Waste and the circular economy #3
Unwaste.io
Building a cloud platform to connect everyone who can help reduce plastic waste entering our planet’s environment.
Welcome to our round up of stories, videos and research that we've shared amongst the Unwaste.io team.
Community and consumers
Deposit Return Scheme
Many of us in the UK have been waiting with interest for the roll out of the DRS trial in Scotland.
In this Twitter, thread Kat Jones from APR Scotland describes the potential benefits of a scheme, one being a reduction in the volume of beverage and bottle waste.
However, the scheme is facing delays. This piece in theCONVERSATION notes that the UK Government is unlikely to agree to the trade exemption that Scotland needs to participate, despite growing evidence of the effectiveness of DRS in other parts of Europe.
The Scottish Government blames the UK Government for the delay, but remains ‘committed’ to launching the scheme, albeit later than planned.
Zero Waste neighbourhoods
Four years ago, few people believed Zero Waste could be implemented in Tanzania. Today, more than 90% of the residents in the Zero Waste neighborhoods of Dar es Salaam and Arusha are segregating their waste.
This Twitter thread describes the decentralised approach to zero waste neighbourhoods implemented by our partners, Nipe Fagio, in Tanzania.
Their Director, Ana Rocha, describes their community led approach in this video.
Do consumers understand the difference between recycling and the circular economy?
No, is the answer.
...recycling is far from the simple solution promoted in the past; it is complex and requires effort from everyone involved. But businesses have a critical role in bridging the gap between consumer interest in sustainable products and packaging and their everyday recycling practices. This can be accomplished by focusing on two key efforts: investing in circular materials and processes, and incentivizing circular behaviors.
This piece from Sustainable Brands highlights the need for companies to make it easier for consumers to adopt more sustainable behaviours through a combination of education and rethinking of materials, process and packaging.?
Making reuse available to all
Another option for consumers to help reduce plastic waste is reuse. Break Free From Plastic shares a call for reuse to become mass market - available to everyone in every store.?
But it’s not without challenges. Large scale reuse would require investment by manufacturers in suitable packaging and processing:
For this to happen at scale, we would need standards that would allow interoperability across different brands, products and jurisdictions. In a world where the USB stick can be used in any brand of laptop and our mobile phone SIM cards work in any country that we land in, it does not make sense that plastic packaging is designed into hundreds of different categories which are individually churned out by hundreds of different brands.??
Microplastics everywhere
97% of children tested had plastic byproducts in their systems.
This article in Forbes sets out the ‘hidden health consequences’ of microplastics. The author, Marianne Lehnis , references a range of studies about the growing presence of microplastics in people, animals and the environment.?
This paper looks at the growth of research into marine microplastics in recent years - well worth a read.?
And if you want more big numbers, a piece in the the Guardian refers to over 170 trillion plastic particles plastic floating in the ocean
领英推荐
The research, by the 5 Gyres Institute and published in the journal Plos One, evaluates trends of ocean plastic from 1979 to 2019. The authors noted a rapid increase of marine plastic pollution and blamed the plastics industry for failing to recycle or design for recyclability.
What happens to these particles? Apparently they’re causing a completely new disease in seabirds. This article describes the research on plastic-induced fibrosis in wild animals, or ‘plasticosis’. While the research is limited to a specific species, there is plenty more to do to understand the full effects of microplastic pollution on all of us who inhabit this planet. Grim.
Global Plastics Treaty?
the U.S. position contrasts sharply with submissions representing dozens of other countries that are part of a “high ambition” coalition including members of the European Union. Those differences reveal deep divisions among some of the 160 nations working to solve a problem the United Nations describes as a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution.?
This piece from Inside Climate News highlights criticism of the US delegation’s proposals to the plastic treaty.?
From the data we collect in our plastic monitoring platform, wastebase.org, we see that US-based manufacturers regularly feature in the top polluters in multiple countries in the global south.?The map below shows location of manufacturer (blue dots) linked to location where waste was detected using the Wastebase app (red dots - mainly by our partners in the global south).
We publish this waste ownership map on Kaggle to demonstrate the international flows of ownership and responsibility. Check out the live visualisation here.
Data and measurement
One of the challenges for the global community is in tracking and measuring interventions for waste reduction in a consistent way. We were interested in the launch of the Plastic Footprint Network which aims to standardise measurement and mitigation for plastic pollution.
Unifying the methodologies and perspectives of leading scientists, experts, and global practitioners, the PFN enables organizations to understand the full impact, or footprint, from the use of plastic in their companies, products, and services.?
Good data, better decisions
At Unwaste.io, we believe that good data is essential to creating a circular economy for plastics.?
More than ever, leaders are seeking opportunities to harness the power of data and create analytical systems that enable informed decision making for coordinated global action. Several data driven tools have been developed to assess material and waste flows. 德国国际合作机构 Data Lab
We’re pleased to be featured as one of the 35 data sources in the 'Data Catalogue' from GIZ Data Lab.?
Why has plastics pollution been so stubborn from a global governance perspective??
We joined a discussion on Twitter about global plastic regulation, kicked off by Kenyan environmental journalist Benard Ogembo
To finish…
Would you eat your crockery? Here’s a cool plastic alternative from South Africa: https://www.munchinnovation.com/
Want to get involved?
If you're interested in data about plastic waste, contact us at community at unwaste.io to set up a chat.