Clinical Professor, NYU Stern School of Business, lots of other hats, even more opinions. Author of Higher Ground, HBR Press. Winner of the Porchlight award for best leadership and strategy book of 2024.
Excellent piece on the growing evidence that microplastics pose horrible health risks 🤢 , juxtaposed against the latest failure to establish a global agreement on plastics here from Simon Mundy. As he points out, the plastic producers resist any cap on production, and want a focus on recycling. "Mensink said his group wanted “a treaty that keeps plastics in the economy and out of the environment” — as though it were simple to sever the link between the two. After decades of industry talk about a circular plastic economy, the global plastic recycling rate is just 9 per cent." Meanwhile, the consumer facing companies that actually get BLAMED for exposing us to plastic, have very different agendas: "The position of the big consumer goods companies is somewhat different. A food or toiletries business that wants to replace plastic with more sustainable materials could face an increase in its costs, potentially weakening its competitive position. If the whole market is forced in that direction, however, the shift would look less risky. And for businesses like Unilever that operate in scores of countries, an overarching global plastics framework would be much easier to work with than a patchwork of wildly differing regulations." Sadly, it looks like the patchwork of different and contradictory regulations is what is coming. This is now the global landscape for responsible business. Managing misalignment and conflicting agendas. https://lnkd.in/dkNQdc9F
Nicole Bigby
2mo
Lindsay Hooper - more evidence of a dysfunctional #policy / #regulatory and #competitive #environment and need for a fresh approach and #rethink and reset to drive all these goals.
I also just finished an assignment on dangers of plastic. It was incredibly eye opening. If we are going to have any hope of transitioning from plastic we do need to find a way to get industry buy-in in high plastic producing countries. I focused on transitioning to PHA and training workers, giving gov't subsidies to build plants. Like carbon, society is very locked into plastic, it is another wicked problem we face as a society.
Emmanuel Jimenez
2mo
Really powerful insights. Do you think a global plastics treaty is still realistic in the near future, or are we stuck with this patchwork for a long time?
In 2018, while I was a lead scientist at WWF-DC, during a meeting with it’s longtime corporate partner, The Coca-Cola Company, one of the latter’s staff who worked on TCCC’s risks from its use of plastics was extremely distressed about the then available science on the health risks of microplastics (I bet the makers of plastics have known of these risks much, much earlier, maybe decades earlier). WWF and TCCC at that meeting decided to focus their efforts on plastic - the main solution? Get governments to pay for the infrastructure and technology to collect and recycle plastics. The focus what not on the production or use of plastics even though we all knew then what the FT is (finally) reporting now. The WWF-TCCC effort led in part to what became the “plastic treaty,” which recently largely failed to garnered much support for even govt funding of recycling, reuse infrastructure let alone curb the production of plastics. Likely, oil companies, both state and privately owned, and their primary customers put political pressure to water down and stymie the treaty based on the evidence of the votes. We cannot keep waiting for corporations to “do the right thing.” They just have no incentive to do so as long as no one is providing.
Garrick Villaume
2mo
Well, if scientists and engineers can figure out how to compute with plastics we can have our AI and immortality in a convenient, consumable package.
Simon Mundy
2mo
Thanks Alison!
Murray Beach
2mo
Thanks for sharing, Alison
A minor point, but that FT headline - of all the activities creating risk here, medical research seems the least likely candidate!