However, an increasing body of literature question the adequacy of current policy responses to the handling of marine plastic pollution. Generally speaking, the current international policies for the treatment of marine pollution are only in principle and lack specific implementation rules. Despite the success of governance policies in some jurisdictions, they cannot match the global scale and accelerated growth of pollution. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate a policy to determine the timeline, goals and specific measures to reduce marine plastic pollution. Based on this, this article uses the curve fitting function in SPSS, applies Ordinary Least Square and fits the historical data to determine the specific time to achieve the goal from a quantitative perspective. Agenda can thereby be built and specific measures can also be proposed to reduce ocean plastic pollution on a global scale and tackle the issue from a policy-making perspective.

Timeline and Targets

To determine the timeline and targets to solve ocean plastic pollution problem, we need to know when all accumulated plastic waste can be processed and reach the final balance. Since the production of plastic waste is closely related to per capita income and the proportion of plastic waste in the solid waste is relatively stable, it can be deduced that the amount of plastic waste and GDP per capita go hand in hand.

Therefore, from the quantitative perspective, this article starts from GDP per capita, to figure out the point where the total amount of plastic waste (T_w) and the total amount of recyclable plastic products (T_r) intersect in the future by establishing the following model:

where

• m is the GDP per capita

• T_r is the total amount of recycling & energy recovery plastic products apart from landfill

• a_r is the effect of per capita GDP on total recyclable plastic products

• b_r is the total amount of recycling & energy recovery plastic products apart from landfill when GDP per capita is 0

• T_w is the total amount of plastic waste

• a_w is the effect of per capita GDP on total plastic waste

• b_w is the total amount of plastic waste when GDP per capita is 0

     This article, using the curve fitting function in SPSS, applying Ordinary Least Square and fitting the historical data, obtains the result:

And the coefficient of determination R² is 0.9892, which proves that the equation can well explain the relationship. On this basis, it can be calculated through the following equation:

that when the GDP per capita (m) is equal to 36761.73($), then all the accumulated garbage can be processed. Since by 2050, almost all developing and developed countries can reach this level of GDP per capita. This means that basically all developing and developed countries can solve the problem of plastic pollution by 2050. Therefore, we can formulate a policy to determine a specific time point, that is, by 2050, the goal of solving marine plastic pollution can be achieved.

Policy Measures

On the basis of determining the timeline and goals, this article also proposes two specific policy measures, taxation and fiscal expenditure, to improve the policy from a global perspective.

Taxation

Known from the literature, taxation is a very effective factor that affects the reduction of total amount of plastic waste. To be more specific, we take the successful case of Ireland for example. The table below shows the per capita consumption of plastic after implementing a plastic taxation system in Ireland:

where

• N is the consumption of plastic per capita

• η is the ratio of the amount of plastic before taxing to the amount of plastic after taxing, showing the effect of taxation.

Since the taxation policy varies from country to country, while the policy should promote the model from Ireland to the global extent, this article takes the GDP per capita as a medium and get the table as follows:

    This shows that from a quantitative point of view, the effects of taxation on the treatment of plastic waste pollution are very obvious on a global scale under different per capita GDP.

Fiscal Expenditure

 Similarly, spending fiscal expenditure on pollution treatment costs can also increase the ratio of recycling & energy recovery plastic waste, thereby helping to solve environmental problems. To be more specific, we take China for example. The table below shows the ratio of recycling & energy recovery plastic waste after increasing pollution handling cost in China:

where

• θ is the ratio of recycling &energy recovery plastic waste

Similar to the above method, we also consider the various pollution handling cost in different countries and regions and get the table as follows:

    Therefore, we can also see that the policy of spending fiscal expenditure on pollution treatment costs is very effective.

Conclusion

  To determine the timeline and targets to solve ocean plastic pollution problem，this article starts from GDP per capita, to figure out the point when all accumulated plastic waste can be processed and reach the final balance. By using the curve fitting function in SPSS, applying Ordinary Least Square and fitting the historical data, the result can be obtained:

On this basis, we can formulate a policy to determine that by 2050, when the GDP per capita (m) is equal to 36761.73($), the goal of solving marine plastic pollution can be achieved.

Moreover, this article also proposes two specific policy measures, taxation and fiscal expenditure, to solve the problem. By using data ​​from Ireland and China, and the effectiveness of both policy measures is proved from a quantitative perspective.

By Demi Zhang