Trends to tackle plastic waste
To mark World Environment Day 2025, we've taken a look at the key technologies combatting single-use pollution
Ever since it was invented back in 1907, plastic has become a pillar of everyday life, making up the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, and the takeaway coffee cups we drink from. But, the more we’ve relied on plastic for manufacturing, the more we’ve inadvertently added to a mounting and increasingly hard-to-tackle wave of plastic waste.
How can we reduce plastic pollution?
This year, the theme for World Environment Day (5th June) is tackling plastic waste, as part of the UN’s #BeatPlasticPollution movement. Not only does the day draw attention to the harmful impacts of plastic pollution, but the aim is to also spotlight potential solutions that will help us refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rethink plastic use.
The occasion is timely, with the next session of negotiations to develop a global plastics treaty set to take place in Switzerland later this summer. Following on from March 2022, when over 170 countries signed a resolution to create a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution, discussions have so far been inconclusive. Come August, the hope is that nations will finally agree on a comprehensive approach that mitigates the impact of plastic across its whole lifecycle: from design and production through to its disposal.
As countries work to establish this instrument, along with their own nation-specific measures, innovators are also coming up with new ways to tackle plastic waste and protect the ecosystems that otherwise end up littered with this pollution.
To mark World Environment Day, we’ve set out three trends that are shaping the way we tackle plastic waste, along with some key examples of the trends in action from our Innovation Database.
Three trends to tackle plastic waste
Next-generation plastic recycling
According to one study, creating virgin plastics (meaning those made directly using fossil fuel feedstocks) releases around 2.24 billion metric tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions every year – equivalent to over five per cent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite a growing awareness of the harm plastics cause our planet, virgin plastic manufacturing continues to increase. That means more production emissions that the climate can’t afford, and even more plastic waste clogging up landfills and polluting our environment.
Efficient recycling is a central pillar of combatting our plastic problem, but issues surrounding a lack of infrastructure, scalability, cost, and energy consumption have often hindered recycling solutions from being implemented on a large scale, particularly in the Global South. Another concern is that most plastic recycling that takes place now is actually ‘downcycling’, meaning it creates lower-quality materials than the product we started with.
Processes that retain as much value as possible from plastic materials, as well as systems that remove barriers to plastic recycling, are essential. Here are some examples from the Springwise Database:
Combatting marine plastic pollution
Images of beaches littered with packaging waste are often the first thing that springs to mind when we consider the world’s plastic problem. Whether left by the coast deliberately by beachgoers, blown over from nearby bins and landfills, or transported by polluted waterways, once plastic waste has entered the ocean, it becomes extremely hard to locate and retrieve.
When it reaches the ocean, this waste poses immediate danger to marine ecosystems, trapping and choking animals and smothering vulnerable coral reefs. And just like on land, plastics take hundreds and even thousands of years to break down in our oceans, breaking down into ever tinier and more pervasive microplastics. In fact, it’s estimated that there are now 50-75 trillion pieces of plastic and microplastics polluting the ocean.
Tackling ocean plastic is a huge undertaking, requiring interventions long before the waste has reached the sea, as well as more efficient ways of tackling the pollution once in the ocean. Take a look at some ways innovators are protecting our oceans from the plastic scourge:
Alternatives to single-use plastic
Customers have long opted for the convenience of single-use packaging options, but that convenience has come at a great expense for the planet. It’s now estimated that around 40 per cent of demand for plastic production comes from packaging: including items that are only used for a few short seconds or minutes before being thrown into the bin.
Recycling is one option, but with less than 10 per cent of plastics getting recycled around the world, other solutions are required while waste management systems catch up with plastic waste generation. Reuse is likely to be one central solution.
Historically, circular reusable schemes have largely been concentrated to one-off trials, but as the idea of the circular economy becomes more popular and mainstream, more brands and governments are working to implement effective reusable schemes. Here are just a few ways innovators are taking single-use alternatives to the next level:
Want to learn more about how the world’s innovators are fighting plastic pollution? Browse the Springwise Innovation Database for even more inspiration from over 14,000 solutions.
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