Low levels of plastic recycling are bad for human health and the environment. For lead, high levels of dangerous recycling are doing the damage. Northern Australia’s vast, ecologically relatively intact savannas are undervalued.

Plastics harming the health of humans and the environment

The production of plastics has increased from 2 megatons (Mt) per year in 1950 to 475 in 2022, with a projection of 1200 Mt by 2060. It almost goes without saying that China is the biggest producer, responsible for over 40 per cent of the annual global total.

There is now 8,000 Mt of plastic waste polluting the planet from the depths of the oceans to the tops of mountain ranges. Less than 10 per cent of plastic is recycled. Three factors are principally responsible for the worsening plastic pollution crisis: global plastic production is increasing; recycling is failing; plastics fragment into ever smaller particles, most of which do not biodegrade in the environment. A 70 per cent reduction in the production of single use plastics would avoid the consumption of almost four million barrels of oil per day (a staggering 5 per cent of total daily consumption) and cost the petrochemical industry US$138 billion per year.

Image suppliedMaking matters worse, plastic pollution and climate change, which have common origins in hyper-consumptive societies, should be viewed as joint crises. Climate change is contributing to the durability, abundance, wide distribution, exposure to and impacts of plastic and its associated chemicals in our marine and fresh waters, soils, atmosphere, animals and plants. Together, climate change and plastic pollution can have significant synergistic (not just additive) ecological effects. Large, long-lived aquatic organisms at the top of food webs (apex predators) seem to be particularly vulnerable and human agricultural and fisheries systems are not immune.

Following the Paris Agreement in 2015, The Lancet medical journal conducted an authoritative, systematic review of the effects of climate change on health. They followed this by establishing an international research collaboration to create a health-focused, global monitoring system to track progress ( _Lancet Countdown_ series on health and climate change). The Lancet has repeated the process to publish the first

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