Nov. 8 () –
Plastic pollution is changing the processes of the entire Earth system and affects all global environmental problems.
An international team of researchers used the ‘planetary boundaries’ framework (a conceptual framework that evaluates the state of 9 processes fundamental to the stability of the Earth system) to frame the growing evidence of the effects of plastics on the environment, health and human well-being.
“It is necessary to consider the entire life cycle of plastics, starting with the extraction of fossil fuels and the primary production of plastic polymers,” he says. in a statement first author Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez of the Stockholm Resilience Center.
Currently, half a billion tonnes of plastics are produced annually, but only 9% is recycled globally. Plastics are everywhere: from the top of Mount Everest to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench.
Through a synthesis review of the scientific literature on the impacts of plastics on the natural environment, the research team shows that plastic pollution is changing the processes of the entire Earth system and affects all global environmental problems. urgent, including climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and freshwater and land use.
The study emphasizes the need to consider the complexity of plastics. As synthetic polymer-based materials associated with thousands of other chemicals, their impacts occur throughout the entire life cycle of these products and materials. The work is published in One Earth.
“Plastics are seen as those inert products that protect our favorite products, or that make our lives easier, that can be ‘easily cleaned’ once they become waste. But this is far from reality. Plastics are made from the combination of thousands of chemicals.
“Many of them, such as endocrine disruptors and chemicals, pose toxicity and damage to ecosystems and human health. “We should see plastics as the combination of these chemicals that we interact with daily,” says the candidate for Dr. Villarrubia-Gómez.
Until recently, the scientific community has primarily studied these impacts separately, without addressing the interactions between them. Furthermore, public discourse and policies They tend to approach plastics primarily as a waste problem.
“The impacts of plastics on the Earth system are complex and interconnected, and this work clearly demonstrates how plastics are acting to destabilize the system,” says associate professor and co-author Sarah Cornell, from the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University.
The team suggests a set of control variables that can be used together to include plastic pollution in the operational use of the Planetary Boundaries framework. Its impact pathway approach considers the impacts and indicators in three main stages in the complete life cycle of plastics: extraction of raw materials, production and use of plastics; environmental release and destiny; and effects on the Earth system.
“We emphasize the need to consider impacts at all stages of the life cycle of plastics, rather than seeking a single quantified threshold of planetary boundaries. We propose a set of control variables that, together, allow us better understand and control plastic pollution,” says Villarrubia-Gómez.
The researchers examined publicly available data on plastic production. In 2022 (the most recent data), at least 506 million tons of plastics were produced worldwide, with a cumulative total of 11.09 billion tons of plastics produced between 1950 and 2022. Researchers note that there are great challenges in obtaining data on the production and use of plastics to make these calculations.
The data presentation refers to different types of polymers, with insufficient standardization, lack of methodological details and metadata on their sources and assumptions. Transparent and consistent assessments of uncertainty and aggregation are not possible, hampering both research and policy responses.
However, the available evidence clearly shows how plastics contribute to environmental problems up to the planetary scale, both directly and through downstream biophysical interactions and cumulative effects.
Many people around the world are already facing crisis conditions due to the violation of planetary boundaries. Understanding the systemic interactions of plastics within the framework of planetary boundaries can inform strategies for more sustainable responses, as an integral part of climate change, biodiversity and the policy of use of natural resources.
“We now find plastics in the most remote regions of the planet and in the most intimate, inside human bodies. And we know that plastics are complex materials, released into the environment throughout their life cycle, resulting in damage to many systems. The solutions we strive to develop must be considered with this complexity in mind, addressing the full spectrum of security and sustainability to protect people and the planet,” says the paper’s co-author, Professor Bethanie Carney Almroth of the University of Gothenburg.
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