Under fire from the media and citizens on business contribution towards the plastic pollution crisis, companies are increasingly pushing out plastic reduction goals, targets and schemes in an effort to clean up their image. This blog examines the impact of Unilever’s plastic reduction commitment.
The common misconception is that poor countries are the biggest polluters. This article examines the evidence behind plastic waste and the role of high income nations in the plastic mess we will leave behind.
The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) released the Plastic Waste Management by-laws in August 2019 to tackle the city’s plastic problem. Let us have a look at what the by-laws bring to Chennai.
Oxo-degradable plastic packaging, including carrier bags, have in recent years been marketed as a solution to plastic pollution, with claims that such plastics, when they end up in land or aquatic environments, degrade into harmless residues within a period ranging from a few months to several years. However, a significant body of evidence indicates that oxo-degradable plastics simply fragment into small pieces, including microplastics, with the entire process of biodegradation into naturally occurring molecules requiring timescales often (far) in excess of those claimed by their manufacturers. The contribution of these plastics to microplastic pollution poses an environmental risk, particularly in the ocean. Furthermore, oxo-degradable plastics are not suited for effective long-term reuse, recycling at scale or composting. In summary, the evidence to date suggests oxo-degradable plastic packaging goes against two core principles of the circular economy.
Mobile technology is being used to monitor elections, optimize traffic, discourage corruption, encourage citizen participation, pay bills, democratize media. With close to a billion mobile phone connections and a Digital India campaign to connect every village by 2020, India’s mobile revolution offers an unprecedented opportunity to bring good governance to the farthest corners of the country. Dasra’s report, Rule of Thumb, lays out the key challenges and solutions, alongside the work of scalable and impactful social organizations for funders’ consideration.
The last day of the Break Free From Plastics meeting was kept for communications. How can we be more effective in getting across our stories to citizens, governments, and corporates? This session was led by Dancing Fox, a group that works to “help change makers tell their story, and help storytellers change the world”.
On the third day of the four-day Break Free From Plastics meeting, we started with an overview of the link between climate, oil and plastics. That the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, leads to carbon emissions, which have caused a rapid change in the climate is well established. But what is the link between plastics and climate? If you create a venn diagram between the two, the overlap that you will see is fossil fuels.
Day 2 of the Break Free From Plastics meeting in Bali picked up pace quite rapidly. Where Day 1 aimed to set the expectations of the meeting and looking back at the recent past, today we looked at the various actions and strategies that are underway or planned for the coming 18 months. The conversation was anchored in four key questions, one each for the key themes that emerged from the previous day. We formed several break-away groups and had the opportunity to discuss each question.
The Break Free From Plastics (BFFP) Movement meeting started on July 17 in Bali, Indonesia with more than 90 individuals coming from across the world for the four-day meeting. This follows the 2016 meeting in Tagatay, the Philippines where 90 non-governmental organisations committed to work towards a ‘future free of plastics pollution’. It is hard to miss the messages about plastics in oceans and how plastics will outnumber fish or that birds and animals, even on the remotest islands, are dying from having ingested plastics.