Experts call for radical change in Plastic production

A woman collects plastic bottles for recycling at the garbage dump in the outskirts of Agartala, capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura on December 6, 2009. SINGAPORE, December 3, Reuters - Recycling will not be able to contain a runaway global plastic waste crisis, experts said on Friday, and they called for companies to reduce plastic production and shift more products into reusable and refillable packaging.

Moving away from single-use plastics to systems that allow for it to be reused is one of the solutions experts believe will help the problem, but radical changes to the production system are also needed, according to experts.

Rob Kaplan, CEO of Circulate Capital, said he believes that we won't be able to just recycle or reduce our way out of it.

He said that it was a systems problem and needs to combine upstream and downstream solutions in a panel at the Reuters Next conference.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the world produces around 300 million tons of plastic waste every year.

More than 10% of the plastic ever made has been recycled, in large part because it is too costly to collect and sort. The rest are dumped or buried in landfills or burned.

As recycling schemes falter, big consumer goods companies, including Nestle NESN.S and Unilever ULVR.L Coca-Cola KO.N, have started investing in projects to burn plastic waste, as fuel in cement kilns, according to a report in October.

Plastic production is predicted to double by 2040 - something many critics of the industry believe is excessive and the biggest driver of the waste problem facing the planet.

Recycling can't compete with overproduction, said Von Hernandez of the Break Free from Plastic campaign, a global alliance calling for an end to plastic pollution.

He said that limits on virgin plastic production are what we need to do, and he said that's what we need to do, along with Kaplan on the panel.

Individual consumers can help drive changes in corporate behaviour and hold companies accountable through the life cycle of their plastic products and where they end up, despite the absence of a global regulator or treaty for the plastics industry.

Citizens and consumers can compel these companies to do so. Hernandez said that they wanted to reveal their global plastic and carbon footprint, reduce the amount of plastic they are producing and deploying to the market, and really reinvent their delivery systems.