A Plastic World no more.
An Introduction to Circularity in Supply Chains, and why plastic doesn’t fit in.
Written by Tara Gupta, for Map-Collective.com
Did you know that there are nano-plastics in the rain? Earlier this year, a shocking study from Utah State University estimated that more than 1,000 tons of micro-plastics from the air rain down onto protected areas in the western U.S. each year.
The truth is, we really don’t understand plastic all that well. It’s hard to track, it’s hard to reuse, and it becomes so small that we end up ingesting millions of little particles of it just as we go about our everyday lives. Single use plastic has created an invisible plastic storm, that we live in as if it were normal. But it is not normal — plastics have been known to cause severe health problems, from immune system suppression to developmental problems in children, and reproductive defects in prospective mothers.
99% of plastic is sourced from oil. Millions of tons of chemicals are then added to this raw material, and they are distributed for use in various industries, with 44% of plastics going to packaging alone. In a linear model, plastics end up being incinerated, landfilled, or leaking into the water supply (where they end up in fish, or in the rain). The percentage of plastic that is recycled can only be recycled once or twice before it, too, must be put into the waste stream.
The problem with plastics is that they become so small and uncontrollable that they wreak havoc without visibility. We cannot “close the loop” as we try to do in reshaping a supply chain to become more efficient and sustainable, because we cannot recycle plastics with full efficacy-as they eventually break apart into a zillion little pieces, which then end up dispersing across the globe, and our ecosystems.
Plastics, as a packaging solution in particular, may not be able to fit into a picture of the circular economy. So, they must be replaced with wood, glass, metals and silicone, materials that can be reused indefinitely, or composted and regrown as part of the organic process.
According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “A circular economy is a systemic approach to economic development designed to benefit businesses, society, and the environment. In contrast to the ‘take-make-waste’ linear model, a circular economy is regenerative by design and aims to gradually decouple growth from the consumption of finite resources.”
RESOURCES
Plastic rain: More than 1,000 tons of micro-plastics rain onto western US https://earthsky.org/earth/microplastic-rain-western-us#:~:text=New%20research%20finds%20that%20microplastics%20are%20emitted%20into%20the%20atmosphere.&text=A%20new%20study%20estimates%20that,the%20western%20U.S.%20each%20year.
Public health impact of plastics: An overview https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3299092/#:~:text=Exposure%20to%20harmful%20chemicals%20during,endocrine%20disruption%2C%20developmental%20and%20reproductive
PRI https://www.unpri.org/plastics/risks-and-opportunities-along-the-plastics-value-chain/4774.article
THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/explore/the-circular-economy-in-detail#:~:text=A%20circular%20economy%20is%20a,the%20consumption%20of%20finite%20resources.
