SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Nairobi, KenyaIt didn’t take long after the recent United Nations environmental assembly in Kenya ended for environmentalists to sharply rebuke the United States for allegedly derailing global ambitions to prevent plastic debris from flowing into the oceans.
“The tyranny of the minority,” their statement declared as environmentalists denounced the Americans for what they said was slowing progress on marine plastics by diluting a resolution calling for phasing out single-use plastic by 2025 and blocking an effort to craft a legally binding treaty on plastic debris.
...
“I would not say the U.S. is making itself irrelevant,” says David Azoulay, a Geneva-based lawyer for the Center for International Environmental Law, who observed the negotiations. “But it is true that the U.S. is setting itself further apart, as it did with the withdrawal from the Paris accord, from addressing the critical challenges of our generation. The whole world is addressing the plastic challenge at its roots. The EU is doing it, India is doing it. The world is moving forward.”The Americans sought to define marine debris as an issue solved exclusively by waste management, said Hugo-Maria Schally, the European Union’s lead negotiator on marine plastics, in an interview, while “virtually everybody else in the room was focused on the idea that there is a problem with production and the use of single-use plastic.”
...
One reason other nations are also seeking reductions in single-use plastics is the growing unease that even creation of the most comprehensive waste disposal systems may not be enough to keep up with the accelerating pace of plastics manufacturing. The plastics industry has grown so rapidly that half the plastic on Earth has been made since 2005, and production is expected to double in the next two decades. Disposable plastic products account for 40 percent of that production and are largely blamed for the plastic mess that’s been made of the seas.
...So far, 127 countries have adopted regulations regarding plastic bags, according to UN tallies as of July 2018. Twenty-seven countries have adopted bans on other single-use products, including plates, cups, cutlery, or straws.
India, home to 1.3 billion people and the world’s second most-populated nation, continues preparations to abolish all single-use plastic by 2022 in a plan announced last year that may be the world’s most ambitious undertaking.
See also the Flipflopi dhow
Ben Morison’s epiphany came early one morning as he set out for a swim on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast. The Kenyan tour operator counted 13 pieces of plastic, including bottles and flip flops, as he walked to the sea. With a jolt, he realized how degraded the coastline he loved – and marketed as a dream destination – had become. He had to act.
“It’s all too easy to look to the left or the right and wait for somebody else to do something but I thought, ‘What can I do that could help bring this to light, and be fun and cheerful?’,” he says.
The answer became the Flipflopi project: an ambitious plan to build a traditional dhow from recycled plastic and sail it along the East African coast to spread the message that our reliance on single-use plastics is wasteful and destructive.
...
The Flipflopi is the latest chapter in Kenya’s push to become a global leader in dealing with plastic pollution. In August 2017, the country introduced the world’s toughest ban on plastic bags with anyone producing, selling or using a plastic bag risking imprisonment of up to four years or fines of $40,000.The Kenyan ban has inspired other African countries – including Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and South Sudan – to consider following suit. Rwanda already banned plastic bags in 2008.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @01:30AM (5 children)
Plastic in the ocean is generally not trash from USA, EU, Australia, Japan, or any similar place. Those of us living in these areas might gripe about imperfect rivers and imperfect beaches, but really we have it good. People mostly behave.
It's a whole different situation in India, China, and Africa. The rivers are choked with trash flowing toward the oceans. Banning single-use plastic in these places makes a bit of sense. Of course, a more-effective solution would be to fix the culture. I'd say "good luck with that", but 1940s USA wasn't so nice... so maybe.
Banning single-use plastic across the world, including in the better-behaving nations, is collective punishment.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday April 11 2019, @02:24AM (2 children)
Wake up, your trash is coming to your doorsteps**, 'cause it started to have nowhere to go.
Huge rise in US plastic waste shipments to poor countries following China ban [theguardian.com]
Destination of 2018 US waste plastic exports [squarespace-cdn.com] - 78% to countries with poor waste management.
[Mar 2019] China's ban on trash imports shifts waste crisis to Southeast Asia [nationalgeographic.com]
[June 2018] Plastic waste export tide turns to south-east Asia after China ban [ft.com]
[Dec 2018] Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam waste imports crackdown [wastemanagementreview.com.au]
[Mar 2019] India bans plastic scrap imports [recyclingtoday.com]
---
** [Mar 2019] Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling [yale.edu]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @02:46AM (1 child)
1. It's still the fault of places like Africa, China, India, or wherever the trash goes. Once they buy it, it is theirs. They are dumping their trash.
2. Banning those shipments is an easier solution. It still improperly casts blame on the better countries, but oh well. An upside is that we get cheap industrial inputs and stop subsidizing return trips for container ships. This helps promote local manufacturing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday April 11 2019, @03:09AM
Before you're looking to who to assign the blame, better consider what you'll do with your trash.
See? That was easy... to talk. Let's see the walk now.
If that's what is needed for you to learn that it's easier to solve a problem if you don't create it in the first place, then so be it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 11 2019, @02:50AM
So much of it has to do with the economic motivation/will to keep things clean. I visited Freeport, Bahamas in 1986 and back then there were parts of town that were literally paved with garbage, over a foot deep alongside the roads. Then, there were other parts of town that more clearly understood how garbage on the streets impacts their ability to make money from tourists, and they were basically pristine, manicured landscaping, well maintained buildings, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 11 2019, @02:57AM
Is New York City still running garbage barges out to sea to dump? That was still going on surprisingly recently.
There are still a number of landfills and incinerators around the country that are pretty heinous polluters, not to mention coal fired power plants and the chemical refineries like Houston has.
In the U.S. we've improved dramatically over the last 100 years, but there's still a long way to go. Banning single use plastics from the manufacturing sources would be much more effective at protecting the environment than attempting to keep them contained after manufacturing and distribution.
🌻🌻 [google.com]