalent of 523 trillion straws. A new report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and conducted by Dalberg Consultants reveals that the lifetime cost of plastic produced in 2019 alone to society, the environment, and the economy reached $3.7 trillion—more than India's GDP. Unless we take action, the actual social cost of plastic production by 2040 will be double that of 2019. Currently, humanity produces over 200 million tons of plastic waste annually, the equivalent of approximately 523 trillion plastic straws. If all those straws were connected, they would circle the Earth approximately 2.8 million times. Nearly half of this waste is not properly managed, instead being openly burned, dumped, or leaked into the environment. Over 11 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year. The report, titled "Plastics: The Social, Environmental, and Economic Costs," reveals that over its entire lifecycle, plastic produces 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually—more than the annual emissions from aviation and shipping combined. These greenhouse gas emissions are exacerbating the negative impacts of climate change, such as shrinking glaciers, floods, and more severe droughts, leading to crop failures and imposing significant costs on governments and society. Poorly managed plastic waste could threaten the ocean's ability to serve as a carbon sink, further exacerbating the climate crisis. In other words, plastic contributes to the climate crisis in two ways: first, by emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) and second, by limiting the ocean's ability to absorb CO2, further exacerbating the impacts of emissions. Four costs of human plastic production: Plastic pollution imposes costs on all aspects of human life: 1. Increased waste management costs: The annual cost of collecting, sorting, disposing of, and recycling large amounts of plastic waste exceeds $32 billion. 2. Cleanup costs incur by governments, non-governmental organizations, and citizens, reaching $15 billion annually. Third, marine plastic pollution imposes significant economic costs in the form of reduced gross domestic product (GDP), estimated at $7 billion in 2018 alone, primarily from lost income from tourism, fisheries, aquaculture, and other sectors. Fourth, vulnerable communities are particularly vulnerable to the costs of plastic throughout its life cycle. Incinerators and oil and gas refineries are often located in low-income and vulnerable communities, exposing them to health and economic risks. Scavengers face significant health risks throughout the plastic waste disposal cycle. The impact of climate change contributed by the entire plastic life cycle is even greater for vulnerable groups. While it is widely acknowledged that addressing the plastic crisis requires global action, current measures lack the necessary scale to drive systemic change and address the crisis at a systemic level, nor do they effectively reduce the social costs of plastic. WWF calls on governments to negotiate a legally binding global treaty on marine plastic pollution at the Fifth United Nations Environment Assembly in February 2022. This global treaty must address the problems caused by plastic at all stages of the life cycle and prevent plastic pollution from entering the ocean by 2030. Source: Environmental Information Center
