Shifting Plastics to a Circular Economy Could Generate Billions
Plastic packaging is a part of our lives. Just think of everything you buy that is packaged in plastic. But too much of it is just chucked into the garbage. Consider that 32 percent of plastic packaging never makes it into collection systems, according to a new report released by the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. That waste creates “significant economic costs by reducing the productivity of vital natural systems such as the ocean and clogging urban infrastructure,” the report’s authors wrote. The cost of thrown-away plastic packaging that isn’t recycled is “conservatively estimated” at $40 billion a year, which exceeds “the plastic packaging industry’s profit pool.”
