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Kuwait Times
6 days ago
- General
- Kuwait Times
Plastic pollution plague blights Asia
GENEVA: Kulsum Beghum sorts waste at a landfill in Dhaka. Her blood contains 650 microplastic particles per milliliter, according to an analysis funded by a waste pickers' union. 'Plastic is not good for me,' she told AFP through a translator during an interview in Geneva, where she came to bear witness on the sidelines of 184-nation talks to forge the world's first global plastic pollution treaty. 'It started 30 years ago' in the Bangladeshi capital, the 55-year-old said, supported by her union. At first, 'plastic was for cooking oil and soft drinks', she recalled. Then came shopping bags, which replaced traditional jute bags. 'We were attracted to plastic, it was so beautiful!' Today, in one of the most economically fragile countries on the planet, plastic is everywhere: lining the streets, strewn across beaches, clogging the drains. Alamgir Hossain, a member of an association affiliated with the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, showed photos on her phone. Beghum wants non-recyclable plastics banned, pointing out that she cannot resell them and they have no market value. 'No one collects them,' she said. 'Disaster for the environment' Indumathi from Bangalore in southern India, who did not give her full name, concurs: 60 percent of the plastic waste that arrives at the sorting center she set up is non-recyclable, she told AFP. This includes crisp packets made of a mixture of aluminium and plastic, and other products using 'multi-layer' plastic. 'No one picks them up from the streets and there are a lot of them,' she said. Scientists attending the treaty negotiations at the United Nations in Geneva back her up. 'Multi-layer plastic bags are a disaster for the environment,' said Stephanie Reynaud, a polymer chemistry researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research. 'They cannot be recycled.' Indumathi was also critical of what she described as public policy failures. After single-use bags were banned in her country in 2014, for example, she saw the arrival of black or transparent polypropylene lunchboxes, which are also single-use. 'We're seeing more and more of them on the streets and in landfills. They've replaced shopping bags,' she said. According to a recent OECD report on plastic in Southeast Asia, 'more ambitious public policies could reduce waste by more than 95 percent by 2050' in the region, where plastic consumption increased ninefold since 1990 to 152 million tons in 2022. Plastics 'colonialism' Consumer demand is not to blame, argues Seema Prabhu of the Swiss-based NGO Trash Heroes, which works mainly in Southeast Asian countries. The market has been flooded with single-use plastic replacing traditional items in Asia, such as banana leaf packaging in Thailand and Indonesia, and metal lunch boxes in India. 'It's a new colonialism that is eroding traditional cultures,' she told AFP. According to her, more jobs could be created 'in a reuse economy than in a single-use economy'. Single-dose 'sachets' of shampoo, laundry detergent or sauces are a scourge, said Yuyun Ismawati Drwiega, an Indonesian who co-chairs the International Pollutants Elimination Network NGO. 'They are the smallest plastic items with which the industry has poisoned us—easy to carry, easy to obtain; every kiosk sells them,' she told AFP. In Indonesia, collection and sorting centers specializing in sachets have failed to stem the tide, mostly shutting down not long after opening. In Bali, where Ismawati Drwiega lives, she organizes guided tours that she has nicknamed 'Beauty and the Beast'. The beauty is the beaches and luxury hotels; the beast is the back streets, the tofu factories that use plastic briquettes as fuel, and the rubbish dumps. – AFP
Straits Times
6 days ago
- General
- Straits Times
Plastic pollution plague blights Asia
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox People in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, crossing a canal which is under a pile of plastic waste. GENEVA - Kulsum Beghum sorts waste at a landfill in Dhaka. Her blood contains 650 microplastic particles per millilitre, according to an analysis funded by a waste pickers' union. 'Plastic is not good for me,' she told AFP through a translator during an interview in Geneva, where she came to bear witness on the sidelines of 184-nation talks to forge the world's first global plastic pollution treaty. 'It started 30 years ago' in the Bangladeshi capital, the 55-year-old said, supported by her union. At first, 'plastic was for cooking oil and soft drinks', she recalled. Then came shopping bags, which replaced traditional jute bags. 'We were attracted to plastic, it was so beautiful!' Today, in one of the most economically fragile countries on the planet, plastic is everywhere: lining the streets, strewn across beaches, clogging the drains. Ms Alamgir Hossain, a member of an association affiliated with the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, showed photos on her phone. Ms Beghum wants non-recyclable plastics banned, pointing out that she cannot resell them and they have no market value. 'No one collects them,' she said. 'Disaster for the environment' Ms Indumathi from Bangalore in southern India, who did not give her full name, concurs: 60 per cent of the plastic waste that arrives at the sorting centre she set up is non-recyclable, she told AFP. This includes crisp packets made of a mixture of aluminium and plastic, and other products using 'multi-layer' plastic. 'No one picks them up from the streets and there are a lot of them,' she said. Scientists attending the treaty negotiations at the United Nations in Geneva back her up. 'Multi-layer plastic bags are a disaster for the environment,' said Dr Stephanie Reynaud, a polymer chemistry researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research. 'They cannot be recycled.' Ms Indamathi was also critical of what she described as public policy failures. After single-use bags were banned in her country in 2014, for example, she saw the arrival of black or transparent polypropylene lunchboxes, which are also single-use. 'We're seeing more and more of them on the streets and in landfills. They've replaced shopping bags,' she said. According to a recent OECD report on plastic in South-east Asia, 'more ambitious public policies could reduce waste by more than 95 per cent by 2050' in the region, where plastic consumption increased ninefold since 1990 to 152 million tonnes in 2022. Plastics 'colonialism' Consumer demand is not to blame, argues Ms Seema Prabhu of the Swiss-based NGO Trash Heroes, which works mainly in South-east Asian countries. The market has been flooded with single-use plastic replacing traditional items in Asia, such as banana leaf packaging in Thailand and Indonesia, and metal lunch boxes in India. 'It's a new colonialism that is eroding traditional cultures,' she told AFP. According to her, more jobs could be created 'in a reuse economy than in a single-use economy'. Single-dose 'sachets' of shampoo, laundry detergent or sauces are a scourge, said Ms Yuyun Ismawati Drwiega, an Indonesian who co-chairs the International Pollutants Elimination Network NGO. 'They are the smallest plastic items with which the industry has poisoned us – easy to carry, easy to obtain; every kiosk sells them,' she told AFP. A volunteer collecting plastic waste from a mangrove swamp in Surabaya on July 26, 2025, during World Mangrove Day. PHOTO: AFP In Indonesia, collection and sorting centres specialising in sachets have failed to stem the tide, mostly shutting down not long after opening. In Bali, where Ms Ismawati Drwiega lives, she organises guided tours that she has nicknamed 'Beauty and the Beast'. The beauty is the beaches and luxury hotels; the beast is the back streets, the tofu factories that use plastic briquettes as fuel, and the rubbish dumps. AFP
IOL News
05-06-2025
- General
- IOL News
Wastepickers play a key role in the fight against plastic pollution
Wastepickers play a key role in the fight against plastic pollution. Image: File Niranjan Shrestha/AP Our addiction to plastics is trashing the planet, exacerbating global heating and threatening our very survival. Since 2022, the UN has been convening negotiations on a Plastics Treaty to address this crisis. In one of the greatest success stories of the negotiations, an International Alliance of Waste Pickers representing 460,000 of them in 34 countries has ensured that the draft treaty includes a just transition for waste pickers. As my research shows, there are a host of reasons why this should happen. Among them are the fact that waste pickers provide an important service to society. In addition they are producers of knowledge and ideas. Because they go through our trash and leave behind everything without value, they know better than anyone which plastics should be eliminated. They are also the only people with significant experience collecting recyclables in developing countries. According to the alliance, a just transition for waste pickers involves: recognising and formalising waste pickers' role; registration; meaningful involvement in policy-making and implementation; social protection and fair remuneration; and capacity building and organisational support. As the world's leaders meet in Ottawa for the current round of negotiations, the alliance's challenge is to ensure commitments to waste pickers make it into the final text. South Africa's approach to waste picker integration demonstrates how they can be protected. A waste picker sorts through plastic bottle waste at the Dandora garbage dump where people scavenge through the landfill for re-usables and recyclables that can be re-sold. Image: Tony Karumba / AFP A working model As the Reclaim, Revalue, Reframe website my colleagues and I created explains, South Africa's just transition for waste pickers is grounded in an approach that I call 'participatory evidence-based policy-making'. I first used this approach when I facilitated the three-year process to develop government's Waste Picker Integration Guideline for South Africa. A series of education workshops combined waste pickers' knowledge with analysis of academic research. In this way, a working group of various stakeholders agreed on the content of the guideline. The key to our success was to start by agreeing on what existed. In the past, government and industry treated waste pickers as poor, marginal people in need of help. But research showed waste pickers collected 80%-90% of the used packaging and paper recycled in South Africa. It became clear that it was waste pickers who were subsidising government and industry and that they were the experts on getting recyclables out of the environment. Based on this analysis, the working group defined waste picker integration as the creation of a formally planned recycling system that: values and improves the present role of waste pickers builds on the strengths of their existing system for collecting and revaluing recyclables includes waste pickers as key partners in its design, implementation, evaluation and revision. The group also agreed on integration principles. They include redress, improved incomes and working conditions, and valuing waste pickers' expertise. Melanie Samson is an Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Johannesburg. Image: The Conversation Now, South African municipalities and industry are required to make this work in practice. South Africa has regulations which make producers responsible for the impact of their products after consumption. The rules require industry to pay a service fee to waste pickers registered on the South Africa Waste Picker Registration System. This is a vital step in addressing racial capitalism, as the entire recycling industry has exploited black waste pickers' free labour. It is difficult to register waste pickers, as they are understandably reluctant to give their personal information to municipalities and industry. Including them in the process of developing the registration system helped to create trust. Justice delayed South Africa's potential to be the world leader in a just transition for waste pickers is at risk, however, because of weak implementation, monitoring and enforcement. Industry is paying the service fee to only a handful of the registered waste pickers. Few municipalities have integration programmes that comply with the guideline. It is unclear what the government is doing to address these legal violations. Fixing the loopholes The solution lies in using the participatory evidence-based approach again – this time for implementation. First, the government should establish a permanent multi-stakeholder Waste Picker Integration Committee to develop and oversee the implementation of a national integration strategy. Second, the government should work with waste pickers and other stakeholders to create a municipal waste picker integration support programme. Third, the government should include waste pickers and other experts in monitoring producer responsibility for waste. Stiff penalties must be imposed on industry for noncompliance. Fourth, companies that committed themselves to waste picker integration by signing the Fair Circularity Initiative Principles should push South African industry to meet its legal requirements to pay and integrate waste pickers. Lessons for the Plastics Treaty The South African experience demonstrates what's possible. The International Alliance of Waste Pickers proposed how the Plastics Treaty could address their concerns. Negotiators should agree to this text. The South African experience also shows that achieving a just transition requires participation at all stages: implementation, monitoring and enforcement. This must be built into the treaty now and the Group of Friends of Waste Pickers nations should agree to keep partnering on implementation. SUNDAY TRIBUNE
