swm

In constant contempt of the SWM Rules 2016 and its own bye-laws, Chennai Corporations continues to collect mixed waste and dispose it in dumpyards in Kodungaiyur, Perungudi and other locations in the city. Rather than enforce source segregation and promote composting, it intends to set up incinerators to burn the waste.

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.