Outside experts worried that the study’s focus on pollution, rather than overall production, lets the plastics industry off the hook. Making plastics emits large amounts of greenhouse gas that contribute to climate change.
"These guys have defined plastic pollution in a much narrower way, as really just macroplastics that are emitted into the environment after the consumer, and it risks us losing our focus on the upstream and saying, hey now all we need to do is manage the waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on zero waste and environmental justice initiatives. “It’s necessary but it’s not the whole story.”
We focus on half the problem, the half we burn considerable fossil fuels to move the plastic waste just so it can be burnt somewhere else.
No one is really doing enough.
It’s just when you set metrics and only care about meeting those metrics, you often lose sight of the goal.