What can we do about plastic pollution?

And is the Alliance To End Plastic Waste the solution?

No, the Alliance To End Plastic Waste is not, because as welcome as it is that the plastics industry and its customers spend at least something, on the problem of plastic waste that they are responsible for, it will not solve the problem. Why? Because a highly polluting industry that is not taxed for the pollution it causes will not voluntarily ever pay enough to solve the problem. In this case it would rapidly go out of business, that's how big the bill is that society pays for plastics pollution. Would you rely on the fossil fuel industry to solve the air, water and soil pollution it causes?

The Alliance claims to be spending $1.5 bn over 5 years (that's $300 million/year) to make $240 bn/year and continue to pollute. The real cost to society? $40 billion and that's just for consumer plastic packaging* The net result: society is paying $39.7 billion/year for the consumer plastics packaging industry to trash our environment.

According to a now 6-month-old article “.... this initiative does not tackle the problem at its source: the gigantic production of 400m tonnes of plastic each year, with 60m metric tonnes produced in Europe alone.” The average cost of those 400m tonnes of plastic each year? $65 billion or $162.5/tonne

It's up to society

When will our leaders finally do the math? Way too late for the world so once again it is up to the world's citizens to refuse, ban and pressure politicians to ban and tax pollution caused by single-use packaging (not at a voluntary rate of 0.125% of revenues but preferably at 27% the average cost of plastic pollution**?) .

*United Nations Environment Programme, Valuing Plastic: The Business Case for Measuring, Managing and Disclosing Plastic Use in the Consumer Goods Industry (2014) **Not $300 million (paid for recycling)/$240 billion (plastics industry revenues) = 0.125% but $65 billion (cost of plastics to society)/$240 billion (plastics industry revenues) = 27%