Plastic pollution exacerbates the threats to our planet
According to an international team of researchers from, among others the University of Gothenburg, plastic pollution exacerbates all planetary boundaries, including climate change, ocean acidification and biodiversity loss. Ahead of the final negotiations on the International Plastics Treaty, the scientists urge policy makers to stop seeing plastic pollution as just a waste management problem.
A new synthesis review of the scientific literature on the impact of plastics on the natural environment shows that plastic pollution alters processes in the Earth's systems.
Plastics affect all pressing global environmental problems, including climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification and freshwater and land use.
Thousands of chemicals
The researchers behind the study have used the planetary boundaries framework to structure the rapidly increasing evidence of the effects of plastics on the environment, health and human well-being. In a new scientific paper in the journal One Earth, the researchers emphasise the need to take into account the complexity of plastics.
“Plastics are supposed to make our lives easier and be easy to clean up when they become waste. But this is far from reality. Plastics are made from a combination of thousands of chemicals. Many of them, such as endocrine disruptors and persistent chemicals, are toxic and harmful to ecosystems and human health. We should see plastics as a combination of these chemicals that we interact with on a daily basis,” says Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, PhD student at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, and lead author of the report.
Until recently, the scientific community has mostly studied the effects separately, without taking into account the interactions between them. Moreover, the researchers argue, public debate and policy tends to view plastics as a waste problem alone, but the impacts of plastics on the Earth system occur throughout the plastics life cycle, starting with extraction and production, and the impacts are complex and interconnected.
Three stages of plastic life
The researchers propose a set of control variables that can be used to include plastic pollution within the operational part of the planetary boundary framework. The researchers' methodology considers impacts and indicators at three stages of the plastic life cycle: raw material extraction, plastic production and use, emissions to the environment, and impacts on the Earth system.
Many people around the world are already in a crisis situation because planetary boundaries have been exceeded. Understanding the role of plastics in the context of planetary boundaries can help develop strategies for more sustainable solutions.
Plastics are everywhere
“We now find plastics in the most remote regions of the planet and in the most intimate, in the human body. We know that plastics are complex materials that are released into the environment throughout their life cycle, leading to damage in many systems. The solutions we aim to develop must take this complexity into account and cover the full spectrum of safety and sustainability to protect people and the planet,” said Professor Bethanie Carney Almroth of the University of Gothenburg, who co-authored the report.
Scientific article in One Earth: ‘ Plastics pollution exacerbates the impacts of all planetary boundaries’
Planetary boundaries is a framework for sustainable development developed by a research team led by Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. According to the research team, there are nine environmental problems, each with its own threshold. If this threshold is exceeded, it can lead to incalculable environmental impacts due to threshold effects. The current research shows the interconnectness of the boundaries, and how impacts in one boundary can exacerbate others, thereby functioning as threat multipliers.
