Every year the average US consumer throws away 109kg kilos of plastic. The average European consumer far less: 29 kilos per year which consist of roughly 4,490 pieces of plastic: a daily average of 12. Indian consumers are more responsible with 11kg plastic consumed per year. Now, considering an average of these figures multiplied by 8 billion people in the world, that makes enough plastic to circle the world 40 times! That’s how much plastic is produced in a year; that’s how much we depend on plastic.
Virgin plastic production is expect to more than double from 2030 to 2050.
Plastic surrounds us in everything we do and, even conscious businesses have a hard time avoiding it. Sometimes there are no alternatives to plastic: indeed, no other material is as adaptable, cheap and lightweight as plastic. You might think that this isn’t a problem, since all of this plastic can be tossed in the recycling bin and recycled, right?
Well, you might want to think twice about that.
On average, in the United States, only 9% of all plastic produced in a year is recycled and so - roughly - only 1 out of 10 plastic items that consumers throw away will be recycled. Now the question is: where does the rest go?
The answer to this question is not very encouraging - the majority of our plastic waste ends up in landfills or worse, in our oceans. This is because even the countries that can brag about their state-of-the-art recycling systems aren’t able to manage the amount of plastic waste that consumers create- it’s simply too much.
As a consequence, many developed countries that cannot deal with their own plastic waste at home (these include the UK, US, and Canada) have found a sneaky way to get rid of it - they send this waste to third-world countries that accept it in exchange for money with the promise of treating this waste correctly. Unfortunately, developing countries already struggle to take care of their own waste and so the plastic which is imported is often dumped in the ocean or is burnt.
What if there was a simple action we could all do to stop this?
The blue stripe represents the amount of plastic that gets recycled in the United States.
Source: EPA
MODERN PROBLEMS REQUIRE MODERN SOLUTIONS
When the first alarms of global warming rang, a witch hunt began to find out the culprits behind the carbon emissions that were accelerating this process.
Citizens accused governments of not doing enough, governments accused businesses of not caring about the planet and it took a while to find a collective solution to the issue, but eventually, a solution was proposed and - in some cases - implemented: carbon offsetting.
In simple terms, carbon offset schemes allow individuals and companies to invest in environmental projects in order to balance out their own carbon footprints (or, in other terms, the amount of carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere). An example of carbon offsetting would be the possibility of offsetting our emissions when consumers purchase a plane ticket by paying an additional fee since flying is an activity that releases a high quantity of carbon emissions.
Those fees are then used by the airline company (with the help of a third-pary) for environmentally-friendly projects such as the planting of trees and the creation of forests, which should contribute to capturing carbon in the air.
Now, to tackle the immense plastic pollution problem, a similar solution has been proposed: plastic offsetting.
HERE COMES PLASTIC OFFSETTING
Just like consumers, businesses can also feel powerless in front of images showing rivers and oceans full of plastic. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by how hard it is to reduce the amount of plastic that brands use for their products, packaging, etc. Well now, with plastic offsetting, businesses have a good way of taking the matter into their own hands and finally having a real impact, here’s how:
A waste worker collects plastic in India.
With plastic offsetting, businesses have the opportunity to offset their plastic footprint and neutralise it, similar to the way they are neutralising their carbon emissions.
By paying a given sum, a certain amount of plastic waste would be intercepted from the environment on behalf of this company, and then recycled. This money can be paid directly to organizations that are battling against plastic pollution on the field. Organisations like ours.
At Plastics For Change, we created a system that prevents plastic from entering our oceans by collecting it and providing the waste collectors that intercept it with fair incomes and access to better livelihoods. Being based in India, one of the biggest importers of plastic waste and a country where over 40% of the solid waste management is carried out by informal waste workers, we’re able to see firsthand the impact that plastic mismanagement has on the people and on the planet.
This is how Plastics For Change can offset your brand’s consumption for you: you use the plastic - we recycle it and provide fair-trade jobs in vulnerable communities around India.
By offsetting your plastic with us, you can be sure that your offset amount will go directly towards those who collect the plastic and will help fund new recycling centers that will reduce the amount of plastic entering our oceans - thereby tackling one of the most pressing issues of our time. You can learn more about plastic offsetting for brands here or by clicking the button below.
