Predicted growth in plastic waste exceeds efforts to mitigate plastic pollution

By S. Borrelle, Jeremy Ringma, K. L. Law, Cole C. Monnahan, Laurent Lebreton, Alexis McGivern, E. Murphy, J. Jambeck, G. Leonard, Michelle A. Hilleary and 10 more. Science, 2020

2,369 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A mess of plastic It is not clear what strategies will be most effective in mitigating harm from the global problem of plastic pollution. Borrelle et al. and Lau et al. discuss possible solutions and their impacts. Both groups found that substantial reductions in plastic-waste generation can be made in the coming decades with immediate, concerted, and vigorous action, but even in the best case scenario, huge quantities of plastic will still accumulate in the environment. Science, this issue p. 1515, p. 1455 Even the most optimistic scenario projects huge amounts of plastic pollution in the coming decades. Plastic pollution is a planetary threat, affecting nearly every marine and freshwater ecosystem globally. In response, multilevel mitigation strategies are being adopted but with a lack of quantitative assessment of how such strategies reduce plastic emissions. We assessed the impact of three broad management strategies, plastic waste reduction, waste management, and environmental recovery, at different levels of effort to estimate plastic emissions to 2030 for 173 countries. We estimate that 19 to 23 million metric tons, or 11%, of plastic waste generated globally in 2016 entered aquatic ecosystems. Considering the ambitious commitments currently set by governments, annual emissions may reach up to 53 million metric tons per year by 2030. To reduce emissions to a level well below this prediction, extraordinary efforts to transform the global plastics economy are needed.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9c61aa11ca48ed0fb017acc11c72253b4ec17bac

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. E. van Sebille
2. F. Galgani
3. G. Hanke
4. Melanie Bergmann
5. L. Gutow

In Pollution

1. E. van Sebille
2. F. Galgani
3. Melanie Bergmann
4. G. Hanke
5. L. Gutow
6. A. Lusher

Citations in the corpus

• The quest for seafloor macrolitter: a critical review of background knowledge, current methods and future prospects (2020, background): “by Borrelle et al (2020) to 19–23 Mt for all aquatic ecosystems in 2016.”
• Critical review of global plastics stock and flow data (2021, background): “Efforts toward reducing plastics waste are also examined at global and country level, such as Lau et al. (2020) and Borrelle et al. (2020).”
• Impacts of Plastic Pollution on Ecosystem Services, Sustainable Development Goals, and Need to Focus on Circular Economy and Policy Interventions (2021, background): “The improper disposal of plastic wastes is clogging the urban infrastructures such as stormwater drainage and sewer systems, leading to widespread plastic pollution [253, 254] and waterlogging [255].”