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ExxonMobil remains the largest producer of polymers bound for single-use plastics – responsible for six million tonnes in 2021 – followed by China’s Sinopec, which produced 5.8 million tonnes, and US-based Dow third.
Soft plastics have been stockpiled after the collapse of the REDcycle scheme.
To achieve a significant reduction in production investors should demand companies commit to ending the building of new plastics facilities, and governments should impose levies on production and consumption of the material to raise funds for new recycling facilities, the report said.
Growth in single-use plastics production was driven by demand for flexible packaging such as films and sachets, which grew from a 55 per share of all single-use plastics in 2019, to 57 per cent in 2021.
“This trend is concerning given flexible plastics have lower collection rates, are more difficult to sort and recycle, and have higher rates of leakage into the environment,” the report says.
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Coles and Woolworths have been ordered to dump more than 5200 tonnes of soft-plastic waste into landfill from their failed national recycling scheme, the Herald and The Age reported on Friday.
That scheme run by the Melbourne firm REDcycle claimed to have diverted more than five billion pieces of soft plastic from landfill over the last decade, but has been stockpiling plastics in warehouses.
One of the report’s authors, Dominic Charles, said bans on truly unnecessary plastics, such as those adopted by Australian states on items such as single-use carrier bags and cutlery, were important, but that those items only made up a small proportion of plastics in lives.
He said consumers should still be given freedom of choice, but they should not be unwittingly left to pick up the cost of the damage to the environment and their health caused by plastics.
“The companies producing and distributing those products should be paying for their pollution.”
NSW and Victoria have banned shops from providing single use plastic items such as straws, plates and cutlery, though plastic wrap and packaging remains in widespread use.
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