Plastic Pollution in the Ocean

Jo Gideon Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for working hard to secure this important debate. As she and others have mentioned, visible signs of plastic pollution are everywhere. In preparing for the debate, I have been struck by the staggering scale of the problem. Each year, the world produces over 350 million tonnes of plastic—a mass that outweighs all living mammals on Earth combined. Projections suggest that by 2050 there could be more plastic in our seas than fish. Over the past decade alone we have produced more plastic products than in the entire previous century. In the span of just one human lifetime we have inflicted an unimaginable level of damage to the global environment, particularly our oceans.

Is it not alarming that so much of our produce is packaged in plastic? A supermarket plastic bag serves its purpose for 30 minutes—the duration of an average commute. In a beverage, a straw is used for a mere five minutes, and the lifetime of a plastic stirrer is all of 10 seconds. Despite their fleeting use, those items outlive us by over 400 years. Regrettably, only 9% of all plastic produced has been adequately recycled. That is due in part to degradation of the recycling process. Plastic is functionally recycled often as little as once, meaning that recycling alone will not solve the immense challenges posed by plastic pollution.

For plastic to be recycled it needs to be free from food residue. Plastic bottles need to be crushed and their caps removed. Some containers use two or more different plastics, which must be separated either manually or by specialist equipment. That complexity creates a significant bottleneck in the recycling process. Most material recovery facilities do not even have the technology to process flexible packaging, leading those items often to end up in landfill or to be incinerated. Does the Minister agree that the sheer diversity of different plastic materials remains an issue that is yet to be fully addressed, and that we should aim for a zero-waste society, prioritising reduction and reuse over downstream interventions such as recycling?

Turning to the effect of plastic pollution on our natural world, we are all too aware of the devastation that it wreaks on marine life. Turtles choke on plastic bags, mistaking them for jellyfish. Those who have seen David Attenborough’s “Blue Planet” will have witnessed albatrosses feeding floating rice bags to hungry chicks, having found them in the remotest reaches of the South Atlantic. Our fishermen’s livelihoods are also suffering acutely from plastic pollution. North sea fishermen on average spend two hours each week cleaning their nets of marine litter. At a time when food security is of paramount importance, we simply cannot afford to neglect the health of our seas.

It is not only our oceans that suffer. Before it reaches the sea, plastic pollution affects our own health. With the convenience of food delivery apps, ordering food directly to our home has become easier than ever before. However, when hot food is placed in those containers, chemicals from the packaging can leak into the food, and subsequently our bodies. One article that I read citing research by World Wildlife Fund International suggested—I think the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) read the same research—that we may be ingesting up to 5 grams of plastic a week. It is shocking that it is the equivalent of eating a credit card.

Bisphenol A, or BPA—a hormone disruptor used in polycarbonate plastics—can mimic the effects of oestrogen in the body and interfere with the normal functioning of hormones. In high heat, or after multiple uses, plastic can degrade, releasing BPA into our food and water supplies. Plastic bottles with that chemical in them are everywhere. They can be found in rivers, on beaches and littering our streets. Fizzy drinks alone produced 90,000 tonnes of single-use plastic in 2019. I am glad that there has been a movement towards drinking tap water in restaurants as opposed to bottled beverages. Many products packaged in unrecyclable plastic do not form part of a healthy diet, so that shift is welcome from a health perspective, but what more can we do?

Interestingly, the majority of people are aware of our plastic waste problem. However, the extent to which different individuals, communities and nations are committed to addressing the problem varies hugely. In the UK, we are taking steps to tackle unnecessary plastic waste domestically, such as banning microbeads in rinse-off personal care products, and the forthcoming ban on plastic cutlery and plates from October is another encouraging development. It is heartening to see local government, as well as social and environmental groups, actively preventing, monitoring and collecting the plastics that cause marine pollution, yet there is much more we can do to lead the global response to this global issue.

Current commitments will result in only a 7% reduction in the annual discharge of plastic into the ocean by 2040. The increase in plastic production has not been mirrored by a corresponding increase in recycling rates. Once plastic enters the ocean, it is very difficult to retrieve. While new technologies can capture larger marine debris, small plastic items and microplastics are virtually impossible to recover, especially when they sink deep into the ocean, so prevention is the best solution. We need consistent rules for recycling. More importantly, we must shift the narrative to focus on reduction and alternative systems to traditional recycling models. Only then can we achieve meaningful change and a significant reduction in plastic pollution in our oceans.