Blogs

On the third day of the four-day Break Free From Plastics meeting, we started with an overview of the link between climate, oil and plastics. That the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, leads to carbon emissions, which have caused a rapid change in the climate is well established. But what is the link between plastics and climate?

Day 2 of the Break Free From Plastics meeting in Bali picked up pace quite rapidly. Where Day 1 aimed to set the expectations of the meeting and looking back at the recent past, today we looked at the various actions and strategies that are underway or planned for the coming 18 months. The conversation was anchored in four key questions, one each for the key themes that emerged from the previous day.

The Break Free From Plastics (BFFP) Movement meeting started on July 17 in Bali, Indonesia with more than 90 individuals coming from across the world for the four-day meeting. This follows the 2016 meeting in Tagatay, the Philippines where 90 non-governmental organisations committed to work towards a ‘future free of plastics pollution’.

On June 4, The Initiative on Waste, Informal Workers, and the Future of Chennai, a coalition of research and advocacy groups currently led by Citizen consumer and civic Action Group (CAG),  undertook a waste assessment and characterisation study (WACS) on Marina Beach, Chennai. Volunteers from the Angels of the Marina and Just Volunteer groups collected 40 bags of inorganic waste from a 200 metre stretch of the beach in two hours.

Having recently joined CAG, in the capacity of a researcher, I was excited and curious as to the kind of work my job would entail. I wasn’t disappointed. The very first projects I was roped into were about road safety and zero waste cities. Now, being a design major with a background in architecture and urban design I tackled the issue of road safety with verve and set about approaching the issue from a spatial perspective.

In January 2017, I joined CAG, where part of my work focuses on their solid waste management (SWM) projects. I started with the Mapping Waste Trails project, which aims to gain a better understanding of the lives of the informal waste pickers engaged in waste recycling in Chennai. Furthermore, we will be tracking the movements of certain recyclables, to ascertain the routes by which such materials traverse the city-scape, and the value added within each step in the routes.