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| New Scientist | 29 January 2022
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Columnist
I
N THE lead-up to Christmas,
my household began to feel
like a badly managed waste-
processing facility. We planned
to spend time with vulnerable
relatives, so were keeping a close
eye on our covid-19 status. Each
lateral flow test generated seven
items of non-recyclable waste,
which piled up in the bathroom
until I bit the plastic bullet and
binned the lot. They are now,
presumably, in landfill.
The pandemic may have
temporarily cut global
consumption and greenhouse
gas emissions, but from a
pollution perspective, it has
spawned an almighty mess. It
became clear early on that large
quantities of discarded masks
and other medical detritus were
finding their way into the wild.
Recent research has revealed
the shocking scale of the covid-19
waste heap. It estimates that by
August 2021, the pandemic had
generated 8.4 million tonnes
of plastic waste, which has been
dumped into the environment
rather than disposed of properly.
Such mismanaged waste is the
main source of ocean plastic.
Before the pandemic, we
collectively fly-tipped about
32 million tonnes of it a year.
The extra 8.4 million tonnes
“intensifies pressure on an already
out-of-control global plastic waste
problem”, write the researchers
(
PNAS
, doi.org/gnct34).
This is no exaggeration. Last
year, the United Nations declared
that waste and pollution is a
planetary crisis on a par with
climate change and biodiversity
loss, and that we must tackle all
three together. However, until
recently, this crisis was a distant
third in the global pecking order.
That, in part, was down to a lack
of data. Quantifying waste and
pollution is hard. But if there was
any doubt about the scale of the
problem, new research dispels
it. It contends that waste and
pollution have crossed a Rubicon
called a “planetary boundary”, and
are now a threat to the habitability
of Earth. We are literally choking
on our own detritus.
The concept of a planetary
boundary dates back to 2009,
when a group of researchers led
by Johan Rockström at Stockholm
University in Sweden tried to
define what they called a “safe
operating space for humanity”.
They picked nine global parameters
that have stayed remarkably stable
for the past 10,000 years, including
climate, biodiversity, land
degradation and pollution. These
collectively create a life-support
system for us, but are being pushed
out of whack by our dominance
of the planet. For each of them,
they attempted to set a boundary
that we breach at our peril.
In 2015, the team declared that
four of the nine boundaries –
biosphere integrity, climate
change, land use, and the nitrogen
and phosphorus cycles – had
been breached. And two of them
were still undefined, including
“novel entities” – mostly chemicals
released into the environment by
human activities. In other words,
waste and pollution.
The new paper attempts to fill
this knowledge gap. It defines the
boundary as the global capacity
to run safety tests on these novel
entities and monitor them in the
environment. The authors say
global production of chemicals
has increased 50-fold since 1950,
and there are 350,000 synthetic
chemicals on the market today.
Most haven’t been properly
assessed for environmental
toxicity (see page 44). The team
estimates we have overshot the
boundary by about 200 per cent,
roughly as much as for biosphere
integrity and worse than climate
change (
Environmental Science
& Technology
,
doi.org/gn6rsw).
The timing of the research is
both fortuitous and strategic. Next
month, the fifth UN Environment
Assembly – the world’s highest-
level decision-making body on
environmental issues – will meet
in Nairobi, Kenya. On the table
is a resolution to set up a global
science body for chemicals, waste
and pollution, modelled on the
ones for climate and biodiversity.
This is the culmination of a
campaign that began last year
and has been gathering support.
It is no coincidence that many of
the researchers on the planetary
boundaries paper are involved.
Even without the covid-19 waste,
it is clear that the campaign needs
to succeed. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change has done
more than any other group to
cajole world leaders into taking
the climate crisis seriously. The
Intergovernmental Science-Policy
Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services, created in
2012, has elevated awareness
of the biodiversity crisis to a
new level. Waste and pollution
deserve no less.
We aren’t going to step back
inside the boundary any time
soon. Global chemical production
is forecast to triple again by 2050.
But when our covid-19 waste has
become an archaeological record
of the first great pandemic of the
21st century, maybe we will have
learned to stop fouling our own
nest. If we are still around at all.
❚
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