The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), under the United Nations Environment Programme, met in Nairobi on November 13-19 for its third round of negotiations to develop an international legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution worldwide. Under the UNEA Resolution 5/14, the INC is responsible for delivering a global plastics treaty by 2025.
The Plastic Brand Audit is a yearly initiative to gather data on the top polluting companies (and this year, this global citizen-science project celebrates its 5th birthday!). Last month, our team of dedicated volunteers cleaned up a stretch of the Kasimedu Beach, Chennai. The plastic waste they found was sorted and analysed to find out which company is putting out the most plastic. Our findings about who we found to be the top polluters, will soon be published. #breakfreefromplastic #brandaudit2022
We just took the #breakfreefromplastic Toxic Tours and learned that because of plastic production, clean air and water are a thing of the past for communities in Kochi, India. They showed that over 100 pipes dump toxic liquids directly into their river and over 110 exhaust pipes pump poisonous gases into the air.
Take the #ToxicTour to uncover the realities of plastic production.
➡️ ToxicTours.org
The last day of the Break Free From Plastics meeting was kept for communications. How can we be more effective in getting across our stories to citizens, governments, and corporates? This session was led by Dancing Fox, a group that works to “help change makers tell their story, and help storytellers change the world”.
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? If you create a venn diagram between the two, the overlap that you will see is fossil fuels.
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. We formed several break-away groups and had the opportunity to discuss each question.
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’. It is hard to miss the messages about plastics in oceans and how plastics will outnumber fish or that birds and animals, even on the remotest islands, are dying from having ingested plastics.
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.