Plastic pollution and economic growth: the influence of corruption and the lack of education

Green economic growth fed by technological solutions is often mentioned to mitigate plastic pollution. But economic growth appears to be in contradiction to planetary boundaries. By developing two worldwide socio-economic models based on non-technological solutions, economic production, social, and policy data, we demonstrate the adverse ecological impact of the lack of regulatory process and educational environmental programs. Our results support other studies that observe the effect of several key factors on behaviors in favor of the environment: i) improving the quality of democracy with better regulation in all country income categories, ii) implementing long-term educational programs to increase environmental awareness in low and middle income countries, iii) limiting urbanization and urban sprawl, which generates disconnection from the environment and reduces opportunities for personal experiences with the ecosystem. All these key factors feature industrial responsibility, environmental awareness and willingness to engage in ethical production, consumption and plastic waste management. Our results show a 1% increase in education or corruption control policies reduces annual inadequately managed plastic waste by 0.97% and 0.18% respectively. As a result, progressively raising the number of schooling years to 12 and implementing tighter corruption control policies would reduce by 44% and 28% respectively the global amount of inadequately managed plastic waste discarded into the global ecosystem in 2050 as compared to 1990. Otherwise, this amount is predicted to increase from 61-72 million tonnes per year in 1990 to 61-110 million tonnes per year in 2050.