No exemption for intentionally added biodegradable microplastics
Back in January 2018, the European Commission published its European Strategy on Plastics in a Circular Economy, aiming at rethinking the way plastic is produced, used and disposed of.
In this Strategy, the Commission announced upcoming restrictions on the use of intentionally added microplastics, in line with the REACH procedures for restricting substances that pose a risk to the environment or health. This is currently taking place within the European Chemicals Agency ECHA.
Regrettably, the ECHA proposal for implementing this restriction includes an exemption for biodegradable microplastics. ECOS is opposed to such an exemption for the following reasons:
- The Plastics Strategy announces the microplastics restriction as an action to curb plastic waste and littering (section 4.2) and acknowledges biodegradable plastics are not [to be] put forward as a solution to littering.
- Biodegradable plastics are still plastics. Plastic production and consumption have enormous impacts on the environment, climate and human health all along its lifecycle, from extraction and production to disposal and end of life. Global production of plastics has increased more than 20 times over the past 50 years. Under current trends, it is estimated that it will double again by 2035 and quadruple by 2050. The restriction of intentionally added microplastics could help disincentivise unnecessary plastic production, but the exempting biodegradable plastics defeats this purpose.
- The proposed biodegradation criteria are not sufficient to ensure that there are no adverse impacts on the environment. They lack ambition and fail to acknowledge that plastics are most often a blend of polymers and chemicals. This is also partly because there are currently no available standards, criteria or certification schemes to ensure that a given microplastic will not contain non-biodegradable constituents, biodegrade quickly enough and similarly across all environmental media, or not be carrier for toxic substances during the biodegradation time.
We can acknowledge that biodegradable microplastics in products are the lesser evil when compared to not biodegradable plastics. However, there exist known alternatives for microplastics. Consequently, ECOS can only support a full ban on intentionally added microplastics and will not favour intermediary solutions such as the proposed biodegradability exemption.
