Australia’s waste crisis is tipped to deepen, with global wealth manager Credit Suisse predicting the federal government will intervene within two years with policies such as an emergency tax on plastic.

Credit Suisse says the impact of China’s drastic restrictions on importing Australia’s recyclable waste has been “colossal”.

“Investors are not short of warnings of the impending plasticide,” Credit Suisse says in its report The age of plastic: at a tipping point.

“Our headline view is that things will get worse before they get better.”

The report said plastic packaging has become one of the most intractable environmental challenges of our age: “There will be more plastic than fish in the ocean, by weight, in 2050”.