In a Mexican city with buildings that reflect its level of modernization, a truck collects waste, mainly plastic, ignoring higher standards of care for health and the environment. Plastic garbage is just the tip of a serious social and environmental problem in Latin America and the Caribbean. CREDIT: Greenpeace

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 24 2023 (IPS)

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress towards partial regulations to reduce plastic pollution, but the problem is serious and environmental activists are calling for regulations in the entire chain of production, consumption and disposal of plastic waste.

The release of plastic waste into the environment “is the tip of the iceberg of a problem that begins much earlier, from the exploitation of hydrocarbons, to the transport and transformation of these precursors of an endless number of products,” Andrés del Castillo, a Colombian expert based in Switzerland, told IPS."That is why our main call is for an immediate moratorium on increased plastics production, followed by a phased out reduction in supply, and complemented by other crucial measures such as reuse and landfill systems." -- Andrés del Castillo

Ecuadorian biologist María Esther Briz, an activist with the international campaign Break Free From Plastic, said “plastic pollution in our countries is not on its way to becoming a big problem: it already is.”

“From the extraction of raw materials, since we know that 99 percent of plastic is made from fossil fuels – oil and gas – plus the pollutants that are released during the transformation into resins and in consumption, and in the more well-known phase of when they become waste, our region is already very much affected,” the activist told IPS from the Colombian city of Guayaquil.

Plastic production in the region exceeds 20 million tons per year – almost five percent of the global total of 430 million tons per year – and consumption stands at 26 million tons per year, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), a coalition of 800 environmental organizations.

In the region, the largest installed production capacity is in Brazil (48 percent), followed by Mexico (29 percent), Argentina (10 percent), Colombia (8.0 percent) and Venezuela (5.0 percent).

The average annual consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean is about 40 kilos per inhabitant, and each year the region throws 3.7 million tons of plastic waste into rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

Del Castillo, a senior lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), warned that “if the trend is not reversed, by 2050 plastic production will reach 1.2 billion tons annually. Paraphrasing (famed Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude) Gabriel García Márquez, that is the size of our solitude.”

“That is why our main call is for an immediate moratorium on increased plastics production, followed by a phased out reduction in supply, and complemented by other crucial measures such as reuse and landfill systems,” del Castillo said from Geneva.

Volunteers from Peru’s Life Institute for Environmental Protection clean up plastic garbage washed up on the coast near Lima. In the waters surrounding cities, as well as in the oceans, discarded plastic waste that is not reused or recycled is added to other forms of pollution, severely affecting nature, including species and the landscape. CREDIT: IPMAV

Fearsome enemy

The plastic life chain is an enemy to health due to the release of more than 170 toxic substances in the production process of the raw material, in the refining and manufacture of its products, in consumption, and in the management and disposal of waste.

Once it reaches the environment, in the form of macro or microplastics, it accumulates in terrestrial and aquatic food chains, pollutes water and causes serious damage to human health, to animal species – such as aquatic species that die from consuming or being suffocated by these products – and to the landscape.

It also accounts for 12 percent of urban waste. UNEP estimates the social and economic costs of global plastic pollution to be between 300 billion dollars and 600 billion dollars per year.

It also affects the climate: the world’s 20 largest producers of virgin polymers employed in single-use plastics, led by the oil companies Exxon (USA) and Sinopec (China), generate 450 million tons a year of planet-warming greenhouse gases, almost as much as the entire United Kingdom.

And prominent villains are single-use plastics, such as packaging, beverage bottles and cups and their lids, cigarette butts, supermarket bags, food wrappers, straws and stirrers. Of these, 139 million tons were manufactured in 2021 alone, according to an index produced by the Australian Minderoo Foundation.

After alarm bells went off at the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution, composed of 175 countries, was created. It held its first two meetings last year, in Montevideo and Paris, and will hold its third in November in Nairobi, in a process aimed at drafting a binding international treaty on plastic pollution.

As if the boom in the production, consumption and improper disposal of plastics were not enough, the Latin American region is also importing plastic waste from other latitudes.

Studies by GAIA and the Peruvian investigative journalism website Ojo Público reported that in the last decade (2012-2022) Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Colombia received more than one million tons of plastic waste from different parts of the world.

Although it is claimed that plastic waste is sold to be recycled into raw material for lower quality products or textiles, this rarely happens and it ends up adding to the millions of tons that go into landfills every year.

“We cannot even deal with our own waste and yet we are importing plastic garbage from other countries, often with very little clarity and transparency, so there is no traceability of what is imported under the pretext of recycling,” Briz complained.

Single-use plastics, more than a third of global production and ubiquitous in everyday life, are seen as the main villains in the entire plastics business chain, and Latin American and Caribbean countries are moving towards banning them altogether or at least limiting production and use. CREDIT: Goula

Laws and regulations are on their way

On the other side of the coin, in 2016 Antigua and Barbuda became the first country in the region to ban single-use plastic bags, and it has gradually expanded the ban to include polystyrene food storage containers, as well as single-use plates, glasses, cutlery and cups.

Since then, 27 of the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have enacted national or local laws to reduce, ban or eliminate single-use articles and, in some cases, other plastic products.

“There is a wide range: countries that already have strong rules to regulate plastics, especially single-use plastics, and they are applied. Others have very good regulations but they are not enforced. In others there are no regulations, and there are countries where nothing is happening,” Briz said.

In Argentina a 2019 resolution by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development covers the life cycle of plastic (production, use, waste and pollution reduction) and a 2020 law bans cosmetic and personal hygiene products containing plastic microbeads.

Belize, Chile, Colombia, most Mexican states and Panama have passed regulations to progressively ban or limit the consumption of single-use plastics, as have Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. But in some cases there are doubts as to whether these provisions are effectively enforced.

Brazil has had a National Plan to Combat Marine Litter since 2019, which, however, has not yet been implemented. Costa Rica also has a National Marine Litter Plan, which seeks to reduce waste with the support of the communities.

Ecuador is turning the Galapagos Islands into a plastic-free archipelago, and phased out plastic bags, straws, “to-go” containers and plastic bottles in 2018.

Fences, including those made from recovered plastic waste, are being installed in rivers in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and the Dominican Republic to collect plastic waste and prevent it from being washed out to sea.

In Guatemala, Castillo noted, the municipality of San Pedro La Laguna, in the Lake Atitlán basin, was a pioneer, banning sales of straws and plastic bags in 2016, and the city government won lawsuits in court over the ordinance. The example is spreading throughout the country.

View of a petrochemical plant of the Brazilian giant Braskem. Environmentalists’ demands for a halt to the expansion of plastics production focus on states in Mexico and Brazil, which have the largest petrochemical facilities in the Latin American region. CREDIT: Braskem

From landfills to petrochemicals

Del Castillo, the Ecuadorian expert, said that “apart from initiatives of a voluntary nature, regional action plans, and the regulation of single-use plastic products, the ongoing negotiation of an international treaty promises to be the path that has been chosen to put an end to plastic pollution.”

The treaty should cover “all emissions and risks from plastics during production, use, waste management and leakage,” del Castillo said, but “we don’t have to wait for the treaty to act: States can already say ‘No to the expansion of virgin plastics production’.”

The MarViva Foundation, which fights marine pollution in Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama, argues that “the best way to manage single-use plastic waste is not to create it,” and advocates discouraging the production, use and consumption of these materials.

But in the face of such proposals, “one of the biggest obstacles has to do with the economic power of the petrochemical industry, which refuses to reduce production. In Latin America, the largest producers of plastics are the petrochemical companies of Mexico and Brazil,” said Briz, the Ecuadorian biologist.

“Plastic is a cheap product, since its environmental and social costs are not taken into account, and while the cost of production and distribution is low, the cost for the health of people and the environment is not,” said the activist.

In short, for activists, an approach based only on recycling and bans will be of limited scope until a moratorium is imposed on the expansion of plastics production, with a global market worth 600 billion dollars a year and which at the current rate could triple in the next two decades.

Africa has committed to green recovery of COVID-19, now it needs to turn policy into action, analysts say. Credit: Dustan Woodhouse/Unsplash Dustan Woodhouse

By Aimable Twahirwa
KIGALI, Apr 12 2022 (IPS)

Climate change activist Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), is not reluctant to engage African governments to do what’s necessary to commit to post-COVID-19 green growth strategies.

Through Africa’s post-COVID-19 green recovery pathway, initiated in July last year, governments have committed to reaching the Paris Agreement’s climate change targets and prosperity objectives by adopting eco-friendly measures and doing this amid COVID-19 recovery.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) shows that COVID-19 has triggered the deepest economic recession. The current recovery plan by African governments is centred around climate finance, renewable energy, nature-based solutions, resilient agriculture, and green and resilient cities.

Activists say African countries need to urgently move from talk shops in conferences to implement green commitments.

Africa has committed to green growth strategies in its recovery from COVID-19, but it needs to ensure that the commitments are real, and not just on paper, says climate change activist Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS

Mwenda told IPS that climate actors should not forget the shortcomings manifested by the environmental crisis in terms of biodiversity losses, plastic menace etc.

While tackling the climate crisis, most African countries will require a holistic approach to recovery planning and policymaking. Both climate experts and activists stress that  African governments face an ‘enormous challenge’ even as they seize opportunities of the green transition, which aims to assist developing countries in rebuilding better from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The latest official report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) indicates that by 2050 greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production, use and disposal would account for 15 per cent of allowed emissions, under the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C (34.7°F).

It said that a shift to a circular economy can reduce the volume of plastics entering oceans by over 80 per cent by 2040; reduce virgin plastic production by 55 per cent, save governments US$70 billion by 2040, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent, and create at least 700,000 additional jobs – mainly in the global south, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

While state actors in the negotiations expressed their optimism about the smooth implementation of green economic recovery from COVID-19, some environmental activists believe that much will depend on what is at stake as African countries commit unprecedented resources to green recovery from COVID-19.

“There is one thing resolving (to support international agreements) and another thing implementing it,” Mwenda said while referring to the current situation in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Creating local green jobs: the United States, Italy and South Africa show the benefits of adopting green solutions, especially job creation. The report identified that improving the energy efficiency of existing and new homes, schools, and workplaces could create 900,000 jobs in South Africa.

“These urban actions would lead to significant emissions reduction that would surpass the South African 2030 climate target, making higher ambition to align with the Paris Agreement possible for South Africa,” the report stated. South Africa is one of the African countries committed to green recovery – although there have been mixed messages by politicians because of the country’s dependency on coal both domestically and for export.

The concerns raised by some politicians mirror concerns of other developing countries. Scientists in a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that emissions need to be cut swiftly to limit global warming. However, one of the authors, Fatima Denton, warns that if this is done “at the expense of justice, of poverty eradication and the inclusion of people, then you’re back at the starting block.”

The report also warns that it is crucial to ensure that youth, indigenous communities, and workers are on board.

During the fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly, which took place in March in Nairobi, Kenya, the historical agreement on green recovery from COVID-19 was adopted based on three initial draft resolutions from various nations, establishing an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), that has been assigned to complete draft global legally binding agreement by the end of 2024.

According to Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, this is the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord.

The historic resolution, titled “End Plastic Pollution: Towards an internationally legally binding instrument”, was adopted after the three-day UNEA-5.2 meeting, attended by more than 3,400 in-person and 1,500 online participants from 175 UN Member States, including 79 ministers and 17 high-level officials.

“This is an insurance policy for this generation and future ones, so they may live with plastic and not be doomed by it,” Andersen said.

While humanity is facing a pandemic, an economic crisis and an ecological breakdown, African governments were advised to put their countries on sustainable trajectories that prioritise economic opportunity, poverty reduction and planetary health.

The continent holds 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves and 65 percent of its arable land. It has massive renewable energy sources, according to the UNEP estimates.

According to environmental experts, the best way to tackle these issues simultaneously in Africa is to prioritise green investments in COVID-19 recovery by mobilising assets that back the sustainable use of resources.

Because the economic fallout from COVID-19 accelerated existing inequalities, it is even more critical for countries to rebuild their economies and enhance resilience against future shocks.

While activists agree the green recovery initiative is important for post-COVID-19 economies in Africa, the major challenge for these developing countries is access to these funds.

Faustin Vuningoma, the Executive Secretary of Rwanda Climate and Development Network (RCDN), told IPS that the capacity to develop green projects and meet the required criteria for most countries in Africa could easily hinder the developing world – especially access to resources.

“It is important for African countries to engage development partners with the funding resources and make sure they meet all criteria to access these funding,” Vuningoma said.

“The international partnerships will be crucial in tackling a problem that affects all of us,” said Dr Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya, Rwanda’s Minister of Environment, referring to the landmark agreement in Nairobi.

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Managing the life cycle of plastics, from production to end-of-life management is crucial to solving plastic pollution crisis. Credit: Antoine Giret/Unsplash

By Samira Sadeque
New York, Feb 8 2022 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected plastic waste management, as the world saw a rise in single-use sanitary products, and many cities abandoned their recycling and waste management efforts in the first few months, Eirik Lindebjerg of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) told IPS.

“For example, in March 2020, amid potential hygiene concerns, some major coffee chains paused filling reusable containers in favour of single-use receptacles,” he said. “We also saw many regulators around the world pausing or delaying bans, taxes, or fees on plastic items as well as recycling initiatives in response to sanitary and hygiene concerns.”

He added that some such measures included a pushback against the use of single-use plastic straws, stirrers, and cotton buds in the United Kingdom; meanwhile, the United States saw more than 100 cities halting curbside recycling programmes.

Lindebjerg, WWF’s Global Plastics Policy Manager, spoke with IPS as more than 70 business and financial institutions produced a statement demanding a legally binding treaty to address plastic pollution, ahead of February’s UNEA-5.2, which will be a continuation of UNEA-5.1, which took place in February 2021.

“We need to create proper systems for controlling and regulating plastic pollution, at local, national and global levels,” Lindebjerg said. “Governments need to cooperate and step up their game drastically.”

Excerpts of the interview:

Inter Press Service (IPS): A part of the statement reads: ‘This requires governments to align on regulatory measures that cover the whole life cycle of plastics, not limiting the scope of negotiations to address waste management challenges only.’ What would an approach that considers the ‘whole life cycle of plastics’ entail?

Eirik Lindebjerg (EL): A “whole life cycle of plastics” approach addresses all the potential risks of plastic pollution at each life cycle stage, from the extraction of raw materials to processing materials into plastic and its end-of-life management. Essentially, it is about introducing measures to stop plastic pollution at the stages where it is most efficient, instead of only focusing on high-cost infrastructure to clean up the problem afterwards.

A lifecycle approach would entail a mix of the measures, such as banning certain unnecessary and highly damaging product categories (like certain types of single-use plastics and intentionally added microplastics), product and design standards (to make sure a product produced in one country can be safely reused or recycled in another), as well as global requirements on waste management. Essentially, enabling better regulation of how we make, use and reuse plastic.

A new treaty should include all relevant measures necessary to solve the problem along the entire lifecycle and prioritise those most effective and least costly measures.

Categories of measure in the treaty could be:

• Harmonised regulatory standards and common definitions across markets;
• Clear national targets and action plans for tackling plastic pollution;
• Common reporting metrics and methodologies across the plastic value chain that can calculate discharge rates of plastics by country;
• Coordinated investment approaches toward infrastructure development in key markets and innovation.

IPS: How would a ‘circular economy for plastics’, as mentioned in the statement, add to the efforts to tackle climate change?

EL: Plastic is responsible for generating 1.8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions a year across its lifecycle. That is more than the annual emissions from aviation and shipping combined. A circular economy for plastics would mean significant GHG emission reduction related to plastic pollution and virgin plastic production.

It would ultimately mean that all plastics used stays within the economy. It would mean zero virgin fossil fuel plastic production and zero leakage to the environment. It would most likely entail a reduction of plastics consumption, especially the unnecessary uses that are so common today. It would be built around reuse and recycling. New business models would create new job opportunities. Biodiversity would benefit both from eliminating pollution and reducing the footprint from production and consumption.

Such an approach can potentially reduce the costs and tackle the negative impacts of the plastics system. Research has shown that this approach could reduce the annual volume of plastic entering the oceans by 80 percent and GHG emissions from plastic by 25 percent, while promoting job creation and better working conditions. By one estimate, a circular economy approach could create 700,000 quality jobs across the plastic value chain by 2040. An increase in plastic material value through design for recycling can also lead to significant improvements in waste pickers’ working conditions and earnings.

IPS: Could you share in detail how to ‘keep plastics in the economy and out of the environment’?

EL: The Reduce-Reuse-Recycle hierarchy must guide policies, production, and consumption practices. We must stop producing and consuming unnecessary plastic products and packaging. Plastic products must be designed for being reused or recycled. And producers must be made accountable for the end of life of the products.

Today, most plastic products are being designed with the intention of becoming waste at the end of life. But when the right incentives are put in place, there are a lot of examples demonstrating that it is perfectly possible to have a more circular system, such as deposit return systems for PET bottles in many countries.

Several comprehensive interventions which can support the transition to a circular economy have already been identified. For example, the Pew Charitable Trusts has proposed nine systemic interventions in line with circular economy principles:

1. Reduce growth in plastic production and consumption;
2. Substitute plastic with paper and compostable materials;
3. Design products and packaging for recycling;
4. Expand waste collection rates in the middle- to low-income countries;
5. Double mechanical recycling capacity globally;
6. Develop plastic-to-plastic conversion;
7. Build facilities to dispose of the plastic that cannot be recycled economically;
8. Reduce plastic waste exports by 90%;
9. Roll out known solutions for four microplastic sources.

IPS: There is considerable evidence that climate change and environmental pollution disproportionately affect marginalised communities. How does it work for communities where plastic is just a cost-effective alternative for many objects?

EL: Unfortunately, this is true for plastic as well. Marginalised communities disproportionately bear the cost of plastic pollution: pen burning, open dumpsites, polluted drinking water, soil pollution, damages to marine ecosystems and fish stocks are all implications that disproportionately affect low income and marginalised communities.

Incineration plants and oil and gas refineries are built predominantly in low-income and marginalised communities exposing them to health and economic risks. In addition, incinerators and landfills are disproportionately situated in indigenous communities because their lands have unclear tenure status. Crude oil and gas refineries are also disproportionately built in low-income and marginalised communities. This exposes these communities to chemical pollutants released during the incineration and refining processes.

IPS: Of the countries that have not yet backed this new treaty, which ones are crucial in the global economy? How do you plan to get them to participate?

EL: China is the largest economic actor that has not yet formally expressed support for the treaty but has expressed an openness to engage in negotiations through a recent declaration from trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation and has engaged progressively on the issue at a global level regarding plastic waste trade. Therefore, it is likely that China will support a mandate decision at UNEA and play an essential role in the treaty negotiations.

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The Sakhi sanitary pad is completely natural, comprising pinewood fibre, non-woven cloth, and butter paper. lt composts in eight days. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
PILGAON/GOA, India, Jun 30 2020 (IPS)

Jayashree Parwar has not traveled much outside of her village of Bicholim in the western coastal Indian state of Goa. But the homemaker-turned-social-entrepreneur has been reaching women in dozens of cities across the country with a hygiene product she makes at home along with women from her community.

Called Sakhi (friend in Hindi), the plastic-free sanitary pad is Goa’s first menstrual hygiene product made with organic materials.

Plastic challenge of sanitary pads

According to a 2018 joint report by Water Aid India and the Menstrual Hygiene Alliance of India, women and girls here use a whopping 12 billion sanitary pads annually. Depending on the materials used in the making of the sanitary pads, they could take up to 800 years to decompose, the report says.

Currently, most sanitary pads have over 90 percent composition plastics — the equivalent of four plastic bags.

• Goa may be one of the smallest states in India but it produces 7,300 tons of plastic waste annually. According to the state-owned Goa Pollution Board, plastic waste management remains a mammoth challenge for the state, which aims to go plastic-free by 2022.
• The huge plastic consumption is largely attributed to the flourishing tourism industry of the state, which has a population of less than two million but receives four times as many tourists each year.
• According to the state-based National Institute of Oceanography — India’s premier ocean research institute that regularly organises beach clean-up drives — most of the plastic garbage on the beaches are dumped locally.

Parwar doesn’t know these statistics very well but is aware of the growing plastic nuisance in her state.

“Wherever you go, there is plastic. You can go to any beach and there are heaps of plastic. A lot of it like cups, bottles, spoons etc are used by tourists and hotels, but we locals also use a lot of plastic, especially the carry bags for shopping,” she tells IPS, before adding that the eco-friendly Sakhi sanitary pads are her own way of mitigating the plastic challenge.

Goa may be one of the smallest states in India but it produces 7,300 tons of plastic waste annually. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

“A small step to reduce a big burden”

Parwar’s journey of a thousand pads started in the summer of 2015 in the narrow, tin-roofed hut adjoining her living room that she calls her ‘workshop’.

Three other women from her community joined her. They all share a similar background: none of them have studied beyond high school; they are from a low income group; and they all have dreams of a better life for their family and children.

Their resources were few: a few hundred rupees as their capital and a compressing machine donated by local doctor Subbu Nayak. Nayak also trained them in pad making and connected them with a raw material supplier in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

The process is fairly simple and making a single sanitary pad takes around five minutes, explains Nasreen Sheikh, one of Parwar’s colleagues.

“First we grind the pinewood fibre, then put it into a mould, press it and wrap it in (non-woven) cloth, sticking butter paper on one side and finally we sterilise it,” Sheikh tells IPS.

However, although they had a machine and the skills, a crucial component was still missing. They had no customers.

Fortunately for them, support came from different quarters, including the government’s Urban Development Department. Sumit Singh, an official from the department who leads the Clean India Mission, taught Parwar and her partners how to market themselves online with retailers like Amazon.

Parwar and her colleagues had no prior business experience and limited resources. They naturally saw online marketing as an exciting opportunity.

“We chose to sell on Amazon because none of us have the time or means to go out and market (the sanitary pads) in stores or malls. Besides, online we can have clients even outside of Goa,” Parwar says.

After four years of struggling to build the business and develop a steady customer base, along with numerous failed attempts to secure bank loans to grow their business, the women finally managed to expand beyond the narrow tin shed to a bigger room (their factory) where they now make a thousand pads every month.

“We are only making a 1,000 pads in a month, so it’s a very small step, but I believe every small step counts,” Parwar says.

Jayashree Parwar and her partners have been making plastic-free sanitary pads in Goa, and have sold them to clients in the India’s cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Growing demand for plastic-free

They have received orders from bigger cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi. Unlike known brands and corporate manufacturers, Parwar’s group doesn’t have the ability to advertise, but word of mouth, social media and a growing environmental consciousness have helped them, she says.

“We use materials that are completely natural: pinewood fibre, non-woven cloth, butter paper. There is nothing there to cause itching or skin rashes and once you dispose it, this pad will compost in eight days. We have given demonstration in many schools and other organisations. People have tried it and seen how the composting really works,” Alita Pilgaonkar, another member of the group, tells IPS. 

The sanitary pads also decompose in about two weeks.  

Eight sanitary pads cost 40 rupees and bulk pack containing 96 pads costs 700 rupees. They are cheaper than most popular brands but the women say that they manage to make a small profit.

Reusable vs compostable

Could a total shift to plastic-free sanitary pads be a possibility and could it curb the ever-increasing plastic burden?

Ideally, it is possible, but the willpower seems to be currently missing, Kathy Walkling, co-founder of Ecofemme, tells IPS.  Ecofemme is another women-led initiative that makes eco-friendly menstrual hygiene products. Based in Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry) on the country’s southern coast, Ecofemme produces and advocates for reusable sanitary pads that are both plastic-free and affordable.

“If government would back these initiatives, this could have a powerful effect to make a mainstream shift,” Walkling tells IPS.

But Eline Bakker Kruijne, an environmental engineer and formerly a programme officer at Netherlands-based international think-tank IRC WASH, tells IPS that no significant changes are possible without changing the current disposal system.

Pointing at the practice of treating discarded menstrual products, whether organic or plastic, as hazardous and burning them, Bakker Kruijne says that single-use pads are of no help as incineration only adds to pollution levels.

“It is all about how these single-use materials break down in the environment and if it requires an industrial process (like incineration), does it really help us?” Bakker Kruijne asks.

Walkling also says that single-use menstrual products, even if compostable, add to the daily waste volume. But public preference is currently tilted heavily towards these single-use pads as people see them as more hygienic than reusables.

However,  both the experts feel that moving away from plastic is a positive step.

“With each person who shifts to a reusable and non polluting product, approx 125 kg of sanitary waste per person over a lifetime of use will be prevented. There are currently approx 355 million menstruating girls and women in India and if each uses 10 pads/month this would generate 42.6 billion pads every year (355million*10pads*12 months).

“Obviously given these numbers, more women switching to re-usable products makes a significant difference,” Walking tells IPS.

Meanwhile, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown that has severely affected India’s economic sector has not left the producers of the Sakhi  sanitary pads unaffected. Their main supplier in Coimbatore, in south India, stopped operations, almost forcing the women out of business. However, they have recently managed to find another supplier in Mumbai.

Sales have also decreased, but Parwar is confident of recovering quickly once the crisis is over. Because, as she says, women’s “periods will not stop”.

There are an estimated 13,000 pieces of plastic litter afloat every single square kilometer of ocean. Credit: Bo Eide Snemann/CC-BY-2.0

By Manipadma Jena
ATHENS, Oct 10 2014 (IPS)

Imagine a black-footed albatross feeding its chick plastic pellets, a baby seal in the North Pole helplessly struggling with an open-ended plastic bag wrapped tight around its neck, or a fishing vessel stranded mid-sea, a length of discarded nylon net entangled in its propeller. Multiply these scenarios a thousand-fold, and you get a glimpse of the state of the world’s oceans.

With an average of 13,000 pieces of plastic litter estimated to be afloat every single square kilometer of ocean globally, and 6.4 million tonnes of marine litter reaching the oceans every year according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), researchers and scientists predict a bleak future for the great bodies of water that are vital to our planet’s existence.

A conservative estimate of overall financial damage of plastic to marine ecosystems stands at 13 billion dollars each year, according to a press release from UNEP released on Oct. 1.

“To entirely rid the ocean of litter is an aspiration not expected to be achieved in a lifetime, even if we stop waste inputs into the sea, which we still have not. The cost is too much. Much of the waste has been broken down and is beyond our reach. To clean the sea surface of [floating] litter itself will take a long time." -- Vincent Sweeney, coordinator of the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA).
With the 12^th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP12) currently underway in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the issue of marine health and ocean ecosystems is in the spotlight.

Of the 20 Aichi Bioiversity Targets agreed upon at a conference in Nagoya, Japan in 2010, the preservation of marine biodiversity emerged as a crucial goal, with Target 11 laying out the importance of designating ‘protected areas’ for the purpose of protecting marine ecosystems, particularly from the harmful effects of human activity.

Speaking to IPS on sidelines of the 16^th Global Meeting of the Regional Seas Conventions and Actions Plans (RSCAP) held in Athens from Sep. 29-Oct. 1, Tatjana Hema, programme officer of the marine pollution assessment and control component of the Mediterranean Action Plan, told IPS that marine debris results from humane behaviour, particularly land-based activities.

The meeting drew scientists and policymakers from around the globe to chart a new roadmap to stop the rapid degradation of the world’s seas and oceans and set policies for their sustainable use and integration into the post‐2015 development agenda.

There was a near unanimous consensus that marine littler posed a “tremendous challenge” to sustainable development in every region of the world.

The issue has been given top priority since the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil in 2012, and Goal 14 of the 17 proposed Sustainable Development Goals – which will replace the MDGs as the U.N.’s main blueprint for action at the end of this year – set the target of significantly reducing marine pollution by 2025.

“We did not have any difficulty pushing for the explicit inclusion of this goal in the proposed SDGs,” Jacqueline Alder, head of the freshwater and marine ecosystems branch at the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation for the UNEP told IPS. “After all, oceans are everyone’s problem, and we all generate waste.”

Wastes released from dump-sites near the coast or river banks, the littering of beaches, tourism and recreational use of the coasts, fishing industry activities, ship-breaking yards, legal and illegal dumping, and floods that flush waste into the sea all pose major challenges, experts say.

Similarly, plastics, microplastics, metals, glass, concrete and other construction materials, paper and cardboard, polystyrene, rubber, rope, fishing nets, traps, textiles, timber and hazardous materials such as munitions, asbestos and medical waste, as well as oil spills and shipwrecks are all defined as marine debris.

“Organic waste is the main component of marine litter, amounting to 40-80 percent of municipal waste in developing countries compared to 20-25 percent in developed countries,” Hema said.

Microplastics, however, emerged as one of the most damaging pollutants currently choking the seas. This killer substance is formed when plastics fragment and disintegrate into particles with an upper size limit of five millimeters in diameter (the size range most readily ingested by ocean-dwelling organisms), down to particles that measure just one mm in diameter.

“Micro- and nano-plastics have been found [to have been] transferred to the micro-wall of algae. How this will affect the food chain of sea creatures and how human health is going to be affected by ingesting these through fish, we still do not know,” UNEP’s Vincent Sweeney, who coordinates the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA), told IPS.

Fishermen haul in their catch on a beach in Sri Lanka’s eastern Trincomalee District. Experts say a large portion of marine litter is a by-product of the global fishing industry. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida/IPS

“The extent of the microplastic problem till now is somewhat speculative; we still do not have a sense of how much of the oceans are affected,” he added.

Ocean SDG targets have to stand up to four criteria: whether they are ‘actionable’, ‘feasible’, ‘measureable’ and ‘achievable’.

Unlike, for example, the target of reducing ocean acidification (whose only driver is carbon dioxide), which easily meets all four criteria, the issue of marine debris is not as simple, partly because “what shows up on the beach is not necessarily an [indication] of what is inside the ocean,” Sweeney asserted.

“Marine litter can move long distances, becoming international. Ownership is difficult to establish,” he added. Litter also accumulates in mid-ocean ‘gyres’, natural water-circulation phenomenon that tends to trap floating material.

“The risk in not knowing the exact magnitude of marine litter is that we may tend to think it is too big to handle,” Sweeney said, adding, however that “momentum is building up with awareness and it is now getting priority at different levels.”

“To entirely rid the ocean of litter is an aspiration not expected to be achieved in a lifetime, even if we stop waste inputs into the sea, which we still have not. The cost is too much. Much of the waste has been broken down and is beyond our reach. To clean the sea surface of [floating] litter itself will take a long time,” Sweeney asserted.

“Though there are different drivers for marine pollution in each country, the common factor is that we are consuming more and also generating more waste and much of this is plastic,” he concluded.

Aside from insufficient data and the high cost of cleaning up marine litter, the Means of Implementation (MoI) or funding of the SDG ocean targets is yet another challenge for most regions.

Northwest Pacific countries like China, Japan, Russia and Korea, however, have established replicable practices, according to Alexander Tkalin, coordinator of the UNEP Northwest Pacific Action Plan.

“Korea and Japan are major donors and both have introduced legislation specifically on marine litter,” Tkalin told IPS on the sidelines of the meeting.

“Japan has changed legislation to incentivise marine debris cleaning, tweaking its law under which, normally, one pays for littering, but the government now pays municipalities for beach-cleaning after typhoons, when roots and debris from the sea-floor are strewn on beaches,” Tkalin explained.

The Dutch and the U.S. also have strong on-going programmes on marine debris, as does Haiti, according to Sweeney.

The extent of the crisis was brought home when Evangelos Papathanassiou, research director at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Attiki, 15 kilometres from Athens, told visiting regional journalists about his experience of finding a sewing machine at a depth of 4,000 feet in the Mediterranean Sea.

“Even though man-made marine pollution from aquaculture, tourism and transportation are most pressing in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, they are not getting the deserved attention,” he added.

If the new development era is to be a successful one, experts conclude, we terrestrial beings must urgently turn our attention to the seas, which are crying out for urgent assistance.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida