From the 1960's onwards, the use of plastic polymers for packaging started increasing rapidly and after just 50 years the world, its rivers, and oceans were littered with millions of tonnes of plastic waste, increasing in volume with each passing year. More than 368 million metric tons of plastic are produced globally out of which two-thirds become trash after five years. The production of plastic products is projected to continue to rise to 1.1 billion metric tons by 2030 if current trends continue.
Is this a sustainable situation? Can we go on with business as usual with regard to plastic proliferation in the world in the name of growth and development?
Plastics are the largest, most harmful fraction of marine litter, accounting for at least 85% of total marine waste. By the middle of this century, the ocean will hold more plastic than fish if the trend is not reversed. No one can endorse this scenario where humankind and animals are forced to live in a world littered with plastic waste. We need healthy ocean and coastal ecosystems to store carbon and build resilience to climate change.
A complete circular economy around plastic is the most pressing and prioritised need of the planet to protect it from irreversible damage.
The solution lies in reducing problematic and unnecessary plastic use, redesigning the products and their packaging, and pushing for a market transformation towards circularity in plastics. As stressed by UNEP, this can be achieved by accelerating three key shifts – reorient and diversify, reuse, and recycle, – and concrete actions to deal with existing plastic pollution.
Reduction in the use of plastic can be achieved by redesigning the products, e.g. substituting dry products for liquified ones so that they don't need plastic containers. Reuse refers to the transformation to a ‘reuse society’ where reusing products and refilling them becomes the customary method rather than throwing them away. Reorient and diversifying refers to shifting the market towards sustainable alternatives, in the way products and packaging are produced, consumer demand, regulatory frameworks, and costs.
It is also an absolute must that when plastics are produced, they are designed to be recyclable in the market where they are sold, and that waste management and the recycling market become profitable ventures. Today, only 9% of plastics produced are mechanically recycled. It is also important to attach a social stigma towards littering and raise awareness in societies on careless discarding of plastic.
The UNEP passed a resolution calling for an instrument on plastic pollution that is “based on a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastic”. This would not be an instrument that deals with plastic pollution through recycling or waste management only as we cannot rely on that alone and the whole culture towards plastic production has to be altered, to reduce plastic proliferation.
We need to use fewer virgin polymers, less plastic, and no harmful chemicals. We need to ensure that we use, reuse, and recycle resources more efficiently and dispose safely of what is left over. This is how we will protect ecosystems, human health, and the impacts of climate change.
The entire body of industries and manufacturers need to put their resources and innovation to immediate work. As the drive to sustainability gathers pace, companies that adopt non-plastic substitutes or alternatives or better use of plastic now will win the market share.
There is also a need for strengthening regulatory frameworks, scaling up innovative solutions, mobilising financing, and monitoring actions that will enable us to achieve a transformation towards a circular economy of plastics.
There are technologically sound solutions available now for industries and businesses who want to trace plastic waste and join in the drive for cleaning the planet. Global companies are turning to using blockchain-based platforms such as ‘Plastiks’ to trace plastic waste and reduce its environmental impact.
The urgent need today is a global agreement to combat plastic pollution. Sanctions must be put in place for the companies that are not investing in redesigning their products or not using recycled plastic for their products. The enforcement of sanctions has worked wonders in the past with regard to banning businesses using child labour and the same sanctions can bring the menace of plastic proliferation under immediate control also.
The biggest plastic polluters of oceans like the Philippines, India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil must be held accountable at the International forums and compelled to do the cleanup within a given time frame or pay heavy fines for polluting the shared oceans. Without strict enforcement, just relying on voluntary action to stop the pollution would not work.
In most developing countries the hard work of recovering plastic is done by the informal sector or non-government organisations running projects, with little infrastructure or established links. This does not ensure any protection for the waste pickers nor make the process quantifiable or verifiable. Although some of the projects like ‘Ocean Cleanup’ and ‘Ocean Integrity’, ‘Zero Co’, ‘Second Life’ are doing amazing work and have collectively pulled out billions of kilogrammes of plastic from the oceans in the absence of a circular economy with regards to plastic, there is always the risk of their work going to waste as more plastic continues to be manufactured, used and discarded which can end up in the oceans.
Thankfully there are technologically sound solutions available now for industries and businesses who want to trace plastic waste and join in the drive for cleaning the planet. Global companies are turning to using blockchain-based platforms such as ‘Plastiks’ to trace plastic waste and reduce its environmental impact. The system is not only measurable and verifiable but also ensures that the companies are made responsible for their plastic waste production.
The green tech company, ‘Plastiks’ is the emerging solution to fill the gaps of accountability, transparency, and incentivization. On the one hand, this global platform incentivizes projects that are recovering plastic from the environment by using blockchain and non-fungible token (NFT) technology to verify their data and to advance new levels of accountability and traceability in the informal waste management sector and on the other motivates and galvanises businesses and companies to buy plastic credits for offsetting their plastic waste and to put in measures to reuse, recycle, redesign and reimagine their products and supply chains.
‘Plastiks’ is urging companies to take ‘producer responsibility’ and bring imaginative, commercially viable, and substantial changes in their business to reduce the use of plastic and to substitute it with sustainable materials.
André Vanyi-Robin, the CEO and founder of Plastiks, says: “We learned quickly that if you want the industry to change, you can’t simply go and ask the stakeholders to innovate and update their systems. You need to enable businesses to earn revenues by positively impacting the environment so that economically they are committed to saving the environment."
Plastiks is the bridge between plastic recovery projects on one hand and companies on the other. The NFTs – the secure and immutable certificate of ownership in the blockchain – open the door to innovation in waste management.
This digital asset becomes a digital receipt representing an invoice issued by these recovery projects when selling plastic waste to recycling companies to be transformed into new products. That invoice acts as proof that a certain amount of plastic has been recovered and passed forward. These NFTs represent plastic credits which certify how much plastic has been recovered from a specific area.
Plastiks verifies the recovery and recollection entity and verifies the roadmap for furthering and upscaling the recovery work, audits it after its implementation, and produces an impact report. Plastic provides the digital infrastructure to issue the plastic credits and transact them as well as the tools for showcasing their ownership and impact.
Plastic recovery projects such as Green Mining, Brazil, Esperanza, India, and Second Life, Thailand after collecting plastic waste from around their local communities, upload their invoice into Plastiks' database. The plastic credits they generate are then purchased by Plastiks' partner companies such as Siminetti, Danone, FC Barcelona, and many more to fulfill their commitment to fighting plastic pollution and to offset their plastic waste.
Siminetti, a British company of Mother of Pearl luxury mosaics, is committed to sponsoring a kilogramme of plastic recovery for every square metre of Siminetti product sold, providing the communities of ‘Second Life’ in Indonesia with additional income, while creating a circular economic model. This allows Seminetti to make a direct impact in the effort to stop ocean plastic pollution.
All of these environmentally beneficial investments from companies are showcased using Plastiks' Sustainability Dashboard where the positive environmental impact obtained from the funds related to the sale of these plastic credits can be seen.
To date, more and more global companies are proudly joining Plastiks and showcasing their sustainability initiatives. Danone the world's leading food company has recently signed a collaborative agreement with ‘Plastiks’. This agreement aims to digitise the amount of PET plastic that Danone recovers through ReNueva, a project to promote the recovery of bottles made with PET plastic. Another partner offsetting its plastic waste is FC Barcelona giving one Euro for every match ticket sold for plastic waste recovery.
Now companies, businesses, and associations are joining Plastiks in Pakistan also to digitise their sustainability drives and offset their plastic waste by taking responsible actions.