Bioplastics Cannot Replace Waste Management: Stopping Plastic Pollution

 Bioplastics can help stop the plastic pollution nightmare. But if bioplastics are used as yet another excuse to continue doing nothing about the millions of kilos of new plastic waste that daily pours into rivers and oceans, then bioplastics will not help stop the plastic pollution nightmare. While bioplastics are aggressively pursued, there must be an even greater effort to ensure that proper waste management becomes universal. As long as billions of people in developing countries continue to use products  wrapped in plastic and other plastic materials daily, with no infrastructures to properly collect and dispose of their plastic waste, the plastic pollution nightmare will only worsen. 

Bioplastics, recycling, plastic straw bans, river and ocean cleanup devices, jewelry made from plastic trash pulled from oceans, beach cleanups and all else are not stopping the flood of new plastic trash that daily enters rivers and oceans by millions of kilos. Bioplastics may or may not one day make a real dent against the use of plastics, but waiting for that day to come while rivers, oceans and more continue to be degraded and contaminated by plastic trash is reckless and wrong. The priority must be on establishing universal waste management. 

Universal waste management, in which plastic trash and other harmful waste already contaminating the environment are removed,  and in which new plastic trash and other harmful waste are properly collected and disposed, will end the plastic pollution nightmare and lift millions of people out of poverty by all the jobs that will be created. Universal waste management is far less expensive than continuing to turn rivers, oceans and more into polluted sewers. Without proper waste management the plastic pollution nightmare will not end. It will only become more of a nightmare.