current issues in design for sustainability

The World Economic Forum-backed initiative Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP) estimates that 8 million tonnes of plastic waste leaks into the ocean each year and that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. Its recent Annual Impact Report 2020 stresses the urgent need for collective action worldwide to create meaningful and sustainable change. Disposal issues, human dependence on single-use plastic and post-pandemic waste management pose challenges worldwide. Indonesia, where business, government and civil society worked with GPAP to develop a plan to reduce the amount of plastic reaching the ocean by 70% within five years is meeting this challenge head-on.

GPAP and the New Plastics Economy initiative call for the elimination of all unnecessary plastics and further innovation to ensure those which are used are reusable, recyclable or compostable. They ask, "How could designers play a role here? A circular economy – in which items are used, not used up – for plastic would keep the material in the wider economy and out of the environment."



An audit on single-use plastics shows that top brands sold at Costco (namely: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé) are the worst production offenders. Volunteers collected plastic waste on city streets, parks, forests, beaches, coastal areas and other sites where plastic waste accumulates noting that, due the COVID-19 pandemic, about 13% of the items examined came from waste discarded indoors—in homes, offices, schools and elsewhere.