Individual SDG’s
Sustainable goals development have been accepted by the UN. If none of these goals are specifically about plastic pollution, seven of them are linked to it.
SDG’s and the plastic soup
For many companies, banks, and investment funds, the sustainability goals have the function of a check-list for their sustainability barometers. But how is the fight against plastic pollution given a place in this process? For a number of SDGs, it’s relatively easy to point to the relationship with the plastic soup. In this way, the fight against plastic pollution can still become an integral part of the sustainability agenda via the SDGs. The starting point is that it is no longer sufficient to look only at the end phase of the plastic lifecycle (waste), but that the focus should be on the material’s life cycle as a whole, from extraction to its leakage into the environment or proper disposal.
The plastic life cycle
To combat the plastic soup, it is necessary to focus on the whole plastic life cycle. This consists broadly speaking of the following stages:
- Extraction and transport of fossil raw materials
- Refining and production
- Processing of the commodities into pellets
- The production of consumer products and packaging
- Waste processing and disposal
- Plastic in the environment
The connection with SDGs
Combatting the plastic soup involves linking each of the above stages to individual SDGs, taking into account the following three main goals:
- Preventing plastic from reaching the environment
- Avoiding health risks to humans and other animals
- The absolute reduction of plastic
