M I C R O P L A S T I C S
T H E E N V I R O N M E N TA L H A R M S
OF THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Mikko Paunio

The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Note 42

Microplastics: The Environmental Harms of the Circular Economy
Mikko Paunio
Note 42, The Global Warming Policy Foundation© Copyright 2023, The Global Warming Policy Foundation
Image p. 1, Michal Maňas, CC licence.

Contents
Acknowledgement	iii

About the author	iii

Executive summary	

1

Microplastics	1

Macroplastics	2

A better way: incineration	2Conclusion	3

Notes	4

About the Global Warming Policy Foundation	

6Acknowledgement
The author is grateful to Jarl Ahlbeck, adjunct professor in environmental protection technology atÅbo Akademi (the Swedish-language university in Turku, Finland) for his strategic advice in waste
management technologies over the last two decades.

About the author
Mikko Paunio, MD, MHS was born in Turku, Finland in 1961. He graduated and then completed anddefended his doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki in 1990. He has postgraduate training
from the Free University of Brussels in 1991 and has graduated from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health (Master of Health Science in 1993). He is a certified (University of Helsinki)
specialist in public health (1999) and is an adjunct professor in general epidemiology at the University of Helsinki.
He has worked in the following institutions: the Institute of Health and Welfare of Finland, University of Helsinki, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the European Commission, theWorld Bank and Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. He is a member of the American
Council on Science and Health Board of Scientific and Policy Advisors. He has 40 publications listedin the US National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.
For the past 20 years he has actively followed and participated in discussions on EU and international waste policy issues from health-protection angle.
iii

Executive summary• New data reveals that up to two million tons of microplastics may beleaking from plastic recycling plants into waterways around the globe.
• Incineration of waste is cheaper and more environmentally friendly
than recycling.
• However, the circular economy agenda is preventing its more widespread deployment.

Microplastics
Last year, there were three important new scientific studies – from China, the UK and Vietnam – on the amount of microplastics in the wastewater of mechanical plastic recycling plants.1,2,3 They showed that thequantity currently released is astronomical, with up to 75 billion particles per cubic meter of waste water. This is several orders of magnitude
higher than the particle release from wastewater treatment plants.
In the latest study, conducted in the UK in a plant equipped withlatest processing technology,3 it was estimated that up to 6% of theplastic waste infeed ended up as microplastic particles in the wastewater stream. About 80% of the plant’s microplastic emissions wereless than 10 microns (μm) in diameter – too small to be filtered fromthe effluent, but the size at which they are most harmful to nature andto human health. The researchers only considered microplastic particles above 1.6 μm, which means their numbers are likely to be an underestimate.
The study also showed that there were high levels of microplastics
in the air around the plant, with 61% of the particles being less than
10 μm in size. This suggests that there are also high concentrations of
directly inhalable particles in the facility’s indoor air too. According to
the researchers, this finding warrants the introduction of measures toprotect workers.
In a recent interview,4 the team behind the study explained that
global production of plastic amounts to nearly 400 million metric tonsof plastic each year, of which 9% is recycled. This suggests that plastic
recycling facilities might be releasing as much as 2 million tons of microplastic particles every year, although they also suggest that microplastics may be released through other routes.
The presence of high microplastic concentrations in wastewater
streams of mechanical plastic recycling plants was no surprise to me.
In my 2018 report Save the Oceans – Stop Recycling Plastic,5 I noted a
Dutch paper recycling plant, which, despite receiving only relatively
small amounts of plastic, still leaked 60,000 tons of microplastic particles into the North Sea every year.*
We can therefore conclude that current green policies and the demand for further recycling will significantly increase microplastic pollution around the globe.
* Paper is often laminated with a plastic covering. In addition, paper collected forrecycling often is often contaminated with plastic.

1Macroplastics
Of course, it is now well known that plastic waste exported fromwealthy countries to the developing world is frequently simply
dumped in the oceans. Ten months after my 2018 report on plastic waste, the Basel treaty forbade OECD countries from exporting dirty plastic to developing countries.6 In a follow-up reportpublished in 2019,7 I predicted that this would result in an uncontrollable accumulation of plastic waste in the EU, because of limited processing capacity. However, this did not happen, for thefollowing reasons:• the existence of loopholes in the Basel treaty (it remains possible to export plastic waste, e.g. PET† bottles, to developingcountries);8• illicit waste trafficking, which is more lucrative than drug trafficking.9
Many developing countries use legally or illicitly imported
plastic waste to generate energy, but others simply dump it inrivers and oceans or burn it in open fires, because so little of it
can be recycled. However, a growing quantity is now being recycled in mechanical recycling plants – some legal but others informal – especially in South-East Asia.10,11,12 This development is
the result both of political pressure to recycle plastic and also of
the global energy crisis (especially hikes in natural gas prices inEurope), which has pushed up the price of virgin plastic.13 To alesser extent, illegal waste trafficking (particularly to countries inthe eastern Europe, such as Poland14 or beyond, e.g. Turkey15) has
reduced the accumulation of plastic waste in the UK and wealthier EU countries.

A better way: incineration
There is a better approach to plastic waste, namely incineration.
In August 2022, I was asked if there was any evidence that Finland
was ahead of other countries in promoting a circular economy.16In response, I explained that Finland had promoted recycling
through significant investment in municipal recycling. However,
the hundreds of millions of euros spent in this area over the first
decade of the new millennium had unfortunate results, notably
bad odours affecting large areas.17 In addition, few of the anticipated benefits, for example to agriculture,‡ had materialised. As
a result, Finland changed direction, building a network of energy from waste plants, similar to the ones already operational in
Denmark and Sweden. During the energy crisis last winter, theseplants were operating flat out; they had become indispensable,
effectively killing off environmentalists’ dreams of improving thecountry’s recycling rates. These rates are far lower than the legally† Polyethylene terephthalate, a common plastic used for food and drink
packaging.
‡ For example, through composting.

2binding levels ordained in the EU’s circular economy package18
and, as a result, the European Commission has recently placed
Finland on an early warning list.19
Incineration also offers a solution to another pressing waste
management problem, namely how to deal with the sludge
extracted from the effluent streams of wastewater treatment
plants. This also contains a large quantity of microplastics, whichcannot be removed. The idea of dealing with the problem in thisway is not new. Japan has a long tradition of incinerating almost
all sludge, on environmental grounds.20 Modern waste incineration plants, such as those in operation in Scandinavian countries,
which burn waste at high incineration temperatures (>850°C)
and for a sufficiently long time, can safely handle dried sludge
just as easily as they can deal with mixed municipal waste, including plastic.21
Incineration of plastic is, from the perspectives of climate,
wildlife protection, environmental health and the economy, superior to any other approaches.5,6 Chemical recycling through pyrolysis is already seen as problematic because it would dramatically increase greenhouse gas emissions.22,23 However, efforts toexpand incineration across the EU are being hampered by recent
developments in environmental law and regulation. The ‘circular economy’ concept has delivered much irrational waste policy
legislation, such as the EU’s 2018 Circular Economy package.8 Net
Zero legislation, notably 2022’s ‘Fit for 55’ package and the 2018
Taxonomy regulation,24,25 which are also based on the circular
economy concept, have thrown up new barriers.26 There are now
also attempts to put in place a global Plastic Agreement, centredon recycling.27

Conclusion
Incineration can solve the problem of microplastic pollution,
whatever its source, so long as waste collection is organised effectively. However, as noted above, the legislative and regulatory machinery appears hellbent on approaches that are more
expensive and more environmentally damaging. Incineration
simply goes against the philosophy of a circular economy andthe superstitious belief in a need to ‘save the planet’.
Even Greenpeace now admits that recycling plastic is ‘a deadend street’,28 but their solution to the problem – an almost total
ban on plastic – is no better. Plastics’ advantages make them indispensible. Without plastic packaging, for example, food waste
would be a much bigger problem and hygiene would be radically worse. The loss to human welfare will be incalculable if theenvironmentalists get their way.

3Notes

1. G Suzuki et al. Mechanical recycling of plastic waste as a point source of microplastic pollution. Environmental Pollution 2022; 303: 119114.
2. Y Guo et al. Ignored microplastic sources from plastic bottle recycling. Science of The Total Environment 2022; 838(2): 156038.
3. E Brown et al. The potential for a plastic recycling facility to release microplastic pollution andpossible filtration remediation effectiveness. Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances 2023; 10: 100309.
4. EC Alberts. Even in recycling, microplastics remain a persistent polluter, study shows. Mongabay, 5May 2023. https://news.mongabay.com/2023/05/even-in-recycling-microplastics-remain-a-persistentpolluter-study-shows/.
5. M Paunio. Save The Oceans: Stop Recycling Plastic. Briefing 32, The Global Warming Policy Foundation.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/06/Save-the-oceans.pdf.
6. Basel Convention.
Default.aspx.

https://www.basel.int/Implementation/Plasticwaste/Overview/tabid/8347/

7. M Paunio. Saving the Oceans and the Plastic Recycling Crisis. Note 16, The Global Warming Policy
Foundation. https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/05/Paunio-Baselagreement.pdf.
8. Seehttps://www.basel.int/Implementation/Plasticwaste/PlasticWasteAmendments/FAQs/
tabid/8427/Default.aspx.
9. Europol. Environmental Crime in the Age of Climate Change. Threat Assessment 2022. https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/Environmental_Crime_in_the_Age_of_
Climate_Change_threat_assessment_2022.pdf.
10. Market Study for Malaysia: Plastics Circularity Opportunities and Barriers. World Bank Group, 2021.
https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/272471616512761862/pdf/Market-Study-forMalaysia-Plastics-Circularity-Opportunities-and-Barriers.pdf.
11. Market Study for Thailand: Plastics Circularity Opportunities and Barriers. World Bank Group, 2021.
https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/973801612513854507/pdf/Market-Study-forThailand-Plastics-Circularity-Opportunities-and-Barriers.pdf.
12. Market Study for Philippines: Plastics Circularity Opportunities and Barriers. World Bank Group, 2021.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/philippines/publication/market-study-for-philippinesplastics-circularity-opportunities-and-barriers-report-landing-page.
13. A Uhler. Even if we manage to stop using oil as fuel, plastics made from oil will be harder to give up.
Marketplace, 24 March 2022. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/24/even-if-we-manage-to-stopusing-oil-as-fuel-plastics-made-from-oil-will-be-harder-to-give-up/.
14. J Bronska. Illegal waste exports to Poland on the rise. Deutsche Welle, 18 January 2021. https://www.dw.com/en/polands-growing-problem-with-illegal-european-waste/a-55957224.
15. R Soylu. Turkey becomes Europe's dumping ground for illegal plastic waste. Middle East Eye, 17May 2021. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-uk-germany-plastic-waste-dumped-illegallygreenpeace.
16. M Paunio. The circular economy: a return to Soviet-style five-year plans. RealClearEnergy, 5September 2022. https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/09/05/the_circular_economy_a_return_to_soviet-style_five-year_plans_851567.html
17. M Aatamila et al. Odour annoyance and physical symptoms among residents living near waste
treatment centres. Environmental Research 2011; 111(1): 164–70..
18. D Bourguignon. Circular economy package: Four legislative proposals on waste. Briefing PE 614.766,
European Parliament, 2018.
19. The Early Warning For Finland. SWD(2023) 175 final, European Commission, 8 June 2023. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD%3A2023%3A175%3AFIN&qid=1686232269132.

420. Statista. Volume of incinerated industrial waste in Japan in 2021, by waste type. https://www.
statista.com/statistics/1170533/japan-volume-incinerated-industrial-waste-by-type/.
21. Y Liang et al. Municipal sewage sludge incineration and its air pollution control. Journal of Cleaner
Production 2021; 295: 126456.
22. JH Demastri. The war on plastic waste could massively increase CO2 emissions. Daily Caller, 10 May
2023. https://dailycaller.com/2023/05/10/war-on-plastic-waste-increase-co2-report/.
23. E Ballard. Why eliminating plastic waste could mean more emissions. Wall Street Journal, https://climate.cmail20.com/t/d-e-zuhukhk-ihkktuujn-r/.
24. Council of the EU. 'Fit for 55': Council adopts key pieces of legislation delivering on 2030 climate
targets. Press release. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/04/25/fit-for55-council-adopts-key-pieces-of-legislation-delivering-on-2030-climate-targets/.
25. EU Commission. EU taxonomy for sustainable activities. https://finance.ec.europa.eu/sustainablefinance/tools-and-standards/eu-taxonomy-sustainable-activities_en.
26. M Paunio. By purposfully increasing capital costs of nuclear energy and waste incineration with EUs Taxonomy regulation this will make them economically non-viable. oikeamedia.com, 16 April 2023.
https://www.oikeamedia.com/o1-199201.
27. UN Environment Programme. Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution.
https://www.unep.org/about-un-environment/inc-plastic-pollution.
28. Greenpeace USA. Plastic recycling is a dead-end street – Year after year, plastic recycling declines
even as plastic waste increases. Press release, 24 October 2022.

5About the Global Warming Policy Foundation
People are naturally concerned about the environment, and want to see policies that protect it,
while enhancing human wellbeing; policies that don’t hurt, but help.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is committed to the search for practical policies. Our aim is to raise standards in learning and understanding through rigorous research andanalysis, to help inform a balanced debate amongst the interested public and decision-makers.
We aim to create an educational platform on which common ground can be established, helping
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Views expressed in the publications of the Global Warming Policy Foundation are those of theauthors, not those of the GWPF, its trustees, its Academic Advisory Council members or its directors.

6THE GLOBAL WARMING POLICY FOUNDATION

Director
Benny Peiser

Honorary President
Lord Lawson

BOARD OF TRUSTEESDr Jerome Booth (Chairman)
The Hon. Tony Abbott
Michael Cole
Lord Frost
Kathy Gyngell

Professor Michael Kelly FRS
Terence Mordaunt
Allison Pearson
Graham Stringer MP
Professor Fritz Vahrenholt

ACADEMIC ADVISORY COUNCIL

Professor Christopher Essex (Chairman)
Professor Wade Allison
Professor Anthony Barrett
Professor J. Ray Bates
Sir Ian Byatt
Dr John Constable
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Professor John Dewey
Professor Peter Dobson
Professor Peter Edwards FRS
Professor Samuel Furfari
Christian Gerondeau
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Dr David WhitehouseRECENT GWPF NOTES7Michael Kelly
8David Whitehouse
9Anthony Kelly
10Susan Crockford
11Andrew Montford

Technology Introductions in the Context of Decarbonisation
Warming Interruptus: Causes for the Pause
Global Warming and the Poor
Healthy Polar Bears, Less Than Healthy Science
Fraud, Bias and Public Relations

1213
14
15

Harry Wilkinson
Peter Lilley
Constable and Hughes
Patricia Adams

UK Shale Developments
The Helm Review and the Climate-Industrial Complex
Bubble or Babble?
The Road from Paris: China's Climate U-Turn

16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
2930
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42

Mikko PaunioJohn ChristyGordon Hughes
J. Ray Bates
Andrew Montford
Andrew Montford
David Whitehouse
Gautam Kalghatgi
John Constable
William M Briggs
Ross McKitrick
William M Briggs
J. Ray Bates
Susan Crockford
Michael Kelly
Michael Kelly
Andrew Montford
Peter Ridd
William Kininmonth
Alexander Stahel
Ralph Alexander
Wade Allison
Bryan Leyland
Michael Kelly
Wade Allison
Wade Allison
Mikko Paunio

Save the Oceans: Stop Recycling Plastic
The Tropical Skies: Falsifying Climate Alarm
Who's the Patsy? Offshore Wind's High-stakes Poker Game
What Caused Hurricane Lorenzo?
Reducing Emissions Without Breaking the Bank£3 Trillion and Counting: Net Zero and the National Ruin
The Next Solar Cycle and Why it Matters for Climate
The Battery Car Delusion
Who Are They Fooling? The UK Energy White Paper 2020
The Climate Blame Game: Are We Really Causing Extreme Weather?
Suboptimal Fingerprinting
How the IPCC Sees What Isn’t There
Polar Sea Ice and the Climate Catastrophe Narrative
The State of the Polar Bear 2021
Achieving Net Zero: A Report from a Putative Delivery Agency
Net Zero for New Zealand
Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Climate Models
The Good News on Coral Reefs
Rethinking the Greenhouse Effect
The Crisis of the European Energy System
Chinese Whispers: How Climate Science Gets Lost in Translation
Confidence in Nuclear Energy
Do We Need A New Electricity Market?
The Feasibility of a Net-zero Economy for the USA by 2050
The Inadequacy of Wind PowerThe Provision of Energy Without Fear
Microplastics: The Environmental Harms of the Circular Economy

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