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Sustainability assessment of a single-use plastics ban

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Barlow, CY 
Finkbeiner, M 

Abstract

jats:pGovernments around the world are introducing single-use plastics bans to alleviate plastic marine pollution. This paper investigates whether banning single-use plastic items is an appropriate strategy to protect the environment. Product life cycle assessment was conducted for single-use plastic and single-use non-plastic alternatives. The life cycle impacts of the two product categories were compared and scaled according to EU consumption of 2016. The results show that a single-use plastics ban would decrease plastic marine pollution in the EU by 5.5% which equates to a 0.06% decrease globally. However, such a ban would increase emissions contributing to marine aquatic toxicity in the EU by 1.4%. This paper concludes that single-use items are harmful to the environment regardless of their material. Therefore, banning or imposing a premium price on single-use items in general and not only single-use plastic items is a more effective method of reducing consumption and thereby pollution. The plastics ban only leads to a small reduction of global plastic marine pollution and thus provides only a partial solution to the problem it intends to solve.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

single-use plastics, plastics ban, plastic marine pollution, LCA, plastics policy

Journal Title

Sustainability (Switzerland)

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2071-1050
2071-1050

Volume Title

12

Publisher

MDPI AG