Noreen Haider
More than 368 million metric tons of plastic are produced globally out of which two thirds become trash after five years. The production of plastic products is projected to continue to rise to 1.1 billion metric tons by 2030 if current trends continue. Plastics account for at least 85 per cent of total marine waste. By the middle of this century the ocean will hold more plastic than fish if the trend is not reversed. A complete circular economy around plastic is the most prioritized need of the planet in order to protect it from irreversible damage.
The solution lies in reducing problematic and unnecessary plastic use, redesigning the products and their packaging and pushing for a market transformation towards circularity in plastics. As stressed by UNEP, this can be achieved by accelerating three key shifts – reorient and diversify, reuse, and recycle, – and concrete actions to deal with existing plastic pollution.
Reduction through redesigning the products, e.g. substituting dry products for liquified ones so that they don’t need plastic containers. Reuse refers to the transformation to a ‘reuse society’ where reusing products and refilling them becomes the customary method. Reorient and diversify refers to shifting the market towards sustainable alternatives, in the way products and packaging are produced, consumer demand, regulatory frameworks and costs.
It is also an absolute must that when plastics are produced, they are designed to be recyclable in the market where they are sold, and that waste management and the recycling market become profitable ventures. Today, only nine percent of plastics produced are mechanically recycled.
It is not enough to deal with plastic pollution through recycling or waste management only but the whole culture towards plastic production has to be altered. We need to use fewer virgin polymers, less plastic and no harmful chemicals. We need to ensure that we use, reuse, and recycle resources more efficiently and dispose safely of what is left over. This is how we will protect ecosystems, human health and impacts of climate change.
The entire body of industries and manufacturers need to put their resources and innovation to immediate work. As the drive to sustainability gathers pace, companies that adopt non-plastic substitutes or alternatives or better use of plastic now will win the market share.
There is also a need for strengthening regulatory frameworks, scaling up innovative solutions, mobilising financing, and monitoring actions that will enable us to achieve a transformation towards a circular economy of plastics.
International sanctions must be put in place for the companies that are not investing in redesigning their products or not using recycled plastic for their products. The enforcement of sanctions has worked wonders in the past with regards to banning the businesses using child labour and the same sanctions can bring the menace of plastic proliferation under immediate control also. The biggest plastic polluters of oceans like the Philippines, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil must be held accountable at the international forums and compelled to do the cleanup within a given time frame or pay heavy fines for polluting the shared oceans.
In most developing countries the hard work of recovering plastic is done by the informal sector or non government organizations run projects, with little infrastructure which does not ensure any protection for the waste pickers nor make the process quantifiable or verifiable. Although projects like ‘Ocean Cleanup’ and ‘Ocean Integrity’, ‘Zero Co’, ‘Second Life’ are doing amazing work and have collectively pulled out billions of kilograms of plastic from the oceans but in the absence of a circular economy with regards to plastic, there is always the risk of their work going to a waste as more plastic continues to be manufactured, used and discarded which can ends up in the oceans.
Thankfully there are technologically sound solutions available now for industries and businesses who want to trace plastic waste and join in the drive for cleaning the planet.
The Green Tech company, ‘Plastiks’ is the emerging solution to fill the gaps of accountability, transparency and incentivization. On one hand this global platform incentivizes plastic recovery projects from the environment by using blockchain and non-fungible token (NFT) technology to verify their data and to advance new levels of accountability and traceability in the informal waste management sector and on the other motivates and galvanizes businesses and companies to buy plastic credits for offsetting their plastic waste and to put in measures to reuse, recycle, redesign and reimagine their products and supply chains.
‘Plastiks’ is urging companies to take ‘producer responsibility’ and bring imaginative, commercially viable and substantial changes in their business to reduce the use of plastic and to substitute it with sustainable materials.
André Vanyi-Robin, the CEO and founder of Plastiks, says: “We learned quickly that if you want the industry to change, you can’t simply go and ask the stakeholders to innovate and update their systems. You need to enable businesses to earn revenues by positively impacting the environment so that economically they are committed to saving the environment.”
The NFTs – the secure and immutable certificate of ownership in the blockchain becomes a digital receipt representing an invoice issued by these recovery projects when selling plastic waste to recycling companies. That invoice acts as proof that a certain amount of plastic has been recovered and passed forward. These NFTs represent plastic credits which certify how much plastic has been recovered from a specific area.
Plastiks verifies the recovery and recollection entity and verifies the roadmap for furthering and upscaling the recovery work, audits it after its implementation and produces an impact report. Plastic provides the digital infrastructure to issue the plastic credits and transact them as well as the tools for showcasing their ownership and impact. Plastic recovery projects such as Green Mining, Brazil, Esperanza, India and Second Life,Thailand after collecting plastic waste , upload their invoice into Plastiks database. The plastic credits they generate are then purchased by Plastiks partner companies such as Siminetti, Danone, FC Barcelona and many more in order to fulfill their commitment to fighting plastic pollution and to offset their plastic waste.
Siminetti, British company of Mother of Pearl luxury mosaics, is committed to sponsor 1 kg of plastic recovery for every square meter of Siminetti product sold, providing the communities of ‘Second Life’ in Indonesia with additional income, while creating a circular economy model.
All of these environmentally beneficial investments from companies are showcased using Plastiks’ Sustainability Dashboard where the positive environmental impact obtained from the funds related to the sale of these plastic credits can be seen.
Danone the world leading food company has recently ‘Plastiks’ to digitize the amount of PET plastic that Danone recovers through ReNueva, a project to promote the recovery of bottles made with PET plastic. Another partner offsetting its plastic waste is FC Barcelona giving one Euro for every match ticket sold for plastic waste recovery. Now companies, businesses and associations are joining Plastiks in Pakistan also to digitize their sustainability drives and offset their plastic waste by taking responsible actions.
