After carbon and water, the drive is on to reduce the world’s plastic footprint

Submitted by: The Two Sides Team March 27, 2012

This article by Ben Schiller, which appears in The Guardian, illustrates how The Plastic Disclosure Project encourages companies to reduce how much plastic they use and lower their environmental impact

As you may have heard, we have a plastics problem. Millions of tonnes of the stuff goes into the sea every year, according to Plastic Oceans, a UK NGO. And, because plastic is made to be durable, that is where it stays. You can get more information on Plastic Oceans by visiting their website at www.plasticoceans.net

Plastic accounts for four-fifths of the accumulated garbage in the world’s oceans, says the United Nations. And, perhaps most insidious of all, the debris is broken down by waves and sunlight into a sort of “soup” that fish and other wildlife mistake for food.

This much is known. The question is, what can we do about it?

Doug Woodring, a campaigner in Hong Kong, says one answer is to bring greater accountability to the use of plastics. He is asking companies, and other major plastic consumers, to disclose how much plastic they are using, in the hope that measuring is the first step to minimising, re-using, and finding alternatives. His Plastic Disclosure Project, launched last October, aims to emulate the success of the Carbon Disclosure Project, which now counts more than 3,000 organisations as members and is widely credited with driving carbon reductions at a company level. More broadly, he is trying to establish the concept of a “plastics footprint” alongside the carbon footprint, and more recently, the water footprint.

“The Plastic Disclosure Project is a great way to get companies and communities to value and look at plastic in a different way,” he says. “We’re not saying ‘Don’t use it’; we are saying, ‘Let’s close the loop’.”

Woodring is trying to gain momentum for his campaign by sending out questionnaires, while encouraging investor groups, consultants, and other NGOs, to act as champions. So far, he has not announced any members. But he says one major cosmetics brand has completed the questionnaire, hospitals and sports clubs have asked about it, and investment funds in the UK, US, India, Taiwan, and Australia have agreed to be partners. Several consultants also want to be involved.

“We’ve heard from a lot of consulting businesses who see the project as a way for them to go to their clients and say ‘We’ve done the carbon footprint, and your water footprint, now we can start with your plastic’,” he says.

Anna Clark, president of EarthPeople, a US consultancy in Dallas working with the project, describes the scheme as “very relatable”. She thinks that because many people have heard of “giant garbage patches” in the oceans, they are primed to get involved. “What’s great is that it’s a way for companies to reduce their impacts, while being part of something that’s widely recognised by the public.”

Woodring says plastic should be an easier sell than carbon was – because of its “higher consumer touch point” and visibility. “If your power plant tells you they have reduced their carbon footprint by 20%, you don’t really know what that means. But if you say ‘We’ve changed our packaging and it’s 50% lighter, it’s a different shape, and now we can re-use it’, that’s something everyone can understand.”

Julie Frieder, a sustainability analyst at Calvert Investments, fund managers in Maryland, says it is too early to endorse plastics project, but that the disclosure model “can definitely work in plastics”.

“When companies have information, that can affect management behaviour, and it can affect investors in their ranking, scoring, and research,” she says. “It is also useful for NGOs to do their sorts of action, and governments can establish sound policy.”

To allay groans about “questionnaire fatigue”, Woodring is keeping the initial survey simple. It asks only what volume and weight of plastics groups are using, what recycling they have in place, and what plans they have to reduce plastics use, or switch to bio-plastics.

Woodring has a long way to go before the plastics project approaches the relevance of its carbon counterpart, which since 2000 has got the backing of 655 investment groups, with $78 trillion under management, set up offices in three countries, and recruited partners in another 18. For the moment, Woodring says his staff is small and that he has limited funds to market the scheme.

The position of the plastics industry probably does not help. When asked about disclosure project, Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets for the American Chemistry Council, says he welcomes anything that helps cut waste. But, he says “if it encourages people to switch to alternatives, it could have negative impacts”, and “major unintended consequences”.

The council argues that the lifecycle of plastic packaging is less carbon and energy-intensive than, say, paper. Instead of reducing plastic for its own sake, it calls for greater enforcement of litter laws, more recycling and energy-from-waste, and further research. Forty-seven plastics trade associations signed a “global declaration” last year, agreeing to such measures.

Louis Lindenberg, global packaging director at Unilever, is also sceptical about the plastics project. “I’ve heard about it, but I’ve wondered as to the value of it,” he says. “What is it going to deliver? Plastic is here, and it’s going to stay, I’ve no doubts about it.”

But, in a sense, Unilever proves the value of Woodring’s approach. A couple of years ago, the company did a full lifecycle assessment of the packaging it was using, eventually committing to a 50% waste reduction by 2020, under its 2010 Sustainable Living Plan. It is fair guess that if all companies took Unilever’s approach, Doug Woodring, and his organisation, would not be too unhappy. For now, he is struggling to achieve a lot less.

Ben Schiller is freelance journalist in New York, writing regularly for Fast Company, the FT and Yale e360

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