In March, the UK signed a legally binding UN treaty alongside other member states designed to ultimately end plastic pollution.
In a letter to the journal Science, an international group of scientists said the issue should be tackled at its source by regulating, capping and ultimately phasing out the production of new plastics.
“Even if we recycled better and tried to manage the waste as much as we can, we would still release more than 17 million tons of plastic per year into nature,” said Melanie Bergmann of the German Alfred-Wegener-Institute, the initiator of the letter. “If production just keeps growing and growing, we will be faced with a truly Sisyphean task.”
A research project from 2020 found that plastic emissions can only be cut by 79 per cent over the next 20 years if all solutions available today are implemented, including replacing some plastics with other materials, and improved recycling and waste management.
“The exponentially growing...