Plastic is all around us. Packaging, single-use cutleries, shampoo bottles, toothbrushes, toys, smart devices, vehicles, to name a few major ones we deal with in daily life. We all are aware how deadly it really is for the environment, but refraining to use it is really the solution? Circular Plastic Economy provides a fresh alternative.
Plastic is one reliable material, you have to agree. It’s durable, lightweight, easily accessible and affordable. Without plastic, the world wouldn’t have come so far in technology and human development. But looking behind the scene doesn’t paint a very beautiful picture. It’s ugly and needs to be dealt with asap.
Plastic never goes away. Even if you throw your plastic bags after 15 minutes of use, the plastic doesn’t degrade for more than 100 years. It breaks into microplastics and becomes even deadlier and difficult to separate.
The ocean is the popular trash can for plastic these days. 8 million metric tons of just the packaging plastic ends up in the seas and oceans, massively polluting it and putting marine life in danger. It is estimated that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than the fishes.
On 5th June, world environment day was a huge success with masses and the main theme was ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’. But thinking from a radical mind, putting a stop to the use of plastic, will not do much for cleaning up the plastic that is already there. Using less plastic would not only make life difficult but it’s hardly possible to wipe it out of the system. It would take another hundred of years to bring a new material to replace our beloved plastic.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is providing a new age solution to this surmounting problem- the circular plastic economy. It’s simply the recycling and reusing the plastic. Everyday humans are coming up with new technologies and innovations. With the help of those creative minds, we sure can make the unrecyclable fully recyclable.
The flow of plastic is required to be monitored. The more we recycle the old plastic, the lesser amount of new plastic will be made.
A study in 2016 by McKinsey, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and World Economic Forum “The new plastic economy- Rethinking the future of plastics” estimated that ’applying circular-economy principles to global plastic-packaging flows could reshape the material’s economy.’
So that’s the catch. Plastic is not the villain we thought it was but its mismanagement and misuse are.