Single-use plastics strangling our planet

THE SA National Bottled Water Association (Sanbwa) believes consumers can make a difference in dealing with the thousands of plastic bottles entering the Western Cape during the water crisis and which pose an environmental threat.

As World Earth Day looms on this Monday, Sanbwa said that with the increase in consumption of bottled water, the volume of bottles that needed to be recycled could overwhelm local recycling capacity.

Sanbwa executive director Charlotte Metcalf said joint efforts driven by recycling company Petco and supported by its members and associate members – including bottled water producers – aimed to prevent these additional bottles from being sent to landfill sites.

They are achieving this by transporting baled bottles to a recycling facility with excess capacity in Gauteng for processing.

“Working together with Petco, Metcalf has sponsored another truckload, as has Woolworths, which saw bottled water sales soar during February and March this year.

“I spend a considerable part of my day seeking additional sponsors so we can relieve the pressure being placed on recycling facilities in the Western Cape.

“But consumers can help too by following a few simple guidelines laid out by Petco,” said Metcalf.

City of Cape Town dropoff facilities where the bottles will be sent to Petco member companies for recycling can be found at: www.capetown.gov. za/Work%20and%20business/ See-all-City.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) SA has also joined the call this Earth Day to end plastic pollution choking oceans and impacting negatively on human health.

John Duncan, senior manager of WWF SA’s Marine Programme, said: “While certain plastics play a critical role in applications, such as packaging for food preservation, our oceans are suffocating under this growing tide of plastic.

‘‘If we want to chart a new course, we need to start asking ourselves which are the plastics we can live without and how we can better manage the ones we can’t.”

Melanie Sember, a Greenpeace Africa volunteer in Durban, said the nurdles spill in Durban Harbour in October last year brought home plastic pollution awareness for a lot of Durbanites.

Volunteers are seeing more plastic pollution with every clean-up.

“In truth, nurdles wouldn’t be in our harbour if our local producers weren’t using them to make single-use plastic products, nor would we have food containers, plastic bottles and packaging littering our shorelines and beaches either.

‘‘We are asking the retailers to switch to biodegradable alternatives or to start offering us solutions away from using plastic as the only choice,” Sember said.

As part of the #BreakFreeFromPlastic movement, Greenpeace Africa is urging individuals in South Africa to contribute to an additional “Million Acts of Blue” – actions to push retailers, corporations, restaurants and businesses to reduce their single-use plastics.

Nhlanhla Sibisi, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, said: “Plastic waste is changing the face of Africa.

‘‘The fight against plastics cannot be a burden put on the public alone.

‘‘We need to start putting pressure on corporations to rethink their role in how to alleviate and ultimately eliminate single-use plastic.”

Earth Day bottle drive, a call to action to end pollution choking oceans