San Francisco is banning plastic bottles — a significant new step towards achieving its zero-waste target within 4 years. Here's why this measure matters so much more than a drop in the ocean.
The city of San Francisco, in the United States, has banned the sale of plastic bottles in public buildings and city-owned properties, such as the town hall. It has also launched a campaign to encourage residents to use tap water — cheap and clean — instead of contributing to the disproportionate and senseless use of plastic bottles. Americans use 50 million plastic bottles a year, of which only 23 per cent are recycled, according to the Ban the bottle campaign. Producing these bottles requires 17 million barrels of oil a year and more water than a bottle actually contains.
This is not the first measure adopted by San Francisco's administration to curb plastic pollution. The city has already banned plastic bags and polystyrene containers, and has introduced a 10-cent discount for anyone who brings their own reusable shopping bag. A 2009 law, meanwhile, requires commercial and residential buildings to carry out separate waste collection: a hugely lucrative business for the city, given that fines for non-compliance can reach one thousand dollars. Recology, the company responsible for San Francisco's waste disposal, processes 500 tonnes of recyclable materials every day. Thanks to a reduction in waste produced and mandatory recycling programmes, the Californian city is now able to prevent 80 per cent of its waste from ending up in local landfills. San Francisco's environmental roots are a firmly established part of its culture.
The plastics industry uses as much oil as the aviation sector, according to a report released at the World Economic Forum in 2016 in Davos, Switzerland. The equivalent of one lorry-load of plastic waste is dumped into the sea every minute: 8 million tonnes of plastic every year. It is estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans. The Pacific trash vortex is an island of plastic floating in the northern Pacific Ocean that is continuously expanding. There are other similar accumulations, made up of small pieces of petrochemical materials, often mistaken for food by seabirds. A true tragedy, as it introduces plastic into the food chain. While ways of cleaning up the oceans are being sought, the only real solution remains preventing this plastic waste from reaching the sea in the first place.
Plastic use will increase fourfold by 2050 and, despite recycling having begun more than 40 years ago, today we are only able to recycle 5 per cent of plastic packaging, and even then only once. Consumer goods are currently made from mixed plastic materials suited only to downcycling — that is, their transformation into lower-quality products or objects — unlike glass and aluminium, which can be recycled indefinitely without any loss of quality.
Although San Francisco is doing an exceptional job, it still isn't enough. Even the measures already in place have their limitations: the city's ban on plastic bags is not enforced across the whole city — in Chinatown, for instance, they continue to be handed out. Moreover, the ban on the sale of plastic bottles does not cover the entire city and applies only where an alternative water source is available. The law also has exceptions, such as major sporting events, and is less stringent than the one in force in national parks across the country, where the ban is absolute.
Reducing and at the same time discouraging the use of plastic bottles is undoubtedly a positive choice, and a step every city should take. But it takes more courage. It is time to use innovation to find sustainable alternatives to pollutants, and to show that we truly understand how much we owe to nature.
Translated by Camilla Soldati
