Management of plastics a key issue on Earth Day
Earlier this month, the EPA celebrated Earth Day on 22 April.
Earth Day is a reminder of the importance of environmental conservation and sustainability, encouraging people to come together and take action for a healthier planet and brighter future.
This year’s theme focused on the health risk of plastics and called for a 60% reduction in the production of all plastics by 2040.
The management of plastics was also a key recommendation from the EPA’s State of the Environment Report for 2023.
It is estimated that, globally, we are manufacturing 430 million tonnes of plastic each year. By 2024, it is predicted that 29 million tonnes each year will end up in the ocean.
Plastics in the oceans, creeks, rivers and lakes are also having major adverse effects on biodiversity via physical impacts such as ingestion by aquatic animals, or when animals become entangled, and by impacts caused by the additives used in plastics, which are often toxic, hazardous and contain long-lived chemicals.
There is a concerted global effort to address environmental impacts from plastics and South Australia is a leader in this field, with our long-standing Container Deposit Scheme and more recent bans on single-use plastics.
Australia’s National Waste Policy Action Plan 2019 includes targets and actions to guide Australia’s investment and national efforts to 2030 and beyond, it includes:
- banning the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres, commencing in the second half of 2020
- reducing the total waste generated in Australia by 10% per person by 2030
- achieving an 80% average recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030
- significantly increasing the use of recycled content by governments and industry
- phasing out problematic and unnecessary plastics by 2025
- halving the amount of organic waste sent to landfill by 2030
- making comprehensive, economy-wide and timely data publicly available to support better consumer, investment and policy decisions.
SA’s Waste Strategy 2020-2025 has a target of zero avoidable waste to landfill by 2030, including:
- As per the waste management hierarchy, materials should be separated as close as possible to their point of generation and safely used for their highest order purpose. Some materials, including asbestos, certain toxic and quarantine waste, once generated, should be removed from circulation as soon as possible, noting that some of these wastes may be suitable for processes that are higher than landfill on the waste management hierarchy, such as energy from waste.
- Ensuring that principles of ecologically sustainable development and avoiding environmental harm are upheld as new mechanisms for design, use and recovery are promoted and pursued.
- Ensuring that the use of waste-derived materials is beneficial and genuine, not posing a risk of environmental harm or undermining resource recovery markets.
- Ensuring efforts to reduce impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.
An expert paper on plastics commissioned by the EPA provides suggestions to the South Australian Government on how to continue efforts to address waste and facilitate the circular economy, with the aim of achieving:
- reduced use of plastics (more bans on certain plastic items; behaviour change)
- less discharge of plastics into the environment (increased regulation; behaviour change)
- use of less toxic plastic materials (design changes)
- further increases in recycling (expansion of the container deposit scheme to non-beverage containers; container refilling; new recycling technologies; material recovery facility upgrades; procurement of products and infrastructure with more recycled plastic content; improved material and product design to facilitate recycling; behaviour change).
Find out more: State of the Environment 2023 | Management of Plastics (epa.sa.gov.au)
