The lifecycle of plastics, a modern wonder that is choking the planet

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

This is the thought that keeps Professor Sarah Dunlop awake at night: every piece of plastic that has ever been made – and ever will be made – will eventually break down, piece by piece, into ever-smaller fragments.
There's growing international recognition that we can't recycle our way out of this mess.
Global negotiations in Geneva, which failed to reach consensus on Friday, were seen as the last chance to convince UN member states to sign up to legally binding measures to limit plastic production to address waste at its source.
Negotiator Kate Lynch said Australia was 'very disappointed' the session adjourned without resolution for an ambitious global plastics treaty, which aimed to reduce pollution through the lengthy life cycle of plastic products.
'This isn't an ambit claim or rhetoric for us,' she told the session. 'We know that it is an important issue for the global community, particularly the Pacific, where an outsized impact of plastic pollution is felt.'
As plastic ages, it degrades. Most of us have heard of microplastics; the small pieces of plastic smaller than 5mm. Less well-known are nanoplastics, which are invisible to the naked eye but enter the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; in ever-increasing amounts.
'Plastic is toxic, whether it's virgin or recycled,' says Dunlop, the head of plastics and human health at Minderoo Foundation.
'It has toxic chemicals in it, and it will break up into micro and nanoplastics which are like a massive army of mini-Trojan horses carrying toxic chemicals into us. It's a flawed material.'
Chemicals added to polymers in the process of creating different types of plastic cause disruption to human endocrine systems and may be carcinogenic.
The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), representing the packaging industry, estimates Australians used 1.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging in 2022-23 – equivalent to 47 kg of plastic packaging for every person.
Packaging fuels the climate crisis
The overwhelming majority of soft plastic we in use in Australia (more than 90 per cent) is constructed from virgin fossil fuels, rather than recycled plastic polymers.
Global petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil and Dow, and the Chinese state-owned Sinopec, have a massive stake in our dependence on single-use plastic.
According to research by Minderoo Foundation, in 2021 (the most recent figures available) ExxonMobil was the world's biggest creator of polymers used in single-use plastics.
From 55 of Exxon's facilities came 11.2 million metric tonnes of polymer plastics that year, which ultimately produced about 5.9 million metric tonnes of plastic waste.
(Asked about the findings, and why the company doesn't rely more heavily on recycled polymers, a spokeswoman for ExxonMobil said she had 'nothing to share on the results of Minderoo's study'.)
Global plastics leader China manufactured an estimated 80 million metric tonnes of plastic in 2021. The UN reports the world produces about 400 million metric tonnes of plastic waste each year.
Not only is single-use plastic creating a pollution nightmare, it is fuelling the climate crisis.
Minderoo, and energy transition experts Wood Mackenzie, estimate the global 'cradle to grave' greenhouse gas emissions from single-use plastics in 2021 was 460 million tonnes – equivalent to the total emissions output of the United Kingdom.
From factories here and overseas, single-use plastics now enters our lives in a dizzying and growing number of ways.
Adding insult to injury, we're paying for the stuff. Research conducted by the Australian Marine Conservation Society showed the cost of pre-packaged fruit and vegetables was often higher than loose produce.
A study by CSIRO and University of Toronto, released in April, estimated some 11 million tonnes of plastic now sits on ocean floors around the globe.
At the current trajectory, plastic pollution will double by 2040, and the rate of plastics entering the world's oceans would triple in that time. Within 30 years it could surpass the biomass of the world's fish.
Industry body APCO says 19 per cent of plastic packaging was recovered in 2022-23, while the Environment Department calculates only 13 per cent of single-use plastic is recycled. The rest goes into landfill or waterways.
'As people, as responsible citizens trying desperately to look after our common home, the planet, we must always think: where does something come from, and where does it go? It comes from fossil fuel, and it goes to waste,' says Dunlop.
'Because at the moment, we are wedded to the convenience. It's this death by a thousand conveniences.'
The Minderoo Foundation argues that nothing less than internationally binding instruments – a Paris Agreement for plastic pollution, if you will – will stem this toxic tide.
'We can't recycle our way out of this'
In 2010, the REDcycle scheme was launched with great fanfare, giving consumers a sense of power over the sheer volume of plastic that enters our homes as packaging.
But the soft plastics captured by the REDcycle scheme weren't recycled into new plastics packaging; they were transformed into ingredients used in concrete, asphalt, street furniture, bollards and shopping trolleys.
Australian Marine Conservation Society plastics campaigner Cip Hamilton describes plastics recycling as a hollow victory.
'Recycling [plastic] really delays our disposal of products – we need to look at the root of the issue, which is how we can reduce the amount of plastic that we're using.'
In a factory in Melbourne's industrial west, the air is acrid with the stench of chemicals. Every hour this factory's machines thunder along, another tonne of single-use plastic is diverted from landfill.
Much of the degraded plastic being processed here was stockpiled by the ill-fated REDcycle scheme, which collapsed in 2022, all-but wiping out the already-inadequate soft plastics recycling initiatives in Australia.
Australian Food and Grocery Council chief executive Tanya Barden last year told a Senate inquiry that, even at its peak, REDcycle was only collecting 2-4 per cent of soft plastics on the market.
'One of the problems with the REDcycle system was the lack of processing capacity [and] that is still a significant issue,' she said.
'There isn't infrastructure in Australia that can process soft plastic back into food-grade quality [plastic]; existing mechanical recycling can't do that. So at the moment, you can only put it back into road bases and bollards.'
Tangaroa Blue Foundation chief executive Heidi Tait told the same inquiry that while soft plastics can be transformed into materials like decking and bollards, it doesn't mean they should.
'Those products that are meant to be the solution to our soft plastics [problem] are just degrading into microplastics in the environment,' she said.
'They start to look ugly, they get pulled out, and they go to landfill ... we're not actually diverting from landfill, we're actually delaying landfill, and we're giving these products opportunity to pollute again in process [by] extending their life.'
This is an inconvenient truth. Another inconvenient truth is that in Australia currently, there are four options: use less plastic, send it to landfill, let it wind up in the natural environment, or repurpose it into other single-use products.
Back in the factory in Melbourne's west, CRDC Australia managing director Shane Ramsey strides between giant bales of tattered soft plastics.
Ramsey heads the Australian arm of a company that began as a beach clean-up enterprise in Costa Rica. Now, the company has factories in four countries, including a fledgling factory in Melbourne that can repurpose one tonne of plastic an hour.
CRDC transforms soft and hard plastics, and aluminised plastics like chip packets, into an aggregate used in building materials called Resin8. It's lighter and holds more heat than regular building materials, making it an attractive prospect for industry.
Ramsay estimates the factory has processed hundreds of tonnes of stockpiled plastic from REDcycle.
'High-value plastic should stay in the loop as long as it can,' he says.
'But ultimately, it gets to the point where it can't continue in the life it was in, and we need to have an alternative for it.'
Where do we go from here?
Australia has set a national target for 70 per cent of plastic packaging to be recycled or composted by this year. We're well behind on the goal – according to the latest figures available, in 2022-23 we managed to repurpose just 19 per cent (down 1 per cent on the previous year).
Before the election, former environment minister Tanya Plibersek said the federal government, states and territories and business were investing $1 billion to recycle an extra 1.3 million tonnes per year.
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'Australians know how important it is to reduce our plastic waste. That's why so many are doing their bit to reduce their consumption, reusing where they can and recycling as much as possible,' she told this masthead.
'Having individuals keen to do their bit is fantastic – but it's not enough. More than 70 per cent of a product's environmental impact is locked in at the design stage, before a customer ever looks at it.'
A departmental spokeswoman said the government remained committed to reform.
Australia has long pushed for a strong new international treaty on plastic pollution, and the government has been promising since 2023 to introduce mandatory packaging design standards and targets.
In February, the federal Environment Department published the results of a government consultation that showed a clear majority of respondents supported Commonwealth regulation of packaging.
Dunlop says to reduce our reliance on plastic we should start being more frugal and thinking more like our great-grandparents who didn't live with single-use plastic. We also urgently need safe and sustainable alternative materials that don't contain toxic chemicals, she said.
'The problem is very serious and accelerating.' she says. 'And we can act now.'