TRANSCRIPT:
Australia, so the experts say, uses a lot of plastic.
Geoff Spinks is a senior Professor in the University of Wollongong’s School of Engineering.
"They're amazing materials for all sorts of different applications. They're cheap, they're lightweight, they're strong, they're easy to shape into into all sorts of different shapes, and that's why they've become so ubiquitous really in all the products that we use. So without any other consequences on manufacturers in downstream, then of course, they will go to you is a great material, they produce a great product at a good price."
But increasingly, there's concern about how much plastic Australia is generating.
Nina Gbor from the Australia Institute says that charging for the use of plastic packages could be part of the solution.
"We consume 3.8 million tons of plastic every year. To put that into context, that's 72 Sydney Harbour Bridges. That's the size of it, that's how much plastic we're consuming Australia."
The Institute says a tax on plastic packaging could raise $1.5 billion a year for the federal government.
The initiative has been inspired by a European Union tax that requires member states to pay 800 pounds per tonne of plastic packaging waste that is not recycled.
In Australian dollars, this means $1,300 per ton of "virgin" or unrecycled plastic.
Nina Gbor says that could do a lot of good.
"Imagine that that 72 Harbour bridges' plastic was converted into money via tax, we could do so much with it. You know, we could clean up a lot of pollution. We can come up with potentially alternative to plastic that are healthier for the environment and for people."
But Kate Noble, the World Wildlife Fund's senior ocean policy manager, says this should not be considered a long-term solution.
"We really shouldn't be seeing that as a long term source of income because the very purpose of that particular environmental tax is to start to reduce the amount of plastic going into the system rather than raising revenue. But it's a potentially really important lever for Australia to be using to reduce plastic production, consumption and even pollution."
She says reducing plastic use is not just a human issue - but a much broader environmental one.
"Most plastic is derived from fossil fuels, oil and gas. So there's a huge amount of energy and a huge amount of resources embodied in the plastic that we use when we make plastic that lasts only for seconds or minutes or even weeks. That's an enormous waste. Unfortunately, a lot of the plastic that is made also leaks into the environment, which causes really serious harms to wildlife and marine ecosystems, including injury, disease, and even unfortunately, death. We're also seeing a growing and emerging evidence based around the impact of plastic pollution on human health. So we know that it's having an impact, we don't know exactly what those long term impacts will be but we know for example that microplastic is present in human breast milk."
Businesses and consumers are still opting into the use of plastic.
Kate Noble says that the practicality of plastic makes it hard to live without it.
"Plastic is a versatile material, and is really quite essential in some applications. The issue is that we've allowed it to be used for everything and everywhere. And that's absolutely not appropriate. So it is quite reasonable to expect that we will be using plastic into the future, but what we need to make sure is that we're only using it where we absolutely need to use it, that it's designed to be repurposed and reused over and over and over again, and that when it reaches the end of its life, we have a pathway to manage it."
Some experts say making plastic sustainable is easier said than done.
Professor Spinks says it's complex and expensive.
"One of the real problems with recycling plastics is that at the fundamental level, plastics don't like to mix with each other. The problem is that when you melt mixed plastics, and then shape them and solidify them into the final product, that process of solidification means that they separate at the right down at the molecular level. And when they separate, they create these weak interfaces. So your final solid product is very brittle, and therefore not very useful."
He says there is also a lack of education about recycling.
"I think that information is missing. When I speak about recycled plastics most people are quite surprised that there's this technical issue around the problem associated with mixing up plastics. And I think the surprise comes partly because we're encouraged just as recyclers, active recyclers, to put all our plastics into one bin. But that's not the best way to do it from a recycling point of view."
The Australia Institute says recycling issues have to be addressed.
They say as a country, we're missing every target it's set, and recovering less than a fifth of the plastic waste used each year.
Yet consumption is expected to more than double to nearly 10 billion tonnes by 2050.
