Malta has banned the importation of certain single-use plastics, such as bags, containers and cotton buds. Put into perspective of the enormous environmental damage caused by plastic waste, this is a mere drop in the ocean.

Plastic is a highly toxic material made from fossil fuels. A 2017 global study showed that we created 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste up to 2015. Of this, only nine per cent has ever been recycled and 12 per cent has been incinerated, thus polluting the atmosphere, while 79 per cent still exists in landfills or in the natural environment somewhere on earth where it will continue to contaminate life for tens and hundreds of years to come.

These waste volumes are estimated to quadruple by 2050. In the environment, plastic multiplies by breaking down into smaller pieces, up to sizes too small to measure and that could penetrate the cells and organs of animals, including humans.

Landfilled plastic continues to survive, fragmenting to ever smaller bits. It pollutes by leaching and combustion. The Mediterranean Sea contains one billion metric tons of plastic made up of an estimated 500 billion pieces. At concentration levels of 892,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre, the Mediterranean has the third highest concentration of plastic in the world. All Mediterranean countries are responsible for this pollution.

Most clothes, textiles and fabrics are made from plastic fibres. Every time we run our washing machine, hundreds of thousands of plastic microfibres are flushed down the drain. These microfibres flow wherever the water takes them, into our soils, rivers and seas.

Microparticles of plastic that are ripped off car tyres as they rotate and rub against the road surface may account for up to 28 per cent of overall microplastic waste in the oceans.

Microplastics have entered the food chain. It has been reported that up to 80 per cent of humans may already have plastic in their blood.

We are led to believe that plastic appears out of nowhere and that, once we separate the plastic waste at home or at work, the problem is solved. This is not so. Plastic waste is not valuable and it never has been.

The cost of using oil to make plastic is so low that separating and recycling plastic waste cannot be justified economically. Plastic degrades with time and with each recycling process.

A degradation of resin properties and performance occurs during the initial manufacturing. The degradation continues as plastic ages. More degradation takes place with each recycling process.

Up to two-thirds of plastic waste separated at source is not clean enough for further processing, some cannot be recycled because of its density or composition, some can be recycled once and even less can be recycled twice. After that, it is all just waste that will continue to pollute the planet for centuries.

This is the scale of the plastic crisis worldwide and what we are facing in Malta. When faced with a plastic waste tsunami, the banning of a handful of single use plastic items by Malta and the EU, and not even the whole range of them at that, is insignificant.

Policymakers display a dangerous lack of understanding of ecosystem functioning and its importance for our collective well-being.

The industry and policymakers like to frame the plastic waste crisis as a consumption problem. It is, in fact, a production problem. We are being made to buy plastic as the only option.

We should not be forced to pollute the land and ocean environment and made to kill wildlife every time we eat, drink or go shopping. We need to be given a choice, a plastic-free choice.

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