Plastic bags start as fossil fuels and end up as deadly waste in landfills and the ocean. Birds often mistake shredded plastic bags for food, filling their stomachs with toxic waste. For hungry sea turtles, it's almost impossible to distinguish between jellyfish and floating plastic shopping bags. Fish eat thousands of tons of plastic a year and transfer it along the food chain and transfer it to larger fish and marine mammals. People also consume microplastics through food and air.
It is estimated that, around the world, people consume the equivalent of a credit card full of plastic every week,1 and it is expected that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea. Children and babies in the womb are the most vulnerable to the harmful effects of plastics, because in the early stages of human development they are particularly sensitive to hazardous chemicals in the environment. Exposure to plastics has been found to increase the risks of complications in childbirth, lung growth and childhood cancer. Fundamentally, this means that plastic pollution will continue to wreak havoc on our lives and on the earth for generations to come.
In addition, playing an increasingly important role in packaging and consumer products, plastics also absorb an increasing percentage of municipal solid waste streams and pose environmental challenges. Plastics have received severe criticism from environmentalists due to their lack of biodegradability credentials. As is well known, plastic materials take between 100 and 1000 years to degrade when used in landfills, in addition to polluting surrounding air and water. The availability of land will pose a challenge in many countries if the practice of landfilling continues and restrictions are now established for restrict this approach.
In addition, extremely thin plastic bags made of films less than 20 microns thick are clogging drains in many cities and causing uncontrolled flooding during the rainy season. It is estimated that plastics contained in garbage kill one million creatures in the sea every year. Plastic bags that dispose of garbage have led to the consumer industry banning the use of thin plastic bags during the retail sale of products in many countries. The production of plastics is dangerous to human health and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, making plastics an important aspect of the fight against climate change.
Because plastics are generally derived from petroleum or natural gas, they can generate almost as much energy as fuel oil, although the much larger amount of energy initially required to produce the plastic is lost. The promotion of plastic substitutes and the safe disposal of plastic waste require urgent and definitive measures to address this potential health hazard in the future. Among them, plastic pollution and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee responsible for developing a legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. While the health impacts of plastics remain a fairly new area of research, the scientific results obtained to date indicate that plastic causes diseases, disabilities and premature deaths at all stages of its life cycle.
The arrival of fuel-based plastics has revolutionized the industrial world and there is no manufacturing area that is not affected by plastics. The resources below present several initiatives in Geneva and beyond aimed at strengthening the links between plastics and health, and at addressing the plastic crisis to protect human health. Since plastics are essentially non-degradable, their volume will not be reduced and, over time, plastics could consume a disproportionate amount of landfill space. Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), di-isononyl phthalate (DINP), diisodecyl phthalate (DIDP), benzyl-butyl phthalate (BBP), and di-n-octyl phthalate (DNOP) are phthalates that are primarily used to convert polyvinyl chloride (PVC)) from a hard plastic to a flexible plastic.
Exposure to harmful chemicals during manufacturing, the leaching of stored food when using plastic packages, or the chewing of teethers and plastic toys by children are related to serious adverse health effects, such as cancer, congenital defects, endocrine disorders, effects on development and reproduction, etc. However, the cost and accuracy of classification are crucial elements for the recycling of plastics to be economically viable, since each type of plastic has different performance characteristics that make it more suitable for specific applications.
