Hansard

Nothing better illustrates our throwaway lifestyle than plastic, the production, use and disposal of which is a serious environmental and health problem. Globally, we use 160,000 plastic bags every second and components of that man-made material can take centuries to degrade.

Items that are designed to last might be used only once before being thrown away. Vast quantities of plastic debris and particles pollute our planet, with millions of tonnes dumped in our seas each year.

Sunlight gradually degrades plastic into tiny microplastics. Widely dispersed in water, they attract other toxins, and thus pass up the food chain to eventually contaminate entire ecosystems. Sea creatures, from the most microscopic, swallow toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. People eat fish that have eaten other marine organisms, which in turn had eaten toxin-saturated plastics. In essence, we are eating our own plastic waste.

Plastic pollution inspired the environmental scientist Lucy Gilliam and the skipper Emily Penn to launch eXXpedition, a unique series of all-female sailing voyages that strove to make the unseen seen, from the toxins in our bodies to the plastics in our seas. Last summer, the eXXpedition crew docked in Arran, in my constituency, during their month-long voyage around Britain. They also called at Leith and, on 25 August 2017, I hosted an event in Holyrood that was attended by 70 folk. That was before “Blue Planet II” raised the consciousness of millions about the impact of plastics on our seas.

The eXXpedition examined the plastics, chemicals, endocrine disruptors and carcinogens in our marine environment and linked them to the ecosystem and products that we consume. At the same time, it considered the long-term health impacts on future generations. Everyone alive today carries within their body at least 700 contaminants, and 29 of the 35 most toxic chemicals in plastics are present in human tissue.

Having organised and participated in numerous litter picks and beach cleans, I see how much plastic washes up on our shores. Single-use plastics such as bottles, straws, spoons and cups contribute most to the problem. Although a plastic-free society is unlikely, switching to reusable alternatives allows us to be part of the solution rather than part of the pollution.

Packaging should be dramatically reduced, and if the people who work at this Parliament took a proper lunch break, they would not use any of the polystyrene packs that they take their lunch back to their offices in. We can also reduce single-use plastic personal care and hygiene products, such as liquid soap, shower gel, shampoo and conditioner, which often come in wee plastic bottles.

It takes a litre of fossil fuel and 22 litres of water to produce a 1-litre plastic bottle, emitting 55 grams of greenhouse gases in the process. In the United States alone, 17 million barrels of oil are used annually to produce plastic water bottles.

Microbeads are solid plastic particles of less than 1mm. A ban on both the manufacture and sale of microbeads in rinse-off cosmetics and personal care products comes into effect this year. Having raised this issue numerous times, I am particularly pleased by that ban.

Around half of plastic bottles are currently recycled, which represents an important step towards a society in which resources are valued and nothing is wasted. A plastic bottle deposit scheme would surely help further.

Although the Parliament is resolutely opposed to disposable plastic, in life, solutions are not always simple. The plastic bag charge has been remarkably successful in cutting the colossal number of bags that are sent to landfill, but a study in 2005 by the Liberal-Labour Scottish Executive stated that

“a paper bag has a more adverse impact than a plastic bag for most of the environmental issues considered”.

In 2011 the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also concluded that a cotton shopping bag needs to be used 173 times before it is responsible for fewer carbon emissions than a plastic bag, because cotton is a very water-intensive crop that requires lots of fertiliser and oil to fuel the machinery that is required for cultivation, and the run-off is very damaging.

Polylactic acid or PLA, a biodegradable and bioactive thermoplastic aliphatic polyester derived from renewable resources such as sugarcane, corn starch, cassava roots or woodchips, is a possible alternative, but it requires vast areas of land. Europe uses 60,000 tonnes of plastic a year. Switching to PLA would utilise around 100,000 square kilometres of arable land, which is nearly a tenth of all land under cultivation across Europe. Biodegradable plastic decomposes straight to methane, a greenhouse gas with 20 times the potency of CO₂. Ultimately, we must more effectively husband earth’s precious natural resources, reusing and recycling them, as the cabinet secretary said in her opening statement.

A totally single-use-plastic-free Scotland is a long-term goal that will take time to achieve. However, plastic pollution is an entirely man-made problem and the solutions, too, must be of our own conception.