Management of plastic in general and plastic waste in specific has reached global heights in the form of trade between several European and Asian nations.
Highlights
· Impact of global plastic trade worldwide
· Methods of recycling
· Pressure upon developing nations and future
Image Courtesy: The New York Times
Since the inception of sustainable development and related activities, this concept has found place in global platforms like the United Nations Conference on Sustainable development in Rio De Janeiro, its practice has increased manifold.
Generation of plastic waste has huge figures to count that run into millions or billions. It is very natural to happen ascribing to the ever-increasing population and ever-increasing generation of waste. Till 2020, plastics have been hugely utilized with no improvement in its figures although plastic usage has been banned in several countries.
These make way to the landfills and are dumped by garbage trucks. With the purpose of recycling, the amount of plastic waste that is apparently recycled is quite questionable.
Waste Trade: An Attempt towards sustainability
Many of you might not be aware that waste too forms a pivotal element of trade. Rich, high income and developed nations export more plastic waste than ever imagined. This includes the European nations exporting waste to the developing nations.
However, the crisis exacerbates in the long run as generation of plastic waste in developing nations itself accounts for over a million or billion tonnes ascribing to the huge turnout of population. Plastic waste is even generated from items of everyday use. As per statistics from Our World In Data,
· 350 million metric tons of plastic waste is generated by nations worldwide.
· A fraction of waste being recycled, only 2% is internationally traded.
· These figures depict the gap between developed and developing nations in plastic trade.
Thus from the above figures it can be pretty well understood the pressure upon developing countries to recycle the million tonnes of plastic waste that is produced worldwide. This can be seen as a positive aspect from the perspective that innovative ideologies through extensive research is significantly necessary.
Effective management of plastic waste calls for sustainable development and several issues concerning the environment gets significantly identified through this process.
However, trading plastic waste also forms a pivotal element of effective plastic waste management. Developing countries ought to put forth sincere steps to also export plastic waste and engage in a trade that comes with considerable financial benefits as well.
This further reduces its pressure on local and regional landfills, thus evading the possibility of occurrence of any event akin to what happened in the Brahmapuram district of Kochi.
Image Courtesy: Down To Earth