In a letter to the journal Science, we argue that capping and phasing out the production of new plastics must be part of a systemic solution to end plastic pollution. The central argument of the short piece is that modeling studies show that all other available solutions will not suffice to achieve zero plastic emissions to nature. As one of my co-authors puts it:
“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.”
Melanie Bergmann, Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Germany
The letter was published in Science on April 29th, 2022: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq0082
Our press statement can be found here.