Talking Trash to Tackle Trash

 Back in May, at the beginning of monsoon in Mumbai, following a passing cyclone India's financial capital's tourist draws Juhu Beach, Chowpatty and Marine Drive got a return gift of tons of trash (62 tons! That's 62,020kgs of Trash) from the churned up Arabian Sea. The scene reminiscent of the Aquaman revenge of the Mer-Kings is a regular during monsoon in our Plastic Age where marine plastics are projected to overtake marine livestock in a few decades if our consumption patterns continue. In 2018, the BMC  collected almost 2,15,000kg of garbage from beaches across Mumbai in the monsoon, where the amount from Marine Drive itself amounted to 9,000kg (9 tons!).

More recently, research demonstrated that every week we ingest to 5g of plastic from our food items - the usual suspects seafood and fish is overshadowed by plastic in our fruit and alcohol (apples and beer are unexpected culprits!!!)

Returning to Mumbai, its Ganapathy festival season, though public celebrations are cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, here's hoping the divine remover of obstacles sparks in us all inspiration to make both pandemics and the plastic pandemic a thing of the past. May the God of Wisdom and innovation facilitate through successful projects and their scaling up the restoration of ecosystems as well as the zero-waste and net-zero-emission lifestyles become the norm.

Environment Day (June 5th) 2021's theme was Ecosystem Restoration in this the first year of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. Ecosystem Restoration denotes assisting in the recovery of ecosystems that have been degraded by activities like pollution and deforestation. Ecosystem Restoration can also be promoted by conserving the ecosystems that are still intact.

Get the plastic out of the environment

Archeologists of the future will dig up perfectly preserved mounds of trash and human remains because plastic and chemicals!!!

That's the plight of our Plastic Age

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the social cost of plastic pollution was calculated to exceed the GDP of India - my nation of over a billion:

It estimated that unless there was concerted international action, a projected doubling of plastic production could see costs rocket by 2040 to $7.1 trillion.

The analysis looked at factors including the greenhouse gas emissions in the production process, health impacts, waste management and estimates of the reduction in the economic “services” of ecosystems on land and in water.

Since the 1950s, roughly 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced with around 60% of that tossed into landfills or into the natural environment.

Thus, in light of the ANZAC and EU Plastic Pacts and a couple of American states' (Maine & Oregon) Extended Producer Responsibility policy applicable to producers of plastics, India became the first Asian nation in September 2021 to launch its Plastic Pact! It is heartening to see governmental policies & action from around the globe to check Plastic Waste especially as it was found that just 20 companies create over 60% of global single use plastic (SUPs).

The ANZPAC plastics pact aims to by 2025 drastically reduce the amount of plastic waste from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific ending up in landfills and the ocean. Signatories include big brands like Coles, Woolworths, Nestle and Coca-Cola, as well as the Australian Beverages Council, the Australian Food and Grocery Council and Planet Ark.

In India WWF and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) are collaborating to promote a plastic circular economy: "circular system for plastics."

Taiwan, a plastic recycling pioneer, itself has had to rethink how it tackles trash in these pandemic times.

Like the American Extended Producer Responsibility of plastic producers, the Australia Redcycle is another great way to halt soft plastics from ending up in landfills and closing the loop. Talking of Loop, the US startup is making great strides zero-waste supply chains. In Santiago, Chile the startup Algramo partnered with Unilever to cut SUPs. with innovative home delivery and subscription models.

Equally fascinating and the epitome of SDG17: Partnerships for Progress is the video game giant Razer's sustainability and climate action projects that include a collaboration with startup Clearbot to collect floating trash with a next-gen solar and battery powered bot.  

Banyan Nation, another Indian startup is also doing some great work in leveraging Big Data, mobile tech, and washing tech to collect and upcycle plastic instead of downcyling plastic waste that also minimizes water usage in the proprietary technology.

Some other great successes that need to be scaled-up and replicated to suit local conditions of trash management can be viewed in the following URLs

https://climatetracker.org/artists-from-kenya-are-using-recycled-plastic-to-clean-up-nairobis-slums/

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/05/how-rivals-can-work-together-to-stop-plastic-waste/

https://academictimes.com/plastic-waste-can-now-be-turned-into-jet-fuel-in-one-hour/

https://www.thebetterindia.com/252885/tsomgo-lake-sangay-lama-sikkim-village-lake-revival-biodiversity-environment-protection-waste-management-segregation-ecotourism-no-plastic-him16/

We really need to Talk Trash to Tackle It and close the loop in order to restore our precious ecosystems.