Hansard

The great surge in public awareness around the health of our seas has been building for many years. Documentary films such as “A Plastic Ocean” and “Blue Planet II” have taken us to places of such spectacular beauty that we could have scarcely imagined that they even existed. However, they have also shown us how our blasé throwaway culture has blighted the farthest reaches of the deepest oceans. From the story of the polluted gut of an albatross chick to that of the plastic bottles now lining ocean trenches, the stories remind us that we are never separate from the natural world.

The Greens broadly welcome the Government motion and the Government’s emerging work on the plastic problem. However, I would pick up on the motion’s use of the word “litter”, because we need to reframe the plastic problem as plastic pollution, rather than as just litter. The plastic problem is not simply a matter of picking up waste and keeping things tidy. Seeing plastic debris simply as litter is a view that even the plastics industry itself supports. It is more accurate for us to describe that plastic as pollution, because plastic is a harmful substance that degrades into smaller microparticles over time, entering food chains and contaminating the world around us.

The Green amendment therefore focuses on one of the major sources of marine plastic pollution on which, so far, Governments have not taken any action: microfibres. They come mostly from our synthetic clothing and enter the water cycle from our washing machines, and pass into our rivers and seas unnoticed and unmonitored. They enter the food chain, being eaten initially by plankton, shellfish and small fish, and work their way up the food chain to humans. Microfibres have even been found in honey, beer and most of the world’s tap water supplies.

We have probably all bought at some point a fleece. Forward-thinking companies such as Patagonia Inc developed the use of fleece garments as a way to recycle plastic objects such as milk bottles in the 1980s. However, researchers have shown that a single polyester fleece jumper can lose almost 1 million microfibres in every wash. Many of the chemicals that are attracted and cling to plastic microfibres are long-lived, accumulative toxic organic pollutants such as PCBs. They concentrate in the food chain, are stored in body fat and are chemicals that are linked to cancer, birth defects and the disruption of development hormones. Many plastics, such as styrene, also release their own toxic chemicals as they break down. Microfibres effectively multiply the effect of toxic chemicals that are already a growing problem in our environment.

That all sounds pretty scary, but our pollution problem with microfibres can largely be solved by mechanical means. To give Patagonia some credit, that company has supported the development of mesh laundry bags that effectively trap microfibres. There are also filtration devices that can be applied to washing machine outflows and laundry balls that can attract microfibre loadings in the water. Just as we introduced catalytic converters on cars, so we can screen out microfibres from the water cycle with the correct technology and product standards alongside the development of fabrics that shed less fibre in the first place.

So far, it appears from answers to my written questions that the Scottish Government has not focused on the microfibre issue. I urge the cabinet secretary to progress work on the matter with stakeholders including industry, the European Union and other Governments. Perhaps the forthcoming national summit in Oban is a good opportunity for Scotland to take a lead and focus on this growing issue.

In my remaining time, I will focus on some guiding principles for how we should tackle plastic pollution. First, the waste hierarchy is essential in guiding any strategy, as the cabinet secretary mentioned. Prevention and reduction of waste needs to be the top priority, followed by reuse, then recycling and other recovery methods. Incineration is not an acceptable way to deal with hard-to-treat domestic plastic waste. If it is that difficult to recycle, we should not be producing it in the first place.

I accept the cabinet secretary’s approach that each type of product on the plastic pollution list, from drinking straws to cotton buds and ketchup sachets to nurdles, needs to be considered individually. The availability of alternative materials, the harm that the plastic item causes, its pattern of use and the value of materials that can be recovered from it will all be different from one product to the next.

We should also consider a hierarchy of use for plastics, placing products that are used in engineering or medical procedures at the top while giving far less importance to single-use plastics such as food packaging, which can and should be phased out.

We then have lots of tools in the box to tackle plastic pollution, from immediate bans to phase-out deadlines, levies, producer responsibility systems and deposit return. I look forward to hearing and reflecting on members’ thoughts on those during the debate.

Our planet is in the middle of the Holocene extinction: the sixth tumultuous extinction event that life on earth has had to endure. The ravages of climate change and habitat loss will only be intensified by the plastic pollution that poisons, chokes, sterilises and destroys. We need to end this wasteful age of plastic.

I move amendment S5M-10307.2, to insert at end:

“; remains shocked at levels of plastic found in wildlife across the globe; understands that, during every clothes wash, thousands of plastic microfibers escape from clothing that is made from synthetic materials, and that billions of these small fibres make their way into the oceans; acknowledges that plastic in the environment can be a harmful pollutant, and commits to collective action to reduce plastic pollution from microfibers as part of a comprehensive action plan.”