Page - 290 - in Freshwater Microplastics - Emerging Environmental Contaminants?

allowingproduct upgrades over plannedobsolescence.Bymaking abusiness case for managing the circular flow of technical materials, the status quo of cradle to grave canbeput to rest. Themarketdominanceofpoorlydesignedproductswill likelynotself-regulatea transformation, requiring policy tools. EPR in some ways can be facilitated by novel policy tools. In London in 2015 a 5p fee on plastic bags, rather than a ban, resulted in an85%reduction in their consumption. In areaswhere citizens “pay to pitch” thewaste theygenerate,consumerscommonlystrippackagingat thepointof purchase,which in turn iscommunicated to thedistributorofgoods to redesign the delivery of goods. This system of pay to pitch has been applied to some remote communities, such as islands, to require importers to export postconsumer materials. AndrewWinston, authorofTheBigPivot, suggests analternatemodelofdoing business, the Benefit Corporation, or “B-Corp,” whereby corporations take on a mission statement of social or environmental justice that is on equal parwith the profitmotive. A rapidly changing consumer base that ismore connected through communication is forcing corporations to be transparent, accountable, and behave ethically.TheB-Corp is the bridge across thedivide. 8 ReducingandReusingPlasticWaste Avoiding the production of newplastics altogetherwhenever possible is themost reliable way to avoid the generation of microplastics, whether primary microplastics (needed for the production of new plastic articles) or secondary (resultingduringbreakdownof larger plastic items). As the market for ethically produced products is growing worldwide (e.g., Fairtrade [100], organic food produce [101, 102]), and consumers become aware of the possible impacts of marine pollution [103], several examples are demon- strating a successful reductionofplasticwasteor the reuseofdiscardedplastics in order to createother products (upcycling), thereby savingnatural resources and, in somecases, even removingoceanplastic pollution. Among popular recent innovations are the production of clothes, shoes, skate- boards, sun-glasses, andswimminggear fromderelictfishinggear [104,105].Such linesofproducts,makingapro-environmental statement, are likely tobeespecially appealing to customers of the Generation Y/Millenials (see references in [106]). Another example for a consumer-driven desire to combat excessive plastic litter, this time in the formof packagingwaste, is the recent development of zerowaste stores, sproutingup inEurope and theUnitedStates (Fig. 3a) [107, 108].Manyof these stores are crowd funded [107] and require customers tobring their own food containerwhichalsoavoids foodwastebyallowingcustomers tobuythequantities they consume. Many of those shops do not offer products from large brands to distance themselves from supermarket chains and emphasize a community-based economymodel. 290 M.Eriksen et al.