Letters | On Earth Day, Hong Kong must reckon with the inconvenient truth about plastic
- Readers discuss why Hong Kong’s ban on single-use plastics should be embraced, and the need for the city’s residents to do to their bit to prevent wastage of food
The theme of Earth Day 2024 is Planet vs Plastics, advocating a 60 per cent reduction in global production of all plastics by 2040 for human and planetary health.
You might wonder why plastics are considered a problem these days when they have been widely used in our daily lives, from beverage bottles and meal containers to shopping bags and fast fashion.
So, allow me to take you through the life journey of plastics. Plastics are a kind of synthetic polymer, a product of oil refining processes. Around 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced a year globally.
Plastic bottle waste is just the tip of the iceberg. Even more worrying is the continuous increase in single-use plastic production – around 36 per cent of all plastics made go into single-use packaging.
The production, use and disposal of plastics are predicted to generate 19 per cent of global carbon emissions by 2040. Hence, plastics not only contribute to the global waste crisis but also worsen climate change.