WED: Get Engineers to Redesign Products without Plastic, Govts Urged

As humanity marks the World Environment Day next week, governments have been advised to get their engineers to redesign products not to include plastic or be delivered in plastic.

The theme of this year’s WED is “solutions to plastic pollution and finding ways to #BeatPlasticPollution.”

This advice was given by participants at a high level meeting, titled ‘Pathway to a plastic pollution-free world’, hosted by the French government in Paris, recently, ahead of the second round of negotiations on the global deal to end plastic pollution.

They said, “Today, the leadership dialogues will focus on circularity and waste management. This is of course important. But let me also stress that the journey to a pollution-free world begins with reducing the size of the problem. Because one thing is clear: we cannot recycle our way out of this mess. Current recycling and waste management infrastructure cannot cope with the volume of plastic the linear economy is pumping out every day carelessly and needlessly. It will never be able to cope unless less plastic comes out of the system.

“These negotiations are critical, because we will set the mandate and pathway towards an agreement, and this matters greatly. “Because the agreement is, of course, critical to ending the plastic pollution that is damaging the natural world, oceans, human health, and the climate.”

The agreement, they said, must take a full life-cycle approach that reduces the size of the problem. It is all about redesign. Redesigning products so that they do not need to include plastic or be delivered in plastic. Why ship water around. Why not ship solids or dry powder? Get our engineers to redesign the products that we envelope in plastics. Redesign packaging to avoid using plastic or to use less plastic. Redesign systems and products so that the right to repair, reuse, refill and/or recyclability can be realised but remember, this is about recycling everything, not just the 9 per cent we do now. “Redesign rules and incentives. It is absurd that what we take out of the belly of the earth i.e. new raw polymer is cheaper than recycled polymer. This must change. Redesign the broader system for justice – so that informal waste-pickers, what is called the Green Force in Sri Lanka, and other vulnerable communities are not left behind, but gain decent jobs and the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, now enshrined by the UN General Assembly.