Cities of the future must be zero plastic

Plastic is one of the deadliest creations of man, being
non-biodegradable and difficult to recycle. Only a few decades old, plastic waste has scourged the environment and has already begun changing natural ecosystems, particularly oceans and areas around landfills. As millions of tonnes of plastic waste is generated every day, ‘what can be the remedy to plastic?’ remains the one to be answered.

Plastics are the scourge of the environment, considered by many as a necessary evil. With this in mind, it is important to note that more than half of the world’s plastic was manufactured after the year 2000, and about 75 per cent of all plastic ever produced is already waste. Thus, a solution to plastics is essential to the achievement of Agenda 2030, now more than ever.
The World Wildlife Fund’s Plastic Smart Cities is an initiative that helps cities worldwide in realising the need to systematically phase out plastics from their production, consumption and disposal systems, and to switch to greener and cleaner alternatives. So far, the initiative has a total of 31 participating cities, most of them from Southeast Asia and Europe. Plastic Smart Cities provides a platform for cities to come together, share their knowledge and experiences, and also helps them with access to a world of expertise. The initiative supports cities and coastal centres in taking bold action to stop plastic pollution, with a goal to reduce plastic leakage into nature by 30 per cent in the near term, and achieving no plastics in nature
by 2030.
With a little over eight years to go till the deadline of the long term goals of the initiative, it is necessary to assess how their progress has been.

Waste prevention

The famous saying, ‘Prevention is better than cure,’ applies perfectly to tackling the global plastic crisis. The Plastic Smart Cities initiative makes use of the same strategy, giving prime importance to smart prevention instead of systematic disposal. The initiative signifies prevention of generation of waste from source and puts to use a number of approaches – a ban on single-use plastics; edible packaging; packaging material fees; city waste rating; and plastic credit system, etc. A number of these approaches deal with phasing out the use of plastic in production and packaging processes. This helps in reducing global plastic generation, making it easier for city administrations to handle waste and dispose it off responsibly.
Evoware is an excellent example of adopting waste prevention using edible packaging as an approach. Evoware is a social enterprise, aiming to innovate biodegradable alternatives to singleware-use plastics using seaweed, while increasing livelihood security and incomes of seaweed farmers in Indonesia.

Waste collection

Waste collection is a major problem for city administrations, majorly caused by a lack of awareness amongst citizens and waste collectors regarding the essence of segregating waste at source. This, in turn, leads to a back log in the waste management processes of cities as additional time is spent in segregating waste post-collection. Moreover, as more and more cities are developing and increasing in size across the world, they are not being accompanied by an equivalent and appropriate increase in waste collection capacities. This is only going to add to the current issue of plastics. The Plastic Smart Cities initiative adopts a mix of modern and typical waste collection techniques, making it both easier and cost-effective for cities to collect more waste. Some of these are smart sensors and digitalization, recycling initiatives and awareness campaigns, city waste ratings and plastic banks.
Waste Free Oceans (WFO) is an exceptional example of how waste collection can be extended to areas outside of cities. WFO’s ‘Ocean Trash Catchers’ collects upto eight tonnes of floating marine debris per pass. Once collected, WFO acts as a link between the collected marine debris and plastic recyclers/processors, turning what was once waste into new, innovative and durable products.

Reusing waste

Reusing is one of the oldest tricks in the book to reduce the amount of waste generated. Reusing a product for purposes that it may not have been initially intended for is a great way of extending its life and including in deeper into the material-cycle. This also helps in reducing the amount of plastic produced at source, thereby translating into lessening problems for future generations. The COVID-19 pandemic played a particularly important role in this by making sanitation and protective equipment essential to life, which are mostly either made of plastic, or packed/distributed in plastic containers. Using products like toothbrushes and water bottles made of organic/biodegradable materials is also enough to reduce the overall generation of plastic by millions of tonnes per year, as per a report by the United Nations Organisation.
iFixit is one such initiative, teaching people how to repair electronic devices and adopt measures to extend their useful life, thereby reducing the need for the production of new electronic devices. The step-by-step guidance offered by iFixit has been adopted widely in Europe and Southeast Asia and needs to be up scaled to other regions of the world too.

Recycling waste

Recycling is considered by many as one of the only credible and widely available methods of reducing the amount of untreated plastic that ends up in our environment. Of the total packaging material used globally, only 14 per cent is collected for recycling, according to a study by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. This is a staggering number and depicts how humungous the issue at hand is. Localising recycling by creating recycling pop-ups, issues cash/kind incentives for those recycling their waste, and using different methods of recycling for different types of plastics are just some of the ways suggested by the Plastic Smart Cities initiative.
In Hong Kong, the Environmental Protection Department introduced GREEN$ (Greeny Coins) smart card system in November last year. The project aims to encourage people to deposit their recyclables in the city’s waste collection network, in turn encouraging them to recycle their waste and rewarding them with points. These points are logged into the GREEN$ smart card and can later be used to redeem gifts. As of August this year, 11 recycling stations placed across Hong Kong have collected a total of 13,500 tonnes of recyclables and received over 23 lakh visitors. The scheme has, therefore, been successful and has now been launched at full scale.

Waste disposal

The Plastic Smart Cities initiative gives the least importance to waste disposal and considers it as a last resort, to be used mainly for plastics that cannot be reused or recycled using any of the methods mentioned above. Research has shown that almost half of the world’s population lacks access to waste management facilities, a result of the large capital required to undertake responsible waste management activities by urban local bodies. And the harmful gases released when plastic is burnt irresponsibly only adds to the problem. The Plastic Smart Cities initiative suggests multiple solutions, while strongly terming them as the last resort at every step.
Advanced Disposal Fees (ADF) is an excellent method of reducing the supply and demand of plastics, while also bringing in revenues for the urban local bodies to treat plastic waste. In Denmark, which imposes an average ADF of 0.37 euros per bag on retailers, the consumption rates of plastic bags are only four single-use plastic bags per person per year. In Thailand, on the other hand, where there is no AFD, the rate is almost 3000 per year.
The solutions and case studies mentioned above, though ground-breaking in their own way, have not been adopted globally. The climate change clock is ticking fast, and the time to act is now. And until governments realise that climate change cannot be reversed without taking care of plastics, achieving the Agenda 2030 will remain a mere dream.