Advocating for
TpHE amount of plastics produced by large corporations and manufacturers can significantly create a ‘plastic crisis’ that leaves our environment looking nastier than ever.
In a seminar organised by the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) at the University of the South Pacific last month, titled “Brand Audits: Demanding Corporate Accountability for Plastic Pollution under the Break Free from Plastic Movement”, project coordinator Miko Aliño said consumers and other stakeholders were not the only ones to be blamed.
Miko explained that brand audits were ‘important exercises’ that could help bring accountability for corporations and to inform policies of governments so that they make better decisions and regulations.
“The only way to stop or address plastic pollution is looking at the source and so we have received from plastic members that have done brand audits for the past five years.
“The idea is to expose who’s responsible for the plastic pollution crisis and at the end of the day our cities or local government do not have the technology, infrastructure to deal with packaging.”
Miko said ‘The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment’, which was launched in 2018, had brought together over 500 signatories that were committed to change the way they produced, used and reused plastics.
However, he said these voluntary commitments were not enough to make plastic reduction to the level it needed to get to.
“Unfortunately with voluntary commitments, you’re not being punished when you’re not meeting these targets.”
He said people living in the most polluted countries were often in fact struggling with managing these problematic materials.
“Making materials like PET is something valuable for collectors or recyclers but in other places, they don’t have that infrastructure to collect them so they end up on beaches.
“After putting it in the trash bin, where does it go?
“It depends on the infrastructure at the landfill, plastics leach and it will seep into groundwater if you don’t have proper linings at disposal sites.
“If you live in outer islands, people will probably just burn it into the environment.”
He used an example by putting Coca Cola in the narrative where they made a pledge to have 25 percent of its packaging globally reusable by 2030.
In 2022 the company said that by 2030, the it aims to have at least 25 per cent of all beverages across its portfolio of brands sold in refillable/returnable glass or plastic bottles, or in refillable containers through traditional fountain or Coca-Cola Freestyle dispensers.
“We’ve seen a lot of reports coming out that are saying that there’s more evidence of other things found in plastic packaging that leach
chemicals and therefore affect human health and the environment,” Miko said.
“We’ve seen studies that plastics are being found in all parts of our body and in recent studies they say that they can affect our hormones.”
Miko said the brand audit report revealed that the most alarming scientific findings was done by leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Dr Shanna Swan who found that plastics dramatically lowered fertility in both men and women.
He said 397 brand audits were conducted across six continents in 44 countries where citizen scientists helped identify companies responsible for plastic pollution.
In total, 429,994 pieces of plastics were collection, analysed and associated with companies.
While spotlighting the use of sachets that were commonly used across Africa and Asia, Miko said companies would often sell food, personal care and household products using ‘sachets’.
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He said the case study on sachets revealed that companies were choosing to sell drinking water in these unrecyclable sachets which also undermined the basic human right to ‘safe and clean drinking water.’
He also shared that in a particular city in Philippines, local law banned the use of single-use plastics and disposables.
As a result, fast-food restaurants don’t have any disposables and food is served in rice paper bowls.
“You can be part of a movement that will propose for better policies in government, phasing out these materials and just bringing about change,” Miko said.
Capping plastic production and demanding that corporations reveal their global plastic footprint is a must.
Miko says recycling systems can hardly keep up with the volume of plastics produced annually.