More than half of uncollected plastic waste is incinerated
Tim Gainey/Alamy
Approximately 1.5 billion people around the world have no access to waste collection services, making how to dispose of plastic waste a serious environmental issue.
Most of these households resort to incinerating their plastic waste or dumping it in the environment, new analysis argues, arguing that comprehensive collection services are the only way to curb global plastic pollution.
Costas Bellis Researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK used municipal waste data and census data to model plastic waste flows in cities around the world, then used this data to train an AI algorithm to predict how waste is generated and disposed of in more than 50,000 urban areas around the world.
Bellis says this bottom-up approach offers an “unprecedented” look at how plastic waste is processed and why it becomes a pollutant in different countries. “It's never been done before,” he says.
Velis' team estimates that 52.1 million tonnes of plastic waste (one-fifth of the global total) becomes polluting each year. Most of it occurs in poor countries where waste collection is unreliable or not available at all. Rather than being properly treated, most of this plastic waste is burned in homes, on the streets or in small dumps, without any environmental controls.
Researchers estimate that about 57% of uncollected plastic waste is disposed of in this way, while the remaining 43% is dumped into the environment. Burning plastic not only releases greenhouse gases, but also carcinogenic dioxins, particulate pollution, and heavy metals. All of these are harmful to human health..
Low-income countries generally produce much less plastic waste per capita, but much of that waste ends up polluting the environment, whereas in high-income countries, where the majority of waste is collected and treated, littering is the biggest source of plastic pollution.
The findings highlight the need for low-income countries to receive support to establish comprehensive waste collection systems for all their citizens, Velis said. India, Nigeria and Indonesia were named as countries with the highest rates of plastic pollution.
The study comes ahead of a conference in Busan, South Korea, in November to consider adopting the world's first plastic waste treaty. Velis calls for the treaty to include measures requiring countries to steadily increase the proportion of waste treated in appropriate facilities and for high-income countries to increase financial support. “Lack of waste collection is the biggest cause of the decline in plastic waste,” he says. [plastic pollution] “That's where the problem lies,” he says.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
