Only One Planet Cambodia

Thailand has just joined China, Turkey and Malaysia in banning the import of plastic waste. For years, wealthy nations have shipped their plastic waste to these countries under a pretence of it to be recycled (also reporting this plastic waste as 'recycled'). But the truth is that the vast majority of plastic isn’t recyclable. Instead, it often ends up burned, dumped, or mismanaged, causing serious harm to people’s health, local communities and the environment. China started this trend by banning plastic imports in 2018, and other countries like Malaysia and Turkey soon followed. Now, with Thailand shutting its doors, we’re running out of places to send our trash. Over 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year, and much of it ends up as waste we don’t know how to deal with. This is a problem we can’t ignore anymore. If no country wants our plastic cr*p, what are we going to do with it?

Recycling is the fig leaf of consumption, as proved by yet another shameful report. Research by Everyday Plastic and the Environmental Investigation Agency demonstrates how UK supermarkets attempt to fool the British public with soft plastic “recycling schemes”. Trackers were placed on 40 pieces of soft plastic that were supposed to be recycled under the “return to store” recycling scheme by leading supermarkets, Sainsbury’s and Tesco. However, none of the items that were tracked to their end destination were recycled. 70% of these soft plastics were burnt, and others were downcycled to be used as unrecyclable materials. These alarming but unsurprising findings are just one of many demonstrations that plastic waste is unmanageable, and that industries are tricking consumers under the guise of recycling. People are bothering to take their bread bags and food wrappers back to their supermarket for what? Ritual burning? This is tantamount to fraud.   We have learnt from the case of ExonMobil that corporations will increasingly be facing litigations around misleading recycling claims and plastic pollution. With the UN Plastics Treaty on the horizon, there is a real opportunity for governments to introduce ambitious legislation that cuts the production of plastic at the source, so businesses have no choice but to play ball.

A new study has linked a key chemical found in plastic bottles to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. The study reveals the Bisphenol A (BPA), commonly used in food and drink packaging, can reduce sensitivity to insulin, which regulated our body’s sugar metabolism. Exposure to chemicals in plastic, like flame retardants, bisphenol, phthalates and PFAS, have previously been associated with a myriad of health impacts from reproductive disorders to cancer. With an abundance of research demonstrating the omnipresence of microplastics, found even within human blood and breast milk, this must be treated as a health crisis. The Global Plastics Treaty must put health at the top of the agenda and prioritise plastic regulation to protect our bodies from harm.

🍹Who doesn’t like Coke? But do you know that SOFT DRINKs industry churns out 470 Billion plastic bottles every year 😲 The total CO2 emissions from all those bottles add up to a whopping 61 million tons! 🌫️ Let's see how each of us can make a difference: One 500 ml PET bottle emits 0.13 kg of CO2💨 And Global per capita soft drink consumption is 180 bottles per year 🍾 Each of us emits 23.4 kg of CO2 eq. Per year😮💨 That is the amount of CO2 that a fully-grown tree absorbs in one year🌳 Isn't that a lot of destruction for a five-minute adrenaline rush from a soft drink?🤔🥲 What can You do?🌳 🤐It's crucial for our health and the environment to consume fewer soft drinks, although it can be challenging. 🍶The next best option is to purchase aluminium or tin-plated steel cans. While this also contributes to pollution, at least these materials can be recycled. ♻Last but most important - Stop believing the recycling claims #softdrink companies make because only 7-10% of these bottles are made from recycled plastic. Will you stop drinking soft drinks to save this world?🧐 Let’s make the change one #Coke at a time🥤🌍 #PlasticPollution #ClimateAction #Sustainableliving #SaveThePlanet *** Found this interesting? Follow Ankit Jajoo 🌱 for more exciting bits on sustainability and eco-friendly ways of living.

This is an unsettling example of an EPI plastic bag that goes beyond misleading #greenwashing to outright deception, very ripe territory for ACCC regulation. It says: “100% degradable. The produce bag that returns to nature!” Firstly, degradable simply means the bag is expected or designed to break into small pieces, not decompose naturally into something that can be used as a resource in an environmentally beneficial or even benign way. All standard thin gauge single-use plastic bags will degrade eventually, many ending up in the environment in the guts of fish and birds. In this sense, the bag does indeed “return to nature” but in a terribly destructive way. Surely this isn’t what EPI actually means… There are no credible standards for fluffy terms like degradability, oxo-degradability, or biodegradability. Compostable plastics must be independently certified to a recognised standard to be credible, ideally Australian Standards AS 4736–2006 (industrial) or AS 5810–2010 (home), which is consistent with Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) guidance. Secondly, would the average consumer or business understand all this or instead think that “returns to nature” means it just goes away and the world is a brighter place, somehow disappearing in a responsible way? It wouldn’t pass the pub test, and certainly not the #accc test for environmental and #sustainability claims.