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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.
Freshwater Microplastics
Emerging Environmental Contaminants?
- Titel
- Freshwater Microplastics
- Untertitel
- Emerging Environmental Contaminants?
- Autoren
- Martin Wagner
- Scott Lambert
- Verlag
- Springer Open
- Datum
- 2018
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-319-61615-5
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Seiten
- 316
- Kategorien
- Naturwissenschaften Chemie