We don't throw anything away, we throw it here

You might look out and not see plastic waste everywhere, but it's in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the fish we eat.

It's in our breast milk, lungs, and placentas, and has even crossed the blood-brain barrier.

How do they get there?

There are only three places our waste can go:

1. In the ground
2. In the air
3. In the water

In other words, here.

Here on this blue marble spaceship we call home.

Plastics don't break down. They break up into smaller and smaller pieces and are carried by our rivers, seas, clouds, wind, and rain.

That's why they're everywhere.

And they're making us sick

The toxic legacy of our current materials economy

These microplastics have jagged edges, so they cause inflammation wherever they gather in our bodies.

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed micro and nanoplastics in arterial plaques, and their presence was tied to a higher risk of heart disease.

While the study's authors caution that this data does not prove causality,  the new research is the first to associate such plastics inside the body with heart attack, stroke or death.

And it won't be the last, given that there is now evidence that PFAS and microplastics become more toxic when combined.

We're going to need more research to prove the definitive causality of adverse health effects such as disruption of endocrine systems, cancers,  fertility, and cognitive impairments. But because plastic has been around and in us for so long, we haven't been looking at the effects, so we don't have a baseline we can measure against.

Still, the evidence is continuing to mount.

But we don't really need more evidence to know that these microplastics should not be inside us and in our most important organs. Plastics are made from petrochemicals, and then a litany of other chemicals and additives are combined with the polymers to make them flexible, stronger, or resistant to sunlight and flames. Many of these substances—such as PFAS, phthalates, and other endocrine disruptors—pose serious health risks.

Some numbers

A staggering 16,000 chemicals are used in plastic production, yet only 6% are regulated.

Despite mounting evidence of harm, the plastics industry continues to prioritise production growth over human safety, producing 1.4 new chemicals every minute.

Recycling, long touted as a panacea, often exacerbates exposure to these harmful additives.

This toxic legacy comes with an astronomical price tag. In the US alone, the healthcare costs associated with plastic-related chemicals amount to $250 billion annually, or 1.22% of GDP. These numbers should be a wake-up call for industries and policymakers alike.

The financial liabilities from plastic pollution could exceed $20 billion in the US by 2030.

Yet the production of virgin plastic continues to soar, with companies like ExxonMobil and Dow producing 1,000 times more new plastic than the waste they remove through initiatives like the Alliance to End Plastic Waste—a shining example of greenwashing and gaslighting they manipulate us with.

The use of plastic could triple globally by 2060, with the largest increases expected in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Plastic waste is also projected to triple by 2060, with half ending up in landfill and less than a fifth recycled.

The global plastic crisis is reaching a tipping point, with experts warning that the world will be unable to manage the sheer volume of plastic waste within a decade unless production is significantly curtailed.

We can't recycle ourselves out of this firehose of plastic waste.

We have to start turning it off at the tap.

INC-5: Hoping for the best, expecting peanuts

In last week's post, we dipped our toes into what businesses and consumers can do to reduce both supply and demand. A few weeks before that, we looked into how innovators are embracing biomimicry to ensure what we do make is cleaner, using bio-derived feedstocks and then bio-assimilating at end-of-life.

But now we need global governments and regulations to do the real heavy lifting. To muster up the political will to take on the powerful fossil-fuel lobby and petrostates and agree to a global treaty to reduce plastic pollution, implement a worldwide extended producer responsibility with teeth, and consider the whole lifecycle of plastics.

The negotiations for exactly that are happening at the UN plastic pollution treaty (INC-5) in Busan. I have high hopes, but I am expecting little in the way of action. Hot on the heels of COP29, which was a disaster, I wonder if we've reached the limits of the consensus model. It is great, in theory, when every party walks away with not everything they wanted but at least something substantial.

At COP29, the petrostates and fossil fuel lobby walked away with the cream, and everyone else got peanuts.

Countries have been urged to be ambitious in this final push for a UN plastic pollution treaty, but the US (a petrostate, no less) has set the bar low with a weak sauce proposal that distinctly lacks ambition.

The US proposal includes action on 18 chemicals, such as vinyl chloride and phthalates, and eight plastic products, like microbeads and single-use polystyrene packaging, but offers countries broad discretion on that action, ranging from strict bans to minimal evaluations. Environmental groups argue the plan lacks urgency, as many of these measures, such as bans on single-use plastics, are already in place in Europe.

But I don't want to seagull on this just yet. I just hope the delegates focus less on process and more on outcomes.

There is also the possibility of this treaty providing a backdoor to climate impact off the back of the failure of COP29.

The plastics crisis is the climate crisis in material form

Under our current trajectory, plastics emissions are expected to double by 2050 and could use up half our remaining carbon budget for 1.5C.

With demand for oil stagnating in other sectors such as transport and energy, petrochemicals (primarily plastics) are the main driver of oil demand growth.

If this treaty could set a cap on global plastics production, then this could be a backdoor to reduce emissions and curtail our waste output significantly.

The fight against plastic waste and climate change is not about left or right; it's about survival.

This really is our last best chance, and I'm not expecting perfection. But I wish the delegates at INC-5 godspeed and the political will to push against the strong oppositional headwinds to achieve an ambitious deal that can be strengthened over time.

Know hope.