THE accumulation of plastic trash in the oceans has worsened. Every year some 8 million metric tons of plastic is dumped into the world’s oceans globally. It is said that about 60 per cent of the plastic trash that ends up in the oceans is from just five countries – China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
In the late 1940s, plastic was new and popular. It was invention for consumer goods’ cleanliness and durability. Nobody talked about its permanence, and difficulties with plastic waste.
Aluminum can be recycled innumerable times to make new aluminum cans, but plastic is difficult to recycle. Each variety of plastic requires a different recycling process, and plastics are made from thousands of different formulas. Sorting all that out is a huge chore and there is no financial profit.
In 1980s, a new kind of marketing strategy which is plastic packaging in minimal quantity – the sachet, took flight in Southeast Asian countries. The sachets are cheap, flashy and convenient to sell any product to those who might not have enough cash for a larger size.
The big drawback, though, is that the plastic sachets can’t be recycled, where there’s no infrastructure to recycle them. Nobody collects them. The plastic does not degrade. Packets have created an epidemic of trash. They are accumulated in landfills, dumps or the natural environment together with single use plastic products i.e.; PET bottles, HDPE (harder plastic) bottles for shampoo or milk, PS (low-density) grocery bags and food packaging, plastic cutlery among others. Uncollected plastic waste ends up mostly in rivers and esteros, and drift to the ocean.
Companies should do away with single-use packaging, and instead introduce ecologically-sound packaging. The UN report predicts if the trajectory of plastic production, use, and mismanagement continues, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean.
