What would a world without plastic look like? Earlier this year, Austria-based environmental consultancy Denkstatt imagined such a world, where farmers, retailers and consumers use wood, tins, glass bottles and jars, and cardboard to cover their goods. It found the mass of packaging would increase by 3.6 times, it would take more than double the energy to make and the greenhouse gases generated would be 2.7 times higher.
the mass of 大多数
To understand this, consider the properties of plastic that make it so attractive: it is durable, flexible, it does not shatter, it can breathe (or not) and it is extremely lightweight. As a result, food and drink are protected from damage and kept for lengths of time previously unimaginable.
The European Packaging and Films Association (Pafa) says average spoilage of food between harvest and table is 3% in the developed world, compared with 50% in developing countries, where plastic pallets, crates, trays, film and bags are not so widespread. Once the food reaches people's homes, its lifespan is also increased – for a shrinkwrapped cucumber, from two to 14 days.
A less obvious benefit is that, by being much lighter than alternatives, plastic packaging greatly reduces the fuel needed for transport. Because of the huge carbon content of our diets, it is estimated that for every tonne of carbon produced by making plastic, five tonnes is saved, says Barry Turner from Pafa.
A more surprising point is made by Friends of the Earth's waste campaigner Julian Kirby, who points out that because it is inert in landfill, plastic waste buried in the ground is a counterintuitive way of "sequestering" carbon and so avoiding it adding to global warming and climate change.
This focus on carbon and climate change, however, ignores the very reasons plastic bags and plastic packaging generally first gripped the public imagination – namely that it is such a highly visible result of our throwaway society.
Wales, Ireland and other countries have opted to levy a tax on plastic bags to deter their use but making deeper cuts to plastic waste will need other options too.
levy a tax on 对……征税 deter v. 制止;阻止
Many "ethical" products – from sandwiches to nappy bags – have switched to biodegradable plastics, made either from natural products such as cornstarch or by using an additive that helps break down the plastic. However, Turner suggests this will remain a niche, because the process is expensive and – in his words – is "destroying" a resource that could be recycled.
break down 分解
Recycling plastic is particularly hard because there are so many types and because it is difficult to remove contamination. Increasing recycling is, though, one of the two areas focused on by the plastics industry. It estimates that if every council in the UK operated at the rates achieved by the best local authority for each type of plastic – PET bottles, cartons, trays, bags and so on – the country could raise total plastic recycling from 23% to 45%. "On-the-go" recycling – currently almost nonexistent – also needs to be dramatically improved, said Turner.
at the rates 以…的速度;按…的比率
To meet its self-imposed target of zero plastic waste to landfill by 2020, however, the industry is largely looking to incineration, which is highly controversial with environment groups and communities, who worry about how waste ash is disposed of and breathing in emissions from the plants – despite assurances from the Health Protection Agency that modern plants are not damaging to health.
Greenhouse gas emissions from such plants are also high: equivalent to 540g of carbon dioxide (CO2e) per kilowatt hour, more than gas power and more than 100 times that for nuclear.
Instead, environment campaigners want more attention paid to the "waste hierarchy" – reduce, reuse, recycle. To drive this change, the government this month proposed increasing all recycling targets, raising plastics to 50%.
waste hierarchy 废物管理体系
If enforced, that should encourage innovations, such as more food recycling (which research suggests reduces over-purchasing and so the need for packaging), and the recent development of a new dye for black plastic bags which, unlike the traditional compound, can be detected by the automatic sorting machines.
Globally, 47 industry groups have united to fund research to stop plastic getting into the seas. On land, countries could adopt a system used in several European nations where manufacturers are responsible for recovering a percentage of the plastic they make. "The idea of producer responsibility is one that people are most agreed on, but no one's sure how," said Kirby.
Question time:
1. What are the properties of plastic according to the passage?
2. Why is recycling plastic particularly hard?
【参考答案】
1. it is durable, flexible, it does not shatter, it can breathe (or not) and it is extremely lightweight. Therefore, food and drink are protected from damage and kept for lengths of time previously unimaginable.
2. Because there are so many types and because it is difficult to remove contamination.