Sustainability Assessment of a Single-Use Plastics Ban

Abstract

Governments around the world are introducing single-use plastics bans to alleviate plastic marine pollution. This paper investigates whether banning single-use plastic items is an appropriate strategy to protect the environment. Product life cycle assessment was conducted for single-use plastic and single-use non-plastic alternatives. The life cycle impacts of the two product categories were compared and scaled according to EU consumption of 2016. The results show that a single-use plastics ban would decrease plastic marine pollution in the EU by 5.5% which equates to a 0.06% decrease globally. However, such a ban would increase emissions contributing to marine aquatic toxicity in the EU by 1.4%. This paper concludes that single-use items are harmful to the environment regardless of their material. Therefore, banning or imposing a premium price on single-use items in general and not only single-use plastic items is a more effective method of reducing consumption and thereby pollution. The plastics ban only leads to a small reduction of global plastic marine pollution and thus provides only a partial solution to the problem it intends to solve.

TSC Opinion

Enfin des chiffres sur ces mesures très médiatico-politiques : Le bannissement des plastiques à usage unique a permis de réduire la pollution plastique marine de 0.06% au niveau mondial. Pas très motivant, et en plus cela s’accompagne d’une augmentation des rejets de polluants dans le milieu marin à hauteur de 1.4 %. Les auteurs concluent que ces mesures ne sont pas adaptées, car ce ne sont pas les plastiques à usage unique qu’il faut interdire, mais plus globalement les objets à usage unique, ceci afin de réduire la consommation globale. La solution est clairement indiquée : changer le modèle économique pour passer d’une hyperproduction à une production raisonnée frugale en ressources.