UBA President Dirk Messner said, "About 90 per cent of littered plastic waste can be eliminated through removal measures. However, the goal must be to prevent litter from entering the environment in the first place. Overall, the amount of carelessly discarded (littered) waste continues to rise. The national transposition of the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive on 3 July 2021 will provide very effective stimulus to combat plastic littering, for example the ban on crockery and cutlery made of single-use plastic or the labelling requirements for certain single-use plastic products. The requirement to offer take-away food or drinks in reusable packaging from 2023 also makes sense and will reduce the amount of plastic in the environment. We must now pay much more attention to the other areas – tyre abrasion, inputs from the building sector or from agriculture and horticulture. Limit values for tyre abrasion should be introduced. The German Environment Agency is therefore supporting the development of methods of measurement and their implementation at EU level with studies conducted as its own research project."
Beyond the above-mentioned areas, a large part of plastic input comes from products that are manufactured for and used in environmentally friendly applications - e.g. agricultural foils, construction foils, palisades, play and sports equipment, tendril aids, browsing protection, paints, textiles or automotive tyres. In the course of their use, smaller plastic particles are produced through wear, abrasion or decomposition and then enter the environment where they cannot be removed. Some 150,500 to 253,000 tonnes of plastic products used in environmentally friendly ways remain in the environment.
About the study
Plastics in the environment are a major problem because they either do not degrade at all or degrade only very poorly and can thus accumulate in the environment and severely affect individual organisms as well as entire ecosystems. Products made of biodegradable plastics are no alternative as they only degrade under very specific conditions which are usually not given in the environment. Knowledge about sources, pathways and quantities of plastic inputs is crucial for targeted and effective measures to counteract plastic inputs. Another important question is whether or how much of the plastics can be removed again once they have been introduced. The model now developed allows a first-time objective assessment of the overall relevance of the issue and identifies the main sources of inputs.
Up to now, data on plastic inputs into the environment have only been available in isolated cases, mostly in connection with littered waste and measured in quantities. The project's central goal was therefore to develop a methodology that, in a second step, estimated the mass of plastics that enter the environment in Germany through various pathways and remain there over the long term, for example after cleaning or removal measures. However, the study also shows a need for further research. There are considerable gaps in certain parts of the data, meaning that calculations had to be made on the basis of various assumptions. Results are therefore affected by uncertainties, which is also reflected in the wide ranges of the values. Therefore, the data situation should therefore be improved and the model should be updated in order to improve the knowledge of plastic inputs into the environment and to develop appropriate measures.
When interpreting the results it is important to note that in the case of plastic products used in the environment, their fate in the environment results from inputs that occur throughout their entire service life lasting in some cases years or even decades (e.g. through abrasion, weathering, damage). It also results from the fact that the products are not always completely removed from the environment at the end of their service life. Consequently, there is a clear time lag between the year in which the product is placed on the market and the year in which it remains in the environment. In the modelling approach used here, this future fate in the environment is brought forward to the year of the original use of the plastic products.
In the case of littered plastic waste, in contrast, its fate results from the inputs in a given year. In this case, it can be assumed that the input and the beginning of the fate occur consecutively, i.e. in the same period under consideration.
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