Hello Plastic Community - Happy New Year!

I am posting to let you know that the ISLANDS Call to Action on Plastic deadline has been extended until next Sunday (Jan 15th).

Share your experience on how you are taking action against plastics pollution in your country to seize the opportunity of featuring in the ISLANDS Voices video series!

Thank you to all of those who have posted already, including Leon Labuga, Andrew Paris, Julie Pillet, Tendekai Dzinamarira and KUMARASINGHE ARCHCHILAGE DON SAJEERA SHENON PEIRIS

The Climate Impact of Our Insatiable Plastic Addiction

Let's start fresh this year with a nice recap on why plastic is so detrimental for us and the planet!

In December, the UN held the first round of talks to negotiate a global plastic treaty, but nations were split on the best approach.

According to Judith Enck, President of Beyond Plastics and senior fellow and visiting faculty member at Bennington College, any effective plastics treaty must include:

1. Banning unnecessary single-use plastic products such as plastic bags, utensils, stirrers, polystyrene, shipping envelopes, etc.
2. Investing in reuse and refill system infrastructure that reduces our reliance on single-use products
3. Requiring that plastics be reduced by 50% in the next decade and that what is left can actually be safely recycled, which means eliminating toxins from plastics
4. Making plastic polluters pay for the damage that they continue to cause
5. Banning waste exports so that nations are required to manage their own waste and stop dumping it on other countries.

Read this last night to my ten-year-old daughter and felt the need to share. I picked up this article, not having any idea that it related to plastic....

Essentially - adult shearwaters pick up food from the surface of the ocean and deliver it to young in burrows on Lord Howe Island. There is a very high mortality rate of young birds - not making it to the water. A research team has been opening the bellies of these birds and finding a huge array of macro-plastics. It seems the parent birds are confusing their normal foods, with plastic pieces, ingesting, and then regurgitating into their young. The pervasiveness of plastics in our ocean and in our fauna is Incredibly disturbing.

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2022/06/trouble-in-paradis…

28th September 2022 – The Ministry of Environment Climate Change Disaster Management and Meteorology in collaboration with the Sustainable Waste Action in the Pacific Project (SWAP), the Pacific Ocean Litter Project (POLP) and KIOST Pacific Ocean Acidification Program successfully implemented the International Coastal Clean-up (ICC) day event held at Mataniko river mouth beach near Renlau Community.
The International Coastal Cleanup Day is the single coastal cleanup day in the world celebrated every year. The day was started as a way to raise awareness about the growing pollution on various beaches of the world. A promise to bring cleanliness and purity to nature as a whole.
This year 2022 mark the 36th year of the ICCD in action. In 2020 more than 221,589 volunteers from all around the world removed over 5,229,065 pounds of trash along 49,635 miles. Since the first ICC in 1986, over 16.5 million volunteers globally have collected and logged 357,102,419 items, totalling over 344 million pounds of trash. Marine litter is a global intergenerational and transboundry issue that negatively affects the environment, people and coastal economy around the world.
On Saturday 24th September 2022, the Environment and Conservation Division (ECD) with Friends of the City (FOTC) and Renlau Community joins the world to partake on this important event. It is a half day event that involves the official opening near the Mataniko Plaza area, clean up and removal of litter from the Renlau Beach, litter audit, collection and transportation of waste to the disposal site at Ranadi landfill. On that event, 2 loads of 3ton tipper truck of waste are collected and transported by Honiara City Council to the Ranadi Landfill.
Environment Intern from Environment and Conservation Division, Ministry of Environment Climate Change Disaster Management and Meteorology, Mr. Leon Labuga and Ms. Patrina Millie manages the ICCD project activities. Mr Leon thanks the members of the Friends of the City, Renlau Community and staffs of the Ministry of Environment for showing up and taking part in the global effort to clean the environment. He urges the general public to partake in such event in the future to clean Honiara, our City, and Our Home. This is paramount as we prepare towards a Safe and Green Games 2023.

On September 17, 2022, the Pacific Ocean Litter Youth Project and Suva Harbour Foundation hosted a beach clean-up campaign as part of the International Coastal Cleanup Day 2022 supported by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) through the AFD-funded SWAP project.

Thanks to the 105 volunteers who gave a hand, a total of 651 kilograms of rubbish was collected along 4 zones:
- Zone 1: USP Marine Campus
- Zone 2: Apted Park, Suva Point
- Zone 3: USP Marine Campus Foreshore
- Zone 4: Fiji National University Maritime Center Foreshore.

The team also carried out awareness-raising activities, including creating artworks with the collected waste.

Here is the link to the excellent video produced!

Hi everyone,
The first INC for the new plastics treaty concluded last week. I've attached a link to the ENB report - for those looking to learn more about the focus of this first round of discussions.

According to ENB: "While an understanding emerged on the need for the treaty to encompass the full lifecycle of plastics, the definition of “lifecycle” has not yet been agreed." Some delegates said we need to address the early stages of plastic production, and others prioritized starting only at the product-design phase.
ENB's analysis raised the following questions:
- Will national action plans be the implementation cornerstone?
- Will there be an ambition baseline for national action plans?
- Who will decide on what this is and how will it be measured and monitored?
- How will national action plans address the transboundary nature of plastic pollution, including in areas beyond national jurisdiction?
- Will global measures apply across the board simultaneously, or in a staggered fashion?
- Will global standards apply to trade in all plastic, or only in plastic waste?
- Will industry be compelled to disclose the ingredients of plastic products, and will trade in these products now be subject to prior informed consent procedures?

More questions than answers - as is always the way as we begin the long road of international treaty making.

Make no mistake though, there is an opportunity, and the time is now, for SIDS to think about their needs, and to have their voices heard, through SIDS representatives attending the INCs.

SPREP - Talouli - represented SPREP
Bradley Nolan - was also in attendance
Mafile'o Masi - represented Tonga.

Friends - I'd love for you to share your feedback here.

How was INC? What are your thoughts on the structure of the treaty? I read that SIDS (through AOSIS) called the multistakeholder forum to be improved so that stakeholders can give inputs to the INC process - how do you see this progressing?

Looking forward to following this issue closely.

(Photo below: Halatoa Fua, Cook Islands, courtesy of IISD Reporting Services)

New Global Plastic Treaty

As negotiators meet this week to start talking about a a global agreement on plastic pollution, this article explore what is at stake, what the scale of the problem is, and how we could - hopefully - address it.

Indeed, with COP27 just finished - and not in a glorious way - we may wonder whether an international agreement is an effective solution.

In my view:
1. A global treaty on plastic would be a major step forward
2. Would be much more focused than the Paris Agreement hence possibly a bit more straightforward to implement

Yes global environmental governance is slow and often ineffective and things will not become easier any time soon - but it is also the best chance we have. All my best wishes to the negotiators this week!

For the second year, students from VAIMOANA College in Wallis have volunteered to participate in the International Coastal Cleanup Day 2022.

Hello everyone. Zekai Bao here from Inspirocean Team. Look forward to working with everyone.