The report “X-Ray of Plastic Pollution: Rethinking Plastic in Portugal”, carried out by the Nature Portugal Association (ANP), which works in association with the international environmental organization World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), is presented as the first national report on plastic pollution in mainland Portugal.

The ANP / WWF concludes that the country lacks information on the ecological, social, economic and health impacts of plastic pollution, which precludes not only a reduction strategy but the determination of a waste management investment.

“We know the global data: Every year 345 million tons of virgin plastic are produced worldwide. Europe is the second largest producer of plastic, with about 64.4 million tons produced in 2017. And in Portugal, what data is available? What is the real cost of plastics in Portugal? ”Asks Ângela Morgado, ANP / WWF executive director, quoted in an association statement.

The report shows that one of the biggest problems relates to single-use plastic packaging, which has a shelf life of up to a few minutes but can take hundreds of years to decompose and reveals that the effects for the human health of the decomposition of micro-plastics and nano-plastics, which are present in species consumed as food, are unknown.

In Portugal, 2016 data indicate that the amount of declared, produced or imported plastic packaging was 195,902 tonnes.

“Production is very high, but the percentage of recycled items in the period 1950-2015 was only 9%, and 12% was incinerated. The remaining 80% was accumulated in landfills and lost in the environment”. In Portugal, around 40% of plastic waste is still land-filled (2016 data), warns the document, which does not diabolize the plastic and admits that the characteristics that make it beneficial, persistence and resistance, are the same which make it harmful to the environment.

The report also cites recent calculations that indicate that more than half of all plastic in the world has been produced in the last two decades. In the next 20 years the amount is expected to double.

Plastics constitute the largest percentage of waste present in the environment in Portugal, either as macro-plastics (disposables and fishing gear) or as micro-plastics, on beaches, rivers and ingested by marine species.

Plastic pollution from the oceans is one of the threats to the planet, the document points out. According to 2017 data, it is estimated that around eight million tons of plastic annually reach the oceans.

The ANP / WWF defends as a priority the prevention and effective control of pollution by plastics and proposes, among other measures, reducing the supply of disposable plastics, the introduction of deposit systems, in particular bottles, and better labelling.

Public authorities are proposing to create incentives for recycling economy and municipal plastic waste management plans, and to strengthen waste management legislation.

The association also defends incentives for the economy of recycling, to improve the indicators, the increase of public points of delivery of plastic waste and the incentive to the production of signs alluding to the incorporation of recycled plastic.

Ângela Morgado considers, in the statement, that it is essential that packaging guides are created to better inform citizens about which plastics are easy to recycle and safe to reuse.

The report follows the WWF campaign “No Plastics in Nature” launched this year and was presented Tuesday to the Ministry of the Environment.

WWF is one of the largest independent conservation organizations in the world, with more than five million supporters and an active global network in over 100 countries.