RAW TRUTH: A PLASTIC JOURNEY FROM SOURCE TO SOLUTION by Raw Foundation I Making Waves

RAW TRUTH

A PLASTIC JOURNEY FROM SOURCE TO SOLUTION RAW IN SOUTH AMERICA REPORT 2020

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This report and the data within it would not have been possible without a small group of committed volunteers who conducted, coordinated and collated these plastic audits, both large and small, often in difficult circumstances. Their work provides the backbone of this report and we deeply appreciate their active support and invaluable participation. We are also grateful to OSPAR, Break Free From Plastic and 5 Gyres for their indispensable brand audit tools, methodologies and processes. Special thanks to Portobello Tents, The Plastic Free Shop Ltd. and Dexam International for their generous support that made the expedition and this report publication possible. Grateful thanks to Professor Sir Ghillean Prance FRS VMH and to Hugo Tagholm, co-founder of Surfers Against Sewage, for peer reviewing the report and their valuable input and comments. Although every effort to ensure that the information in this report was correct at the time of publishing we do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or any other cause.

EXPEDITION SUPPORTERS

Raw Truth: A Plastic Journey from Source to Solution Report (2020) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

CONTENTS 1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY THE STATE OF PLAY

The worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plastic pollution problem The role of plastic in our throwaway society International Frameworks and Action Plans National Government Policies and Initiatives Multinational Corporations Civil Society and Consumers

8 8 9 14 26 28 69

THE JOURNEY

METHODOLOGY

92 94 95

THE RESULTS

Top Producer Polluter Brands Top Pointless Plastic Items Top Plastic Pieces and Fragments Brazil Argentina Chile Bolivia Peru The Amazon

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105

CONCLUSIONS

118

RECOMMENDATIONS

134

APPENDICES

138

REFERENCES

140

Limitations Analysis

Every piece of plastic ever made still exists somewhere IQUITOS, AMAZON

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Plastic is everywhere. Despite the many benefits of plastics, the entire global fossil-fuel-plastic system is increasingly being recognised as the source of severe life-threatening environmental problems. Fossil-fuel-plastic pollution is now found in every corner of the world: in our soil, water, oceans, the bodies of humans and animals, and even in the air we breathe. Governments are planning to produce about 50% more fossil fuels by 2030, which far exceeds the Paris Agreement goals, and current commitments by government and industry will reduce the amount of plastic flowing into the ocean by only 7% by 2040. Plastic production is expected to almost quadruple by 2050, which will far outstrip our current waste management and recycling capabilities, and without immediate and sustained action, the annual flow of plastic into the ocean could nearly triple by 2040. In short, fossil-fuel-plastic pollution is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time. A large number of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), high profile reports, scientific studies, and civil society actions have helped increased global awareness of the problems associated with fossilfuel-plastic. The global fossil-fuel-plastic crisis presents a wicked multiplicity of challenges, among them fossil-fuel-plastic’s ubiquity, its persistence in nature, the cross boundary effects of fossil-fuelplastic pollution, and its significant contribution to climate change. Compared to other environmental

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

problems, fossil-fuel-plastic stands out for having no one in the cockpit, as there is no centrally recognised global scientific or political authority tasked with addressing the fossil-fuel-plastic problem. No one is tackling the global fossil-fuelplastic problem more widely, partly because there is no common agreement on how exactly to define even the plastic problem. There are multiple fossil-fuel-plastic problems, focus areas and solutions – expectations and visions around these vary – as do many suggestions for sustainability pathways. Prominent among these, circular economy, avoiding or reducing plastics, and reuse have been considered as potential solutions. Though an important fossil-fuel-plastic system change scenario has been expressed very recently, this remains within circular economy constraints – the emphasis remains focused on economic prosperity. From production and consumption to waste management and pollution, plastics have largely been understood as a societal problem. A shortcoming has been the lack of attention to the sociocultural dimension of the fossil fuel lock-in of

plastics. Fossil-fuel-plastics clearly represent an increasingly politicised aspect of humanity’s relation with the natural world. Yet, it is evident that political analysis and debate around plastics remains concentrated at the pollution and disposal end of the plastics life cycle, with a particular emphasis on marine pollution. This is where public and policy attention remains primarily fixed. Less attention has been given to the interrelated fossil fuel, petrochemical, plastic manufacture and patterns of overconsumption. The whole plastics life cycle is political, but it has not yet been equally politicised. It is evident that the different stages in the fossil-fuel-plastic life cycle have for the most part been considered individually instead of holistically. In light of fossil-fuel-plastic projections, this is an urgent and necessary debate that cannot be overlooked. More attention should be directed towards these actors, what drives their investment and production decisions, and what implications this has for the prospects of addressing the challenges that fossilfuel-plastics currently pose to the environment and climate. Policy responses and initiatives must resist the temptation of looking for solutions in technological fixes and adjustments to individual behaviour – rather, we must directly confront the systemic, large scale economic and political arrangements, as well as the governing norms and practices, that stabilise unsustainable patterns of production and consumption. Only in this way will it be possible to get at the root causes of our most serious environmental challenges, the plastic crisis included.1 At the heart of the challenge, the world is on track to produce about 120% more fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with the 1.5°C global warming target, due to minimal policy attention on curbing fossil fuel or plastic production. The predominant economic system and the rampant fossil-fuel-plastic industry lies at the core of a global tragedy that is undermining our earth’s life support systems. We are facing an apocalyptic crisis. The future of every child has been compromised and there is no place on earth where they will be safe.

The current international framework, prevailing regional and national government policies and business-as-usual corporate strategies are insufficient to address the immense challenge humanity faces. We need rapid system change at every level if we are to survive. This report adds to a body of mounting evidence about the extent of fossil-fuel-plastic pollution across the world. It provides evidence of fossil-fuel-plastic pollution across South America, even in the remotest regions of the Amazon, and shines a spotlight on the key investor-owned fossil fuel corporations (Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP) and key Fast-moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) corporations (Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé) that are directly responsible for the multiple fossil-fuel-plastic crises. The report includes key findings and recommendations for policymakers, governments, corporations, civil society and consumers to avoid a full-on apocalypse in the making. The most effective recommendation is simple: immediately reduce the production and use of fossil-fuel-plastic. Stopping the expansion of fossil fuel, petrochemical and plastic production and keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a critical element to address runaway climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, air pollution and ozone layer depletion. Nothing short of stopping the expansion of fossil fuel, petrochemical and plastic production and keeping fossil fuels in the ground will create the surest and most effective reductions in the climate impacts from the fossil-fuel-plastic lifecycle.

This pathway will provide benefits to all life on earth, including our communities, our governments, and even our industries. However, it depends upon the immediate, ambitious, and concerted global implementation of solutions across the entire fossil-fuelplastic chain. This vision for system change survival represents the only viable way forward.

It will inevitably entail a transformation of our own lifestyles, especially for those of us with high carbon footprints. These are painful insights for people as we gradually come to terms with the immensity of it all. To be implicated personally, to however minute a degree, in existential threat to the future of human civilisation – and acknowledging the very real possibility of some kind of calamitous collapse – is bad enough. To have to address the painful reality through the very personal lens of our own children and grandchildren (if we have them, or hope to have them) can be shocking.2 But face it we must. We have no time to waste.

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INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND ACTION PLANS Exacerbated by the current coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, fossil-fuel-plastic pollution is impacting and threatening all life in every ecosystem on the planet (air, soil, water and living things) in ways we are only just beginning to fully understand. The raw truth is that we are inextricably linked to and part of these ecosystems and we will not survive without the Earth being in good health. It is a complicated chaotic global problem that urgently requires a straightforward coordinated global response. There is no international treaty in place dedicated to fully tackling the entire fossil-fuel-plastic crisis and no international duty of care towards the Earth for future generations. Given the intricate interconnected nature of the entire fossil-fuel-plastic issue to the nine planetary boundaries: climate change; ocean acidification; chemical pollution; nitrogen and phosphorus loading; freshwater withdrawals; land conversion; biodiversity loss; air pollution and ozone layer depletion, the existing legal framework is fragmented and ineffective and does not provide the tools necessary for an effective global response. The issue cannot be solved on a regional or national level, or through non-binding, voluntary strategies alone. It requires unprecedented international action, shared responsibility and a common unified framework. A new international legally binding agreement is required immediately â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which clearly stipulates the vision, and goal of regenerative and distributive economies, the ambition (strict national reduction targets), and the required means and time-bound measures for getting there (a comprehensive review system and implementation support architecture). Given the scale, scope, and urgency of the crisis, policy makers must put the Earth and future generations at the heart of the new treaty and include planetary and social boundaries combined to create a safe and just space for humanity to thrive in.

RAW Foundation calls on the United Nations to enact a Law of Ecocide immediately, to tackle the direct fossil-fuel-plastic damage caused to the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ecosystems, especially the resultant impact on the climate.

Air, Soil, Waterways, Rivers, Oceans and all other Organisms IQUITOS, AMAZON

REGIONAL STRATEGIES AND NATIONAL GOVERNMENT POLICIES Intensified by the coronavirus crisis hitting economies all over the world, regional and national government policies continue to jeopardise all ecosystem service provisions on the planet, in ways we are beginning to clearly see and fully understand. The raw truth is that several key governments remain in total denial of the science and most governments continue to deliberately compromise the health of all ecosystems and undermine living conditions for all life on Earth, to maintain the status quo of the current economic system. A range of divergent divisionary policies urgently requires a cooperative collaborative response. There are no regional or national policies dedicated to fully tackling the entire fossil-fuel plastic crisis or regional or national duties of care towards the Earth for future generations. Given the intricate interconnected nature of the entire fossil-fuelplastic issue to the nine planetary boundaries, existing regional or national policies are fragmented and ineffective. While many regional, national, and sub-national strategies and action plans aimed at preventing and mitigating climate and plastic emissions, have made some positive and measurable progress, none have a level of commitment that scales with the global magnitude and accelerating growth of the problem and the consequences.

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Issei Kato / Reuters

New regional and national policies are required immediately â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which clearly specify the overarching global vision, and goal of regenerative and distributive economies, the ambition (to achieve regional and national reduction targets), and the required means and time-bound measures for getting there (to develop and implement effective regional and national action plans). Amidst the global scramble to protect their own selfinterests, regional and national policy makers must put the Earth and future generations at the heart of new regional and national policies to remedy the major disconnect between current economic and social inequity systems and include planetary and social boundaries combined to create a safe and just space for humanity to thrive in. RAW Foundation calls on regional and national governments to enact the Law of Ecocide policies immediately to tackle the direct fossil-fuel-plastic damage caused to the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ecosystem service provisions on the planet, especially the resultant impact on the climate.

Photo Credit: Naomi Brannan / OceansAsia

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MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS Taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis, multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic corporations are directly responsible for impacting and threatening all life in every ecosystem on the planet (air, soil, water and living things) in ways that are becoming more transparent to us by the day. The raw truth is that multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic corporations continue to subvert the science, evade culpability or penalty and continue to deliberately compromise the health of all ecosystems and undermine living conditions for all life on Earth, to maintain short-term profitdriven economic growth for wealthy individuals and corporate shareholders. It is a conscious calculated problem of their making that urgently requires an intentional integrated global response. There are no multinational or national fossil-fuelplastic corporate strategies dedicated to fully tackling the entire fossil-fuel plastic crisis or a duty of care towards the Earth for future generations. Given the intricate interconnected nature of the entire fossil-fuel-plastic issue to the nine planetary boundaries, existing corporate strategies are wholly inadequate. While multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic corporate action plans, shareholder reports and marketing strategies continue to deliberately hide the truth to mislead and lay blame on consumers, and focus on technological improvements, recycling or social

and environmental welfare programs, none have a level of commitment that scales with the global magnitude and accelerating growth of the problem and the consequences they have created. New multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic corporate strategies are required immediately â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which clearly specify the overarching global vision, and goal of regenerative and distributive economies, the ambition (to achieve regional and national reduction targets), and the required means and time-bound measures for getting there (to develop and implement effective regional and national action plans). Amidst the global scramble to protect their own self-interests, multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic shareholders and executive corporate decision makers must put the Earth and future generations at the heart of new corporate strategies to remedy the major disconnect between their short-term profit-driven growth and social inequity system and include planetary and social boundaries combined to create a safe and just space for humanity to thrive in. RAW Foundation calls on multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic corporations to enact new corporate strategies immediately to tackle the direct Ecocidal fossil-fuel-plastic damage they have caused to the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ecosystems, especially the resultant impact on the climate.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CONSUMERS Affected by the coronavirus crisis, civil society and consumers are locked-in to an international, national government and multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic system that is directly responsible for impacting and threatening all life in every ecosystem on the planet (air, soil, water and living things), in ways that are becoming more transparent to us by the hour. The raw truth is that international, regional and national government policies and multinational and national fossil-fuelplastic corporate strategies have deliberately locked civil society and consumers into a life-threatening economic system to maintain short-term profitdriven economic growth for wealthy individuals and corporate shareholders. A range of rebellious reactionary civil movements urgently requires an upscaled united revolutionary civil response.

A global unified civil society and consumer strategy is required immediately â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which clearly demands an overarching global vision, and goal of regenerative and distributive economies, the ambition (to achieve regional and national reduction targets), and the required means and time-bound measures for getting there (to develop and implement effective regional and national action plans). Amidst the global scramble to protect their own selfinterests, international and national civil society decision makers and consumers must all put the Earth and future generations at the heart of an overarching strategy, continue to challenge the major disconnect between the current economic and social inequity systems, and include planetary and social boundaries combined to create a safe and just space for humanity to thrive in.

There is one international civil society and consumer strategy in place dedicated to fully tackling the entire fossil-fuel-plastic crisis to ensure a duty of care towards the Earth for future generations. While many international, regional, national, and sub-national civil society and consumer strategies and actions aimed at preventing or mitigating climate and plastic emissions or social inequalities have made some positive and measurable progress, none have a level of commitment that scales with the global magnitude and accelerating growth of the problem and the consequences.

RAW Foundation calls on civil society and consumers to enact an upscaled, unified, global strategy to demand: the United Nations enact a Law of Ecocide; regional and national governments enact Ecocide policies; and multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic corporations enact new corporate strategies immediately to tackle the direct Ecocidal fossil-fuel-plastic damage they have caused to the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ecosystems, especially the resultant impact on the climate.

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

THE STATE OF PLAY

Despite escalating awareness of the problem, the current global approach to addressing the plastics crisis remains a systemic failure. The flow of plastic waste continues to increase exponentially – across the world. This is contributing to climate change, threatening all life, contaminating precious water systems, passing up the food chain, affecting human health, infiltrating other cultures and encouraging a throwaway consumer culture across the world.

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Nothing better illustrates our throwaway lifestyle and waste problems than plastic. It has become one of the most serious environmental and human health challenges facing us today. It is everywhere. Melinda Watson (2010)

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The world’s plastic pollution problem Every day, as we individually engage in the creation and consumption of plastic products and materials in one way or another – whether it is the computer used to write this report on, or the packaging that it came in – there is no escaping the fact that we are all part of the problem. Whilst consumption is necessary on a personal, social and economic level, excessive production and over-consumption on an individual and macroaggregate level is the primary root cause of the problem. At present, the dominant paradigm of affluent developed nations blatantly promotes hedonistic consumerism and rampant materialism, and this ideology risks becoming entrenched across the world. The constant modification and updating of products, where cost and convenience is of primary concern, forms the basis of our capitalist economy and throwaway culture. The whole system is premised on increasing levels of consumption. Overwhelmingly, consumption in rich countries is far greater than that in developing and poor nations. Paradoxically, nations demonstrating the highest levels of consumption exhibit the lowest levels of environmental degradation since problematic waste and pollution are externalised. Disparities are intensified by obsessive global economic growth and competition for profit, accelerating exploitative inequality and ecological injustice. To facilitate over-consumption, wealthy industrialised nations, multinational corporations and rich individuals continue to strategically monopolise access to global natural resources, energy and trade. Maintaining and exacerbating their cross-national and socio-cultural power marginalises the poor both within nations and internationally.

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A path to prosperity that ravages the environment and leaves a majority of humankind behind in squalor will soon prove to be a dead-end road for everyone. Kofi Annan

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But life wasn’t always this way. Not so very long ago, the idea of using an item once and then throwing it away would have seemed ridiculous and wasteful. We valued and treated our materials with respect. Things were made to last and could easily be repaired. The greengrocer sold loose vegetables and the butcher wrapped meat in greaseproof paper. Milk was delivered from local dairies in returnable glass bottles to the doorstep on battery-electric milk floats. Food and drink came in bulk – bottled water didn’t exist – and bottle deposit return systems were common for beer and soda. Very little was thrown away. Within a single generation, all these items have become encased in a variety of mixed plastics and materials that are difficult to either separate, reuse or recycle. So how did we create this throwaway society?

The role of plastic in our throwaway society From the invention of Bakelite – the first modern plastic – in 1907, to the early polymers that began to pour out of the labs in the 1920s and 30s such as polystyrene for packaging, nylon popularised by stockings and polyethylene the stuff of plastic bags, to today’s multitude of synthetic materials, plastics have become nearly indispensable. While the rate of production increased rapidly, as a result of technological innovations, the rate of consumption remained stable throughout the early 20th century. This meant companies were faced with surplus products that wouldn’t sell – and rather than reduce production (that would reduce profit) – they sought to increase consumption. Thus, the first major surge of mass consumption began and a new ‘gospel of consumption’ 3 was born. Although the Great Depression interrupted this process, it resumed post World War II with an intensity stimulated by corporate advertisers and the medium of television.

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

As retail analyst, Victor Lebow, put it in 1955:

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Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life… that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever accelerating rate. Victor Lebow

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Whilst this was driven partly by consumer desire, as families recovered from economic hardship and rationing, the new consumerism business model was instilled by economists and businesses. But problematically for them, plastic was pretty durable, and didn’t fit with a growth model that relied on products breaking or needing to be constantly replaced. So, during the 1950s and 60s, in order to entrench consumerism into our western value system, a culture of ‘planned obsolescence’ and dissatisfaction was cultured to persuade people that they should voluntarily throw their things away and buy new items. In 1956, Lloyd Stouffer, editor of Modern Packaging magazine, declared “The future of plastics is in the trash can.” His call for the “plastics industry to stop thinking about ‘reuse’ packages and concentrate on single use” came at the start of the new mass consumption era to create new markets for the fledgling plastics industry.4 Although the first plastic bag, invented by Sten Gustaf Thulin in Sweden in 1959 – to prevent trees from being cut down to make paper bags – was originally intended to be used multiple times,5 new plastic products came onto the market which were deliberately designed to be disposable and thrown away after one use. Ironically, the very same items we’re now desperately trying to persuade people differently. Yet, as early as the 1960s there were warning signs that this wasn’t a good model long-term. American journalist Vance Packard published the book The Waste Makers in 1960, in which he defined planned obsolescence as:

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…the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals. Vance Packard, The Waste Makers 1960 6

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

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A function of plastic colonialism on a vast scale IQUITOS, AMAZON

At the same time, Rachel Carson’s ecological vision of the oceans recognised nature’s interactive and interdependent systems and her seminal book Silent Spring in 1962 warned of the dangers to all natural systems from the misuse of chemicals, questioned the scope and direction of government and modern science and initiated the contemporary environmental movement. The idea of single-use plastic didn’t take off straight away. It required careful marketing and messaging to persuade people that a new throwaway society was a good idea. Enabled by its versatility and, most crucially, its cheapness, the message centred around ‘Throwaway Living’ (Life magazine, 1955) to liberate the housewife from the drudgery of daily chores – with the suggestion that single-use items were more hygienic – a new consumerist mindset was born. From a wartime ‘make do and mend’ society, when products were bought to last as long as possible – we entered a world where things were replaced as frequently as possible. The economy entered a new golden age: productivity and prosperity rose steadily, driven by increased mobility and energy derived from fossil fuels. Large sections of the population achieved hitherto-unknown aspirations. Households had their own car, washing machine and television. Industry churned out products in everincreasing volumes at ever-lower prices. The expansion of throwaway packaging started to really take hold worldwide during the 1970s and 80s, when companies like Dow Chemical and Mobil Corporation (now ExxonMobil) developed new products, to create new markets for their oil and gas. DuPont and Pepsi Cola produced the first PET bottles on a pilot scale in 1973 and introduced the first 2L PET plastic bottle to the world in 1977, quickly followed by Coca-Cola.7 And, Mobil Chemical patented all the plastic bag ideas they could, to get single-use plastic items adopted widely 8 and plastic companies began to aggressively market their product as superior to paper and reusable bags.

craze and introduced Aquafina in 1994. Not to be outdone, Coca-Cola followed with Dasani in 1999.9 By the end of the 20th century a new bottled water phenomenon had emerged – from a niche mineralwater product – to a global commodity found almost everywhere.

By the 1990s, the belief that recycling would solve the growing problem of single-use plastics was widespread and by the end of the decade, almost all reusable and refillable milk and drinks bottles had disappeared. Around the same time, Perrier crossed the Atlantic, launching bottled water as a commodity. PepsiCo joined the bottled water

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

The growth of the bottled water industry is a story about twenty-first century controversies and contradictions: poverty versus glitterati; perception versus reality; private gain versus public loss. Peter Gleick, Bottled and Sold, 2010

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The rise of bottled water sales was meteoric. In the United States of America (USA) for example, bottled water sales doubled, doubled again, doubled again, and then doubled again from around 0.35 billion gallons in 1976 to nearly 9 billion gallons (over 34 billion litres) in 2008. Public water fountains vanished, and bottled water was everywhere: in every corner shop, supermarket and vending machine. In student backpacks, travel lounges and hotel rooms. On conference tables, school lunch counters and restaurant menus. Bottled water became so ubiquitous that it’s now hard to remember that it hasn’t always been here.10 In 2000, most US bottled water came from natural springs, sold by brands such as Evian and Nestlé’s Poland Spring. To cash in on cheaper tap water as a source, the industry rapidly shifted from spring water to ‘purified’ refiltered municipal tap water. Spring water made up 67% of the bottled water market and the rest was purified tap water. By 2018, those numbers had essentially flipped, with purified tap water dominating the market. Along with an emerging focus on health and wellness, the consumption of bottled water rose dramatically.11

The Rise of Bottled Water in the USA

2018

2018 Bottled water

159 litres (41.9 gallons)

Bottled water Carbonated soft drinks

159(36.9 litres gallons) (41.9 gallons) 140 litres

Carbonated soft drinks Milk 62 litres (16.4 gallons)

140 litres (36.9 gallons)

Milk drinks 33 litres62 litres (16.4 gallons) Fruit (8.8 gallons) Fruit drinks 33 litres (8.8 gallons)

1997 1997 Carbonated soft drinks Carbonated soft drinks Milk Milk drinks Fruit Fruit drinks Bottled water

202 litres (53.3 gallons) 91 litres (24.1 gallons)

202 litres (53.3 gallons)

91 litres (24.1 gallons) 57 litres (15.0 gallons) litres (15.0 gallons) 5057 litres (13.2 gallons)

Bottled water 50 litres (13.2 gallons) Source: Consumer Reports / Beverage Marketing Corp (BMC)

The multinational corporations such as Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola became adept at selling their products through predatory marketing tactics and exorbitant lobbying efforts and consumers bought into the myth that bottled water was purer, safer and healthier than tap water.12 While some bottled water brands specify their water comes from ‘public water sources’ (in very fine print) many do not state the water source at all. By choosing words like ‘natural’, ‘pure’, ‘purest’ or ‘premium’, almost all brands suggest that their products improve nature or use images of ‘raw’

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nature – such as pristine waters or snow-capped mountains – to establish natural qualities with the brand. Maintaining the myth – not the reality – to naturalise the way things are. Advertisements continued to mislead and confuse consumers and displace meaning. The bottled water industry was chastised for perpetuating the misconception that their non-spring purified water came from spring sources. In 2007 for example, after pressure from advocacy groups, PepsiCo was forced to change their Aquafina labels to spell out that the product was derived from public sources.13

Life speeded up and got even busier over the last decade. Families (especially women) had less time for cooking, gardening or housework and a plethora of plastic trays, cartons and containers exploded onto the market. Freezers and microwaves replaced home-cooked meals with precooked ‘TV dinners’ from the supermarket. A ‘convenience lifestyle’ and consumer lock-in had well and truly set in and baffled consumers were left to decipher the recycling arrows. Technological advances in the petrochemicals industry made the production of plastics so cheap and flexible they could be used for a vast array of single-use products and packaging, making it possible to sell yet more items. For shoppers, it meant consumption ‘on demand’ and ‘on the go’ anytime, anywhere, to aid our increasingly frenetic lifestyles. It also meant piles more disposable packaging to deal with. At the same time, supply chains grew longer. Transporting goods over huge distances made new types of packaging necessary. Ships, lorries and planes wastefully carried often identical goods across the globe and back again to meet ‘consumer demand’. A relentless global boomerang trade emerged and the dichotomy between the shelf life of a product and its packaging became absurd. Plastic has played a key role in this. Paradoxically, the unparalleled expansion of single-use packaging is both a result of globalisation and a driver of international trade. Otherwise known as the ‘skin of commerce’, packaging fulfils an invaluable function in a global economy; it contains, protects, preserves

and transports products conveniently, safely and hygienically whilst communicating essential information. Conversely, it facilitates globalisation, spreads our consumer culture, and increases the consumption of goods and services worldwide. As a result of supply chains crossing the globe and consumers being far away from where the product is made, returning reusable packaging to the point of origin has become costly and complicated. To shed the cost and burden of reverse logistics,14 brands chose to ignore any responsibility for their packaging after the contents had been consumed.15 By 2016, the year sales of bottled water in the United States officially surpassed soft drinks, the world woke up to the burgeoning crisis of plastic waste. In little more than a century, the evergrowing consumption of plastic has gone from being hailed as a scientific wonder to being reviled as an environmental scourge that has severely impacted the planet and the health of our societies and people. Even more worrisome, a growing trend of horrible plastic hybrids – from singing birthday cards (with tiny batteries) to food and drink pouches to labels and detergent pods – made of mixed materials is now making recycling a nightmare.16 The culture and psychology of consumerism to which we are now so accustomed was not an inevitable consequence of human nature, or of capitalism, or any such thing. It was the result of a concerted and deliberate effort on the part of the biggest plastic players to disillusion people to purchase more products.17

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INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND ACTION PLANS Peace, dignity and equality on a healthy planet. United Nations (UN)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Though there is no lack of binding agreements and voluntary initiatives to manage the plastic crisis, the existing global legal framework, strategies and action plans are fragmented and uncoordinated. While some of them cover part of the problem, many sources of plastic pollution remain largely unregulated. Almost all are limited in scope, address waste disposal only, continue to absolve producers of their responsibilities, do not measure and monitor progress at national, regional or global levels and are of limited effectiveness.18 19

THE EXISTING LEGAL FRAMEWORK Several existing conventions directly or indirectly require states to protect the ocean from marine litter and microplastics, but none of them have this as a primary objective. Moreover, they lack adequate governance structure to achieve a world free from ocean plastics.

MARPOL The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) 1973/78, adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), prohibits the disposal of garbage – including plastic and e-waste – at sea (Annex V in 2017). Non-compliance penalties are set by each state domestically. The trouble with MARPOL is it only covers plastic waste into the ocean from sea-based sources and has exemptions based on vessel size, the number of persons certified for the vessel, whether it is fixed or floating and excludes most fishing vessels, which are responsible for a large volume of abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear.

UNCLOS The UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) 1982, which entered into force in 1994, deals with the protection and preservation of the marine environment, including from land-based sources, Part XII (Articles 192–237). Although aspirational, comprehensive and complex, covering virtually all matters relating to global and state management and use of the ocean, UNCLOS does not actually detail how pollution at sea should be prevented, which makes monitoring of compliance difficult.

LONDON, STOCKHOLM AND BASEL CONVENTIONS The London Convention 1972/96 on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and other Matter, which prohibits dumping of all substances and materials – exempts materials such as plastic – in a ‘reverse’ list in Annex I of the London Protocol. In addition, the London Convention does not regulate land-based sources and internal waters of states in Article III (3). Hence, dumping of waste in rivers and estuaries is not covered. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) 2001, is the only legally binding agreement to regulate the lifecycle of chemical production, use and environmental release, including stockpiles and wastes. Although it prohibits the use of certain harmful chemicals in plastics, such as plasticisers,20 the Stockholm Convention is limited in scope. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal 1989, that regulates the transboundary movement of hazardous waste from one country to another, is the most comprehensive global environmental agreement on hazardous and other wastes. However, it did nothing to help control the large-scale export of plastic waste, leaving the international plastic waste trade virtually unregulated. Plastic was not included in the list of materials considered hazardous (Annex I/III), nor was it explicitly mentioned under ‘other wastes’ (Annex II).21

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

In 2019, at the fourteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-14) to the Basel Convention, a proposal for amending some of the Annexes to the Convention was agreed in favour of developing countries. This landmark agreement, dubbed the ‘Basel Plastic Amendment’, adds three new listings for plastic waste to the Basel Convention so that most plastic, apart from the pre-sorted, single-polymer, clean plastic destined for recycling, will be subject to the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure. This means that exporting states must follow stricter rules on transboundary transportation of contaminated, mixed plastic and unrecyclable plastic waste, including obtaining the prior, informed consent of the importing country. As a result, importing countries, including the global south, are better protected from unwanted or unregulated dumping of plastic pollution from foreign countries, and exporting countries will be incentivised (theoretically) to improve their own domestic recycling. The new amendment, due to come into force in January 2021, will have wide repercussions for the global plastic waste trade and recyclers.22 The amendment will place plastic waste in a legally binding framework, address some lack of transparency in the plastic trade and set a minimum standard, thanks to Article 11, for all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. However, as one of the world’s biggest plastic waste exporters, the USA has objected to the incorporation of the new amendment. The USA stands in a unique position, as the only member of the OECD not to have ratified the Basel Convention. Its objections have delayed and may even prevent the incorporation of the Basel Plastic Amendment provisions into the intra-OECD waste trade.23

UNFCCC Closely linked to the aforementioned legal frameworks to manage the plastic-ocean crisis, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 1992, which entered into force in 1994, was remarkable for its time. At a time when world scientists had only a limited understanding of climate change (First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1990) the UNFCCC recognised the problem of anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas emissions, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide. Moving forward to the UNFCCC’s 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-21) in 2015, a new ‘soft law’ Paris Agreement,24 which replaced the Kyoto Protocol, was signed by 195 countries and quickly celebrated as an historic achievement. Based on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), all parties pledged to keep global warming to well below 2°C, and pursue efforts for 1.5°C. Though the ocean was finally mentioned as a vital ecosystem for the climate for the first time, the Paris Agreement didn’t mention the words ‘fossil fuels’, ‘coal’, ‘oil’ or ‘gas’ once. That was a striking omission considering the central role that fossil fuels play in contributing to the deeply interconnected climate, plastic and ocean crisis. It’s as if Alcoholics Anonymous just called itself Anonymous, and no one ever mentioned whiskey, beer, or wine. Since the Conference of the Parties began over 20 years ago, fossil fuel industry lobbyists have had free access to the process. Unlike the World Health Organization (WHO), which bans tobacco lobbyists from taking part in negotiations about tobacco cessation efforts, the UNFCCC has no protection against industry corruption.25

2015 Paris Agreement 2017 1997 Clean Kyoto Seas Protocol 2012 1992 Rio 2011 Rio+20 Agreement Honolulu Strategy

10000 8000

400

300

6000 200

4000 1978 MARPOL Annex V

2000

1950

1960

1970

1980

100

1990

2000

2010

Million Metric Tonnes of Plastic produced / year

Million Metric Tonnes of Carbon emitted / year

Global CO2 Emissions and Plastic Production International Interventions 1950-2020

2020

Source: Borelle et al (2019) Prepared in response to an invitation from COP-21, the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming (SR15) notes, limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C is projected to reduce increases in ocean temperature as well as associated increases in ocean acidity and decreases in ocean oxygen levels.26 Around the same time, a statement from scientists highlighted the critical role of forests and reforestation. As the world’s forests contain more carbon than exploitable oil, gas, and coal deposits, hence avoiding forest carbon emissions is just as urgent as halting fossil fuel use.27 Today, the UNFCCC has near universal membership of 196 countries, with the exception of the USA who formally began a one-year process to exit the Paris Agreement in November 2019. The exit was finalised the day after the November 2020 elections. At the most recent Climate Change Conference (COP-25) in December 2019, the rift between a growing climate vanguard and a handful of countries obstructing progress meant countries failed to finalise the rules of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“

The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis. António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, ninth secretary-general of the UN

Although progress was made, and the f-words were used to call out fossil fuels, the fossil fuel companies continued to pollute global climate negotiations as surely as they continue to pollute the global atmosphere. The Paris Agreement remains a hybrid of legally binding and nonbinding provisions, which relies on voluntary Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by member states to reduce national emissions. The agreement lacks legally binding emissions reduction targets, a regulatory body, enforcement mechanisms or penalties to ensure accountability, and incentives to transition to a green economy. Shipping and aviation emissions are not directly included and a global tax on carbon is not included. After the cancellation of the Conference of the Parties (COP-26), originally scheduled to take place in November 2020, the next conference won’t take place until November 2021.

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ROME STATUTE The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 1998 (known as the International Criminal Court Statute or the Rome Statute),28 which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), entered into force in 2002. The Rome Statute is one of the most powerful documents in the world, assigning ‘the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole’ over and above all other laws. The four crimes that already exist under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court under Article 5 of the Rome Statute are known collectively as Crimes Against Peace. They are: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and The Crime of Aggression. The international crimes currently provided for under the Rome Statute do not however address: the protection of ecology (non-human inhabitants of a territory); the protection of indigenous and cultural rights (for example when there is destruction of a traditional way of life) or loss, damage and destruction that occurs in peace time. As of 2016, 124 nations are State Parties to the Rome Statute. International Crime (codified in the Rome Statute) applies not only to the signatory States. In 2010, a proposal to amend the Rome Statute to include an international crime of Ecocide was submitted by Polly Higgins into the International Law Commission, ‘mandated to promote the progressive development of international law and its codification’.29 The Law of Ecocide would: prevent the risk of and/or actual extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s); prohibit decisions that result in extensive damage to or destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s); and pre-

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empt decision-making of a political, financial and business nature that may lead to significant harm. A State or corporate senior official or other person of superior responsibility shall be criminally liable for ecocide crime where the perpetrator’s acts or omissions caused ecocide or activity known to give rise to ecocide; the perpetrator knew or ought to have known of the consequences; and the conduct was committed in the context of corporate and/ or State activity. By creating a legal duty of care for inhabitants, ecocide crime establishes an overriding primary legal duty to protect both the Earth and society. Ecocide law proposals date back to 1972. Olof Palme, the then Prime Minister of Sweden, spoke explicitly of the Vietnam war as an ‘Ecocide’ at the Stockholm Conference for the Human Environment. The Stockholm Conference focused international attention on environmental issues for the first time, especially those relating to environmental degradation and transboundary pollution. Others, including Indira Gandhi from India and the leader of the Chinese delegation Tang Ke, also denounced the war on human and environmental terms. They too called for Ecocide to be an international crime. A Working Group on Crimes Against the Environment was formed at that conference, and a draft Ecocide Convention was submitted into the United Nations in 1973. An international Crime of Ecocide was included into the drafting of the Rome Statute (1985 – 1996) and had the support of many countries but was removed in a closed-door meeting in 1996, despite objections at the 11th hour. Papers have since emerged, that show the USA, UK, France and the Netherlands lobbied to have ecocide removed.30

Meanwhile, the latest IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate 31 highlights the urgency of prioritising timely, ambitious and coordinated action to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere. The report reveals the benefits of ambitious and effective adaptation for sustainable development and, conversely, the escalating costs and risks of delayed action. The ocean and the cryosphere – the frozen parts of the planet – play a critical role for life on Earth. A total of 670 million people in high mountain regions and 680 million people in low-lying coastal zones depend directly on these systems. Global warming has already reached 1°C above the pre-industrial level, due to past and current greenhouse gas emissions. And there is overwhelming evidence that this is resulting in profound consequences for ecosystems and people. The ocean is warmer, more acidic and less productive. Melting glaciers and ice sheets are causing sea level rise, and coastal extreme events are becoming more severe. Approved in September 2019 by 195 IPCC member governments, the report provides new evidence for the benefits of limiting global warming to the lowest possible level, in line with the goal that governments set themselves in Paris.32 From a global policy perspective, international plastic pollution agreements are now where

climate change agreements were in 1992, when the UNFCCC formally recognised the climate change problem. If policies for plastic pollution maintain the same pace as international carbon emissions deliberations, an effective agreement may not happen until after 2040.33 By this time, under a business-as-usual scenario annual emissions of plastic into the environment will nearly triple, which will have severe environmental, economic, and social impacts without significant intervention.34 Even though they aren’t treated as such, the plastic pollution and the climate crisis are two inseparable parts of the same problem. And the world is nowhere close to being on track to limit plastic pollution or the temperature rise to 1.5˚C in 2100. Despite commitments to that effect being made by the 195 countries that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 and actions to reduce emissions being put in motion, current emissions show no sign of peaking any time soon and are instead leading to an increase of 3˚C by 2100, or even 4˚C with an unchanged energy system. There are powerful economic forces behind the damaging increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Driven by the rapid industrialisation of emerging economies and mass consumption in developed economies, the pattern is set to increase in the future. By 2050, the global population is projected to reach 10 billion. It is predicted that an emerging-market middle class will double its share of global consumption from one-third to two-thirds, and the world economy is expected to quadruple.35

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GLOBAL STRATEGIES AND ACTION PLANS Although these international strategies acknowledge global contamination, attempt to take a holistic approach and give the impression that there is a lot of pressure to act, they contain no binding commitment and lack clear targets to meet the scale and pace of the challenge.

THE GLOBAL PROGRAMME OF ACTION (GPA) AND GPML PARTNERSHIP The Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (GPA) adopted by 108 Governments, and the European Commission in 1995, fosters collaboration and encourages coordinated action at the national, regional and international level on the prevention of marine pollution from landbased sources. It is currently the only global intergovernmental mechanism entirely dedicated to addressing the issue. Among nine source categories of marine degradation, it lists litter, including plastic waste, as one of them, including a mention of plastic under the category of ‘sewage’. It operates primarily through the UN Regional Seas Programme. At the Third Intergovernmental Review Meeting (IGR3) of the GPA in 2012, the Manila Declaration on furthering the implementation of the GPA, included marine litter as a component and recommended the establishment of a Global Partnership on Marine Litter (GPML). Launched at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro (Rio+20) in June 2012, the GPML is a voluntary international multi-stakeholder partnership of governments, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), the private sector, and international agencies. Although it should in principle be able to provide a platform for targeted action to tackle the issue of marine plastic pollution, it lacks a functioning compliance mechanism, and does not provide sufficient funding for implementation of the objectives in developing countries. Similarly, the UNEP Clean Seas Campaign launched in 2017, which contributes to the GPML project, only requires individuals, industries and member states to voluntarily commit to an action of their choice to reduce plastic pollution.

THE SAICM STRATEGY The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) adopted by the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM1) in 2006, provided a broad framework to promote chemical safety around the world and supported the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to minimise their adverse impacts on

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human health and the environment.36 One of the main aims was to close the gap between chemicals and waste management between developed and developing countries, by covering environmental, economic, social, health, labour, and trade-related aspects, throughout the chemical lifecycle. By using a comprehensive cross-sectoral approach, a salient feature was the prominent engagement of International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) and NGOs. This established a valuable forum for identifying emerging hazardous chemicals, such as electrical and electronic waste (e-waste), and cooperative action. Though the framework was comprehensive in scope and had unique potential to bring emerging policy issues to legislator attention on a global level, it lacked mandatory compliance, monitoring and financial mechanisms and was not legally binding.37 While it made significant progress regarding strengthening capacity, commitment, technical knowledge, and political will to implement and mainstream chemicals into national planning, its goal to minimize the adverse impacts of chemicals and waste has not been achieved by 2020,38 and its future is undecided.

THE HONOLULU STRATEGY The Honolulu Commitment adopted at the Fifth International Marine Debris Conference (5IMDC) in 2011, provides a global framework and planning tool to prevent and manage marine debris and its impacts, through the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program. As a voluntary multi-stakeholder approach, it does not provide any measurable targets or timelines, though there are specific provisions for the monitoring and evaluation of progress, as well as possible actions that may be undertaken by different stakeholders (e.g. government, private sector and civil society).

THE G739 AND G2040 ACTION PLANS The G7 Action Plan to Combat Marine Litter in 2015, that agreed on an ‘Ocean Plastics Charter’, contains pledges on sustainable design and production, collection systems and infrastructure, sustainable lifestyles and education, research and

innovation, and coastal and shoreline action. In 2017, the G20 in Rio de Janeiro included a commitment to ‘take action to prevent and reduce marine litter of all kinds, including single-use plastics and micro-plastics’, to reiterate their commitment to prevent and substantially reduce marine litter and its impacts by 2025. In support of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particular attention was given to landbased sources, with a key focus on waste, waste prevention and sustainable waste management. Emblematic of the increased political attention to the ocean-related challenge of marine plastic pollution, these action plans have some inherent limitations as governance frameworks, however. Most evident, they include only a limited number of states. Another notable drawback is that the action plans are not legally binding, and lack adequate compliance mechanisms and funding for effective implementation.41 Compared to other international organisations, the G20 would seem to be one of the weakest as it has no formal mandate, permanent buildings, staff or funds like the United Nations. Because the G20 is a forum, not a legislative body, its agreements and decisions have no legal impact, but they do influence state policies and global cooperation.

THE UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT ASSEMBLY (UNEA) ACTION PLANS

Though resolutions adopted at (UNEA-3) in 2015 continued to treat plastics as problematic waste rather than a design or manufacturing issue, a process for ongoing coordinated international action was established. A new Ad-Hoc OpenEnded Expert Group (AHOEEG) was tasked with examining options to combat marine plastic litter and microplastics from all sources, including through global legally binding mechanisms.42 Recent progress at (UNEA-4) in 2019, recognised plastic pollution as a serious and rapidly growing issue of global concern which requires an urgent and global response. Yet, again the non-binding resolution to ‘significantly reduce’ the use of plastics by 2030 failed to meet expectations and fell far short of what is required. Despite sweeping agreement by the majority of countries that urgent, ambitious and global action was needed to address plastic across its lifecycle – from production, to use, to disposal – a small minority led by the United States, guided by the interests of the fracking and petrochemical industry, delayed negotiations and watered down the resolutions.43 The final ministerial statement made only two references to man-made global warming and none to the damage caused by fossil fuels that drive it.44 Nevertheless, following the first AHOEEG meeting in 2018, the expert group of member states, industry representatives, and civil society experts, is planning to meet twice to develop options for action in the lead-up to UNEA-5 in 2021, that might possibly lead to a binding international Convention.45

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REGIONAL STRATEGIES AND ACTION PLANS REGIONAL SEAS PROGRAMME The UN Regional Seas Programme set up in 1974 under the auspices of UNEP, is the key regional framework for protecting the ocean. Today, it includes a total of 18 Regional Seas, several of which have adopted action plans specifically addressing marine litter/plastics debris and microplastics. One of these (covering the Mediterranean Sea) is legally binding. With clear obligations regarding waste management hierarchy, closure of illegal dumping and dumpsites, shift to sustainable consumption and production patterns, as well as a monitoring mechanism, it could potentially serve as a ‘model for best practice’. Overcoming this would require the inclusion of most land-locked states, not covered by this framework, and significant convergence of policies as well as extensive interregional coordination.46

EUROPEAN SINGLE USE PLASTIC DIRECTIVE In Europe in January 2018, the European Commission (EC) published its ‘European Strategy on Plastics in a Circular Economy’ to address plastic pollution from the items most commonly found on European beaches – single-use plastics and fishing gear. Together they constitute 70% of all marine litter items.47 The strategy set out a commitment to ensure that, by 2030, all plastics packaging placed on the EU market is reusable or easily recycled. It also identified key actions for national and regional authorities and industry to improve

plastics recycling; curb plastic waste and littering; drive innovation and investment towards circular solutions and harness global action. Recommended actions included examination of policy options for primary sources of microplastics from tyres, textiles and paint and development of measures to reduce plastic pellet (nurdles) spillage, such as a certification scheme.48 Operation Clean Sweep® provides a global certification scheme to prevent the loss of plastic granules (pellets, flakes and powders) into the environment along the plastics supply chain. However, as a voluntary industry-led approach, the scheme lacks adequate monitoring and enforcement mechanisms and relies on industry aggregated reporting rather than individual company disclosure.49 The subsequent ‘Directive on the reduction of the impact of certain plastic products on the environment’ (commonly known as the Single-Use Plastics (SUP) Directive) 50 was formally adopted and published in June 2019. It entered into force in July 2019. European Union (EU) member states (EU-27) were given two years – until July 2021 – to transpose the EU Directive into their national law and adopt measures to ensure successful implementation. The SUP Directive urges a transition away from singleuse plastics, towards sustainable and non-toxic reusable products and reuse systems. It addresses single-use plastic items and fishing gear through a range of policy measures, including consumption reduction, market restrictions, design, collection

and labelling requirements, and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes depending on the item and available alternatives. Notably, the Directive sets EU wide bans on singleuse plastic items (plates and cutlery, straws and stirrers, balloon and cotton bud sticks, cups and food containers in expanded polystyrene) and products made from oxo-degradable plastic. It also requires EU countries to:

• •

• • •

•

Reduce their consumption of single-use plastic cups and food containers, by putting in place specific bans or quantitative reduction targets. Establish EPR schemes for packaging, such as packets, wrappers and bags, as well as wet wipes, balloons, tobacco products and fishing gear to ensure producers cover the cost of collection, treatment, awareness-raising and clean-up. Achieve 90% separate collection of single-use plastic bottles by 2029 (77% by 2025). Achieve 25% recycled material in PET bottles by 2025 and 30% by 2030. Establish new markings on cups, tobacco products, wet wipes and menstrual items to indicate the presence of plastics, the appropriate means of disposal and the impacts on the environment when not properly disposed of. Monitor and report their progress to the Commission on an annual basis.

Despite a promising start, the directive lacks EUbinding: quantitative reduction or reuse targets; deposit return schemes to ensure 90% plastic bottle collection rates; strong producer responsibility; further bans or measures on bags or metal caps with plastic seals for example. One year into force of the Directive, only a few countries have adopted measures to transpose the Directive into national law. In many countries, the transposition process has not started and/ or little information is available on the expected transposition process. Several countries have started to transpose the EU wide bans set in the Directive, but have yet to adopt key measures that will determine the level of ambition and the environmental benefits on the ground.51 The UK left the EU in January 2020. Under the UK-EU withdrawal agreement, a transition period will end on 31 December 2020 – unless extended. During which time the UK will be treated for most purposes as if it were still an EU member state, and most EU law will continue to apply. During the transition period, it is likely that the UK will, therefore, need to continue implementing the Directive. The UK has not yet consulted on implementation.52

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EUROPEAN REACH DIRECTIVE Hazardous plastic chemicals or microplastics do not fall directly within the scope of the SUP Directive. As the most comprehensive and progressive chemicals legislation in the world, the EU REACH Regulation, that is concerned with the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and restriction of Chemicals, offers the best example of a well-developed regional chemicals regulatory regime. The Regulation, which entered into force in 2007, holds the chemical industry responsible for the identification and information of the chemical substances they produce. Information on the intrinsic properties, hazards, and specific uses of chemical substances has to be registered in a central database operated by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), in Helsinki. It was established as an integrated system to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals – while enhancing the competitiveness of the EU chemicals industry.53 Although it provides a global framework in principle, it contains serious loopholes and legal uncertainties. It is currently under review. In March 2020, several NGOs issued a Declaration of Concern and a Call to Action regarding plastics, packaging and human health. At the same time, 33 international scientists published a peer-reviewed consensus statement 54 expressing their deep concern about the current use of harmful chemicals in food packaging and food contact materials. Major shortcomings include:

•

In the USA, 40,655 chemicals are used in commerce today 55 and in Europe 23,101 substances have been registered under REACH.56 While it covers many chemicals, there are about 127,000 produced or imported in volumes below 1 tonne per year, for which REACH does not require any safety obligations.57 Human exposure has only been systematically assessed for a fraction of these chemicals, including food contact chemicals (FCCs) in finished food items, food packaging and food storage containers. Almost 12,000 distinct chemicals may be used in the manufacture of food contact materials, yet information on the actual use of a chemical in them (and its levels) is difficult to obtain.

•

The majority of substances are risk-assessed on a single substance basis rather than on a cumulative or symbiotic basis, even though at least 1,200 peer reviewed scientific studies clearly demonstrate migration of multiple FCCs from food contact materials through multiple uses and exposure pathways. For at least some FCCs, aggregate exposure is probable.

•

The human health effects of chemicals used in the manufacture of food contact materials are not covered by REACH – and several substances of very high concern (SVHCs), defined under REACH as chemicals with unacceptable hazard properties (like carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, toxicity for reproduction, persistence and bioaccumulation, or endocrine disruption) – are authorised for use in food contact in Europe and other countries. In addition, it is well known that for several types of food contact materials, migration of non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) is more significant than migration of intentionally used substances. Thus, there are many unknown and/or untested chemicals present in food contact articles.

•

Although the amended Directive 2019 now includes nanomaterials,58 unauthorised chemicals may be used in food contact plastics if their migration into food is below the detection limit of 10 ppb (10 μg/kg food), and if they are not genotoxic, mutagenic, toxic to reproduction, or substances in nanoforms. This detection limit is often interpreted as a safety threshold.

OTHER EUROPEAN DIRECTIVES Other related European Directives include: The Regulation on the Classification, Labelling and Packaging of Substances and Mixtures (CLP).59 The Regulation incorporates UN-level rules on the theme and obligates companies to classify, label, and package chemical substances appropriately before placing them on the market. In addition, there is a significant amount of EU regulation concerning requirements regarding chemicals in selected products and sectors, which compliments the REACH and CLP Regulations. Other specialist legislation includes among others, the Toy Safety Directive,60 the Regulation on Cosmetic Products,61 the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive,62 the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 63 and the Water Framework Directive,64 which refers to water as ‘a heritage which must be protected, defended and treated as such’, lists priority hazardous substances.65

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NATIONAL GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND INITIATIVES More than 60 national and sub-national governments worldwide have taken steps to reduce plastics by imposing bans and restrictions, taxes and charges, and waste management measures on single-use items such as bags, straws, cutlery and containers, and microplastics in cosmetics, to encourage reuse and recycling and promote alternatives to plastic products. For most countries, the primary focus has been on regulating plastic bags (more than any other plastic type) and on increasing collection rates of plastic for recycling and improving waste management, including infrastructure upgrades. In parallel, a number of countries have introduced measures to ban and/or phase out problematic types of plastic such as microbeads. Too few countries have specific legislation that places controls on producers to address waste minimisation, adopt recycling targets or charge enough to disincentivise the purchase of plastic products. Given the urgency of the plastic pollution crisis, measuring and monitoring the implementation and impact of these different regulatory measures will be crucial to scale up successful efforts.66 With significant variations between countries, most rules are very narrowly defined. Most bans and charges (or levies) imposed on plastic bags that stipulate the thickness and material content of mostly carrier bags, exclude many other grocery and packaging types of bags. More comprehensive bans (which include fines and jail sentences) are generally found only in the global south, where pressure on governments are particularly high because of externalised waste from the global north, poor waste disposal infrastructure, litter and blocked waterways and drains, which impact on human health. Only a few pioneers, such as Costa Rica and India, are striving for an outright ban on disposable plastics.

Global bans and charges implemented or drafted by country USA: 2018 Save Our Seas Act prioritises marine debris clean up

Bans on single-use plastic bags Charges for some single-use plastics Bans on some plastics and applications (normally expanded polystyrene and items like straws) Promises to ban single-use plastic entirely

EUROPE: Single Use Plastics Directive bans some single-use plastic products and aims for reduced consumption and increased recycling

CHINA: First country to ban the import of used plastic

VANUATU: First country to ban disposable nappies

Bans and charges that have already been implemented or for which the legislation is passed or in some cases drafted by the government at the country.

Source: Green Alliance, Fixing the system (2020)

All the aforementioned approaches do little to tackle the root cause of the problem; almost all the regulations are targeted at the plastic waste disposal end of the chain and put the onus on the consumer. Very few binding rules exist to force producers to cut back their fossil-fuelled production of plastic items or to develop products that can be reused or recycled more easily. And current regulations fail to cover a large part of short-term plastic products, or microplastics, that escape into the environment. For example, the abrasion of vehicle tyres that are estimated to account for around 30% of all microplastic emissions in Germany.67 As with businesses, the actions announced so far by governments are expected to have very limited effect. Worldwide policy attempts to tackle plastic pollution are piecemeal and most of the regulations only tackle certain plastic materials, types of products and individual uses or encourage simple substitution for other materials, rather than taking a more fundamental approach to how materials are used and managed. Furthermore, various plastic taxes have flaws. As currently envisaged in the UK, for example, the plastic tax will only drive recycled content in plastic packaging, which is a small proportion of material use in the economy, rather than virgin materials which should be on the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s net zero agenda.68 To make matters even worse, plastic bag charges are now being waived, some recycling programmes are suspended and government plans to further reduce single-use plastic are being reviewed or put on hold. Over the coming months, there is a risk that other plastic-related policies will be cancelled or suspended, much like the forthcoming ban on plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds in the UK which has been delayed until late 2020. Moreover, despite their stated climate ambitions, many governments continue to widen the gap between plastic-related fossil fuel production and climate goals, by supporting increased fossil fuel exploration and production through national plans and targets, direct investment, R&D funding, public finance, tax breaks and other subsidies. Collectively, most countries are aiming to produce considerably more coal, oil, and gas than would be consistent with their National Determined Contributions (NDCs) pledges, suggesting a major disconnect between energy, climate and plastic pollution plans. Though several governments (Belize, Costa Rica, Denmark, France, and New Zealand) are demonstrating leadership by already adopted policies to restrict fossil fuel production, seven of the top nine producing countriesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; governments (China, United States, Russia, India, Australia, Indonesia, and Canada) are planning to produce about 50% more fossil fuels by 2030, that far exceeds the Paris Agreement goals.69

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As a glimmer of hope in the USA, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act 2020 has potential as a model for legislators to address the plastic pollution crisis. It offers a comprehensive, systems-based approach to hold plastic producers accountable for the problematic waste they create. The bills (H.R. 5845 and S. 3263) 70 would: require producers to design, manage and finance programs to collect and process waste that burdens state and local governments; establish a nationwide deposit return scheme; source reduce and phase-out certain products; impose a fee on the distribution of carrier bags; require minimum recycled content; standardise recycling and composting labels, prevent the export of plastic waste to non-OECD countries; protect existing state action; temporarily pause new or expanding plastic-producing facilities and promote a shift to reuse and refill.

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS PLASTIC PRODUCTION From bags, bottles and tops – cups, cutlery and containers – straws, stirrers and sticks – packaging, packets and wrappers – to cigarette butts, clothing and electronics – the global production of plastics has soared over the past 50 years, from 2 million metric tons a year in 1950 to more than 400 million metric tons today. Accelerated by a global shift from reusable to single use – more plastic was produced in just the last 10 years than during the whole of the last century – at breakneck speed. Most of it is single-use plastic and packaging.71 72

Global Plastic Production by Industrial Sector (2015) The world produces more than

OTHER

12% PACKAGING

400 million

36%

TEXTILES

14%

tons of plastics every year

INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY

CONSUMER PRODUCTS

10% ELECTRICAL / ELECTRONIC

TRANSPORTATION BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION

16%

Source: UNEP (2018) Single-use Plastics: A Roadmap for Sustainability from Geyer, Jambeck, and Law (2017) Globally, 8.3 billion tonnes of virgin (non-recycled) plastic has been produced to date. From this amount, 6.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste had been generated. Outpacing virtually all other manmade materials, recent growth has been phenomenal, and the pace of plastic production and waste shows no signs of slowing.73 With a growing global economy, rising population and technological development driving demand, the projections are alarming. Plastic production is set to almost quadruple by 2050.74

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Annual Global Plastic Production and Projections (1950-2050)

1400 1200

1000 800

381 Mt (2015)

600

2040

2035

2030

2025

2020

2015

2005

2000

1990 1995

1985

1980

1975

1970

1965

1960

1950

1955

2 Mt (1950)

200

2010

-----------

400

2050

1600

2045

---------------------------------------------

1,503 Mt (2050)

Source: Geyer, Jambeck, and Law (2017) The most prevalent plastic resins are manufactured from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polyvinylchloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene and expanded polystyrene (PS/EPS) and polyurethane (PUR) resins. The most common plastic fibres come in the form of polyester, polyamide, and acrylic (PP&A) and nylon polyamide (PA) as well as Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE).75

In terms of their physical properties, there are three main categories of plastic polymers:

• • •

Thermoplastics (e.g. PE, PP, PVC, PET, PS, PA and PC used in a vast range of products and packaging) which can be reheated and reshaped, can be recycled in theory. Thermosets (e.g. epoxy, polyester and vinyl ester resins, melamine, fibreglass and PUR used in boats, surfboards, building and construction materials, electrical and electronic components, kitchenware items, and motor vehicle parts) which can only be heated and shaped once, cannot be recycled. Elastomers – usually thermoset plastic (e.g. rubber, latex, lycra, neoprene and silicone used in tyres, gloves, balloons, chewing gum, clothing, sportswear and seal rings) cannot be recycled.

Importantly, numerous chemical additives (fillers, plasticisers, flame retardants, colorants, stabilisers, lubricants, foaming agents, and antistatic agents) are contained in all plastic products and packaging to enhance polymer properties and prolong their life.76 77 And in finished products and packaging, polymer components are often combined with each other and other materials (e.g. wood, glass, cardboard and aluminium). For example, a disposable toothbrush or razor includes a considerable range of different polymers and metals.78

Plastic production in developing countries grew significantly over the first two decades of the 21st century. As a result, the developing countries of Asia and China have surpassed the developed world in overall plastic production. The majority of plastics (50%) were produced in Asia – with China responsible for 30% – North America 18%, and Europe 17% in 2018.

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Distribution of Global Plastics Production (2018) CIS

NAFTA

18%

Europe

51% ....................

17%

Asia

Latin America

30% China

+% Japan 17% Rest of Asia

Middle East and Africa

Includes Thermoplastics, Polyurethanes, Thermosets, Elastomers, Adhesives, Coatings and Sealants and PP-Fibres. Not included: PET-fibres and Polyacryl-fibres. Source: Plastics Europe (2019) In terms of annual per capita plastic consumption, the developed countries of North America (132 kg), Europe (111 kg) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and especially Japan (114 kg) which produced only 4% â&#x20AC;&#x201C; remain higher than the developing countries of China (77 kg) and the rest of Asia (68 kg), despite their large populations.79 Nevertheless, projections forecast that world demand for plastics will grow significantly in developing countries, especially in the Middle East and Africa, as well as Asia, due to growing populations, rising incomes, increased urbanisation and shifts in consumption patterns.80 Plastics manufacturing and processing operations in developing Asia alone accounted for 53% of the plastic industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s global employment in 2018. In the manufacture of plastic products, two in every three jobs are now concentrated in the global south and the industry is estimated to generate 7.7 million

direct jobs in developing countries, in comparison to 2.9 million jobs in developed nations and 500,000 in transition economies. Developing countries are also key suppliers of raw materials (feedstocks) to the global plastics industry. This is especially true for countries with large crude oil and natural gas sectors. Conversely, as key suppliers of alternative materials such as jute, cotton, bamboo, natural rubber, paper and cardboard, they could play a larger role in shifting to a less plastic intensive or non-plastic economy.81 China plays a key role in global plastics trade both as a supplier and as a market. Since joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China gradually reduced barriers for foreign firms to operate in China, and in 2004 it began to allow foreign investors to operate retailers across its entire

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domestic market. It also opened up distribution channels, allowing foreign distribution companies to apply for national licenses. As a result, China is now a major market for multinational corporations. Multinational corporation penetration is now higher in China (40%) than in the USA (26%) across ten large plastic-intensive consumer categories. For example, Mondelēz International, the US food and beverage giant, has established a research centre in Suzhou and Dow, the US chemical colossus, has partnered with China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection to manage sustainability challenges. Yet, even though China’s opening and reform have offered substantial economic benefits around the world, the evolution has entailed significant environmental and social costs too, notably in the form of climate emissions and lost middle-income jobs, particularly in advanced economies. The dynamic relationship between China and the rest of the world appears to be entering a new phase. The country is becoming less exposed in economic terms to the rest of the world, while the rest of the world is becoming more exposed to China. Trade disputes are making daily headlines, new rules are emerging to scrutinise technology flows, national protectionism is on the rise, and geopolitical tensions are becoming more heated.82

Plastics Demand by Region Mt per year (2015-2100) 1400

Middle East and Africa

1200

Developing Asia

1000

OECD Asia

China Latin America

800

Europe North America

600 400 200 0

2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 2090 2100 Source: Material Economics, The Circular Economy (2018)

Almost all plastics (99.5%) are petro-based, made from and transported by non-renewable fossil fuels. Only about 0.5% is derived from bio-based sources.83 Coal, oil and gas drive the entire system. And with the advent of fracking over the last decade – the raw materials became significantly cheaper. Just a few major corporations produce most of the world’s plastics. Strategically based in just a few developed/developing countries (USA, UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, China and South Korea), the key players in a long list include: the world’s largest oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, ENI, Royal Dutch Shell, Saudi Aramco and China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec); the chemicals firms and plastic and resin producers such as Dow, BASF, INEOS, SABIC, Lyondell Basell and LG Chemical; the Fast-moving Consumer Goods giants (FMCGs) such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Mondelez International, Unilever and Proctor & Gamble and the waste-management firms like SUEZ and Veolia who monopolise the system with a production footprint in almost every country of the world. As the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the International Energy Agency (IEA), Green Alliance and other observers have extensively documented, the oil, gas, and petrochemical sectors are interconnected and deeply integrated. Indeed, the world’s largest oil and gas companies also rank among the most significant producers of petrochemicals, including plastic. In recent years, as the world attempts to respond to the fossil-fuelled climate crisis by phasing out fossil fuels, these companies announced more than $200 billion in new investment for plastic production, to create new revenue streams to offset inevitable declines in the use of oil and gas and take advantage of cheap natural gas from the fracking boom.84 85

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The Biggest Plastic Players Global annual turnover, billion US$

LYONDELL BASELL 34.7

DOW

LANXESS 9.4 CHEVRON 9.3

EXXONENI MOBIL

SABIC 37.3 72.5

256

INEOS BASF

Petrochemicals – components derived from oil and gas that are used in all sorts of daily products such as plastics, fertilisers, packaging, clothing, digital devices, medical equipment, detergents and tyres – are rapidly becoming the fastest growing sector of global oil demand. Ironically, they are also used in other products such as wind turbines, insulation and solar panels, which are designed to help reduce carbon emissions for a clean energy transition. Together, ahead of trucks, planes and shipping, petrochemicals are set to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030, and nearly half to 2050.86

Despite global concern, most, if not all, of the companies mentioned continue to resist the call to reduce plastic production – to do so would LG CHEMICAL 24.6 force them to abandon their optimistic growth projections and upend their ingrained business practices that depend on cheap disposable plastics – to accept lower profits. Instead, these companies continue to strive to keep throwaway plastics as part of people’s everyday lives. For decades, industry has successfully hired teams of lobbyists to influence policymakers, focused attention on recycling and framed plastic pollution as a problem of litter and waste management to evade their responsibility. Widely promoted globally and unquestioningly accepted by governments and the public alike for decades, allowed multinational corporations to churn out throwaway plastic products and packaging while passing on the blame for plastic waste to consumers, and the responsibility for managing what is discarded to local authorities.87 60

66.5

The Role of Chemical Products in Modern Society

Source: IEA, The Future of Petrochemicals (2018)

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PLASTIC AND CLIMATE Though coal, oil, and gas are the central drivers of climate change, they have only been the subject of international climate policy and negotiations until very recently. Shining a spotlight on the energy sector a series of important new reports were released at the Climate Change Conference (COP-25), such as the UNEP Production Gap Report, which showed, for the first time, just how big the disconnect is between the Paris Agreement temperature goals and countries’ plans and policies for coal, oil, and gas production. By far, the largest contributor to global climate change, fossil fuels account for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions. The world is awash in fossil fuels, including petrochemicals and plastics.

Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Source

All other sources 24%

Energy use 64%

Fossil fuels 76%

Energy use for fossil fuel production 3% Fugitive emissions 7% Non-energy use / other 2%

At the heart of the climate challenge, the world is on track to produce about 120% more fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with the 1.5°C global warming target. These planned levels of fossil fuel production are inconsistent with the collective climate pledges under the Paris Agreement. The global production gap is even larger than the already significant global emissions gap, due to minimal policy attention on curbing fossil fuel production.88

Global Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions GtCO GtCO22per peryear year Countries’ Countries’production productionplans plans&&projections projections Production Productionimplied impliedby byclimate climatepledges pledges Production Productionconsistent consistentwith with2°C 2°C Production Productionconsistent consistentwith with1.5°C 1.5°C

40 40

30 30

The TheProduction ProductionGap Gap

20 20

2°C 2°C

10 10

1.5°C 1.5°C

00 2015 2015

2020 2020

2025 2025

2030 2030

2035 2035

2040 2040

Source: UNEP, The Production Gap (2019)

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Emissions from plastic could reach over 10-13% of the carbon budget by 2050 GABARONNE, BOTSWANA

Seven key countries – China, USA, Russia, India, Australia, Indonesia, and Canada – are among the nine top global producers in terms of extraction-based CO2 emissions. The final three – Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom – represent significant producers with strongly stated climate ambitions. Backed up by an Oil, Gas, and Climate Report, which shows how oil companies are planning to invest over a trillion US$ in new oil and gas extraction projects between 2020 to 2024. US oil and gas expansion by itself, which will account for 85% of new supply, will make it impossible for the rest of the world to manage the safe, equitable and necessary decline of oil and gas production by 2050.89

China*

Extraction-based CO2 Emissions (MtCO2) by Country (2017) Coal Oil

United Kingdom*

Malaysia

Angola

Colombia

Poland

Nigeria

Venezuela

Algeria

Mexico

Brazil

Germany*

Kuwait

Kazakhistan

Norway*

South Africa

United Arab Emirates

Quatar

Canada*

Iraq

Iran

Indonesia*

Australia*

India*

Russia* Saudi Arabia

United States*

Gas

Source: UNEP, The Production Gap (2019)

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Top Countries by Projected Production from New Oil and Gas Development (2020-2024) Million boe 25000

Oil Gas

20000 15000 10000 5000 0

United States

Canada Argentina China

Norway Australia Mexico

United Brazil Kingdom

Nigeria

Source: Global Gas and Oil Network (2019) Paradoxically, despite the fact China has become a world leader in investment in renewable energy, China has been the world’s largest source of carbon emissions since 2006, and today accounts for 28% of the annual global total. To put this in context, in 2017, it accounted for US $127 billion (45%) of the global total of US $280 billion invested in renewables, which was three times larger than the US and European investment of US $41 billion each. In the same year, China’s emissions were larger than the combined emissions of the next three highest sources, the USA, India, and Russia. Although China has reduced its carbon intensity (the amount of carbon emitted per unit of GDP), it still surpasses the USA (0.31 kg of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP), India (0.29 kg), Japan (0.26 kg), and the UK (0.15 kg).

the ground, and the subsequent emissions these fossil fuels are responsible for since 1965 – the point at which experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by both industry leaders and politicians. The top 20 companies on the list have contributed to 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane worldwide, totalling 480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) since 1965. Those identified range from investor-owned firms – such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell – to state-owned companies including Saudi Aramco and Gazprom.

Even though lower-income countries are typically expected to have higher carbon intensities due to limited access to energy-efficient technologies, China’s current carbon intensity (0.47 kg) is higher than the average of low- and middle- income countries (0.36 kg). China’s strong push toward renewable energy is largely intended to address domestic challenges, notably air pollution, which was 3.7 times larger than the OECD average in 2016.90 Furthermore, analysis from world-renowned researchers at the Climate Accountability Institute in the USA, the world’s leading authority on big oil’s role in the escalating climate emergency, evaluated what the global corporations have extracted from

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Chevron topped the list of the eight investorowned corporations, followed closely by ExxonMobil, BP and Shell. Together these four global businesses are behind more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965. Twelve of the top 20 companies are state-owned and together their extractions are responsible for 20% of total emissions in the same period. The leading state-owned polluter is Saudi Aramco, which has produced 4.38% of the global total on its own. Another earlier study found that the largest five stock-market-listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.91 Around the same time, a report from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), concluded that the oil industry had early knowledge of climate risks and important opportunities to act on those risks, but repeatedly failed to do so. Those failures give rise to potential legal responsibilities under an array of legal theories. By no later than 1968, the petroleum industry as a whole was on notice of climate change, its most probable causes, its potential risks, and the pressing need to research technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As early as the 1970s and no later than the 1980s, climate change projections were being used in business and operational planning. From the 1990s forward, therefore, the oil industry acknowledged climate science internally and took measures to incorporate climate risks into their own project planning, while maintaining active campaigns to promote scepticism of climate change science and climate risks among policymakers, journalists, and the public.92 Plastic proliferation directly influences the climate crisis on a global scale – from fossil fuel extraction and transport, plastic refining and manufacture, plastic waste management, and its ongoing impact in our oceans, waterways, and landscapes. It emits significant greenhouse gases that affect sea levels, global temperatures, ecosystem health on land and in the ocean, and storms, which increase flooding, drought, and erosion. Threatening our ability to meet global climate targets, plastic emission sources include:

Extraction and Transport includes direct emissions like methane leakage and flaring, fuel combustion and energy consumption in the process of drilling for oil or gas and fracking. Extraction and transport emission gaps include emissions from machinery at well sites, truck traffic and other distribution transportation, as well as the effects of land clearing for wells, pipelines, and related infrastructure on releasing carbon into the atmosphere, including hindering the forest’s ability to act as a

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carbon sink – which are not considered at all.

Plastic Refining and Manufacture is among the

most greenhouse-gas-intensive and fastest growing manufacturing sectors. Manufacturing processes, which are energy and emission intensive, produce significant emissions through the ‘cracking’ of larger hydrocarbons from petrochemicals into smaller plastic resins, and other chemical refining processes.

Plastic Waste Management which is primarily landfilled, dumped or incinerated, produces varying amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Incineration, which is poised to grow dramatically in the coming decades globally, leads to the immediate release of all embedded carbon and extremely high emissions. The waste-to-energy hungry beasts rely on more production and waste that drives increased emissions, waste valuable reusable materials and are incompatible with a closed-loop circular economy model.

Plastic in the Environment continually release

a range of powerful greenhouse gases when exposed to sunlight and heat, leading to an alarming feedback loop. In the ocean, which provides the largest natural carbon sink for greenhouse gases, plastic leaves a deadly legacy. It directly chokes and smothers a host of marine life and habitats, reducing the ocean’s ability to absorb and sequester greenhouse gases. The microscopic plants and animals that live there – phytoplankton and zooplankton – perform a critical service for human survival. Current estimates address only 1% of plastic at the ocean’s surface. Emissions from the 99% that lies below the ocean’s surface cannot yet be estimated with precision. Plastic on coastlines, riverbanks, and landscapes releases greenhouse gases at an even higher rate. And, open-air burning has not been fully accounted for, but whenever plastic is burned, it emits greenhouse gases, principally CO2. As more plastic accumulates in the environment this is expected to increase.93 94 As of 2019, the global production and incineration of plastic was estimated to emit a whopping 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere a year – equal to the emissions from 189 five-hundred-megawatt coal power plants – around double the UK’s total carbon footprint.95 Plastics alone risk exceeding the carbon budget quota available for all allocated industrial emissions.96 Across its lifecycle, plastic accounts for 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s almost double the global emissions of the aviation sector.97

Plastic Emissions to 2050 3.0 billion metric tons BY 2050 annual emissions could grow to more than 2.75 bıllion metric tons of CO2e from plastic production and incineration

2.5 2.0

Annual emissions from incineration

1.5

Annual emissions from resin and fibre production

1.0 0.5 0 2015 2020

2030

2040

2050

Source: CIEL, Plastic & Climate (2019) About 61% of total plastic greenhouse gas emissions comes from resin production and transport stages and a further 30% is emitted at the product manufacturing stage. If it were a country, the ‘Plastic Kingdom’ would be the fifth-highest emitter in the world.98 Without significant intervention, plastic production may account for 20% of the world’s oil consumption and represent 15% of the global annual carbon budget by 2050.99 In turn, plastic waste will overwhelm our planet and our communities with pointless plastic pollution.

Growth in Net CO2 Emissions from Plastic in the EU

Emissionsfrom fromplastic plasticcould couldgrow grow significantly 2050, largely to demand growth Emissions significantly by by 2050, largely duedue to demand growth and increased emissions at the end of the plastic lifecycle. and increased emissions at the end of the plastic lifecycle.

EMISSIONS FROM PLASTICS WITHIN THE EU Mt CO 2 per year

24 90 +76%

34 233 132

2017

DEMAND INCREASED EMISSIONS IMPROVED GROWTH AT END OF LIFE PRODUCTİON

2050

Source: Material Economics, The Circular Economy (2018)

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The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and others highlight that urgent coordinated action and farreaching system transformations are vital to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and limit global warming to below 1.5˚C. Apart from renewable energy and energy-efficiency measures, meeting climate targets will also require tackling the remaining 45% of emissions associated with making products. When applied to four key industrial materials (cement, steel, plastic and aluminium) they propose that circular economy strategies could help cut costs and reduce emissions by 40% in 2050. For example, if a ‘reuse’ and ‘refill’ model was applied to all bottles in beauty and personal care as well as home cleaning, packaging and transport savings would represent an 80–85% reduction in emissions compared to today’s traditional single-use bottles.100 Increasingly recognised as a systemic risk to which every large multinational company is exposed, replacing just 20% of single-use plastic packaging with reusable alternatives offers a $10 billion (£7.5 billion) business opportunity globally.101 Running in the opposite direction, the oil giants like ExxonMobil and Shell continue to place their bets on petrochemicals and plastic as an increasingly significant source of profit 102 – one that a circulareconomy approach would threaten. Yet belief is growing across the globe that the industry’s untouchable status needs to end. Greenpeace USA have urged Congress to enact a managed phaseout of fossil fuel production and pass a Green New Deal to stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis,103 and the Earth Island Institute and Plastic Pollution Coalition have filed the first major lawsuit against the largest FMCG companies for polluting our waterways, coasts, and oceans with plastic packaging.104 Adopting circular economy strategies alone, however, is unlikely to outpace the scale and rate of petrochemical infrastructure expansion.105 And, even powering plastic production with 100% zero-carbon energy sources would reduce overall emissions by only half.106 Deep decarbonisation will require a broader socio-technical transition that also entails radical changes in policy, industry strategies, infrastructure, user behaviour, culture and science.107 Addressing the root problems of our throwaway culture should be the starting point, to reduce material use and waste across the economy. Despite resource efficiency, lightweighting and material substitution efforts, plastic production across the world is still growing. As all materials have impacts, maintaining the current systems and simply switching to other single-use materials could increase carbon emissions. In the UK, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) estimated that

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simply switching all current consumption of plastic packaging on a like for like basis to other currently used packaging materials could almost triple carbon emissions. But greenhouse gas emissions are not the only consequence. Other environmental impacts, like water use and pollution (air, water and land) must also be considered.108 According to the WHO, ambient air pollution causes 4.2 million premature deaths a year.109 And, air pollution could be exacerbating COVID-19-related deaths, as prior air pollution exposure may increase the risk of death by suppressing immunity.110 Though government contingency measures around the world led to a brief dramatic drop of daily global carbon emissions by 17% in April 2020, compared to 2019,111 – as well as improvements in air quality, cleaner beaches and less environmental noise – negative aspects to contain the pandemic, such as the reduction in recycling and the increase in waste, further endanger the contamination of physical spaces (water and land), in addition to air.112

PLASTIC AND WATER Although global concern over climate change has led to an understanding of embedded energy and carbon footprints, there is in fact a lot of energy embedded in our water, and our water use has a massive carbon footprint due to pumping, treating, and heating. Water and energy are linked, and both are related to climate change. Hand in hand, as our water footprints are expanding, climate change is exacerbating water scarcity in many parts of the world â&#x20AC;&#x201C; places are running out of water. And since our water footprint extends beyond national boundaries, our consumption of water clearly affects water supplies in other parts of the world.113

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Virtual Water Footprint Comparisons by Country (2017)

South Africa

United Kıngdom

Egypt

Bangladesh

500

China

(3785)

Colombia

Global

Dominican Republic

Germany

1000

Australia

Denmark

Russia

Brazil

Botswana

1500

(5678)

Israel

(7571)

Canada

2000

USA

2500

(9464)

UAE

Galleons (litres) / person per day

(1893)

0 Source: Water Footprint Calculator (2017) Less understood, is plastic’s substantial ‘water footprint’ 114 along the entire production and use and waste process. The Water Footprint Network – whose research provides some of the data used in the Water Footprint Calculator (WFC) – defines these components as: Blue Water Footprint: The amount of surface water and groundwater required (evaporated or used directly) to produce an item. Green Water Footprint: The amount of rainwater required (evaporated or used directly) to make an item. Grey Water Footprint: The amount of freshwater water required to dilute the wastewater generated in manufacturing, in order to maintain water quality, as determined by state and local standards. The USA has the highest per capita water use among 30 developed and emerging economies,115

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and as some of the biggest shoppers on the planet, the average American has a ‘virtual’ 116 embedded water footprint of over 8,300 litres (2,220 gallons) per day.117 As regards soft drinks beverage bottles, Coca-Cola estimate that the blue water footprint of their 0.5 litre PET Coca-Cola bottle (containing cane sugar) is 8 litres, the green water footprint is 15 litres, and the grey water footprint is 12 litres, which amounts to 35 litres in total.118 In contrast, a subsequent estimate calculated the water footprint of a 0.5 litre PET beverage bottle (containing cane sugar) at a significantly higher total of 169 to 309 litres (7.4–124 litres blue water, 134.5–252.4 litres green water, and 9.2–19.7 litres grey water). Ironically, the fact that around 99.8% of the entire water footprint of the product stems from manufacturing and that the bottle only contains 0.5 litres of blue water for consumer use, illustrates an absurd short-term profit-driven state of affairs, whichever estimate.119

From the deepest parts of our oceans to the Amazon rainforest MAMIRAUA RESERVE, AMAZON

In the process, companies like Coca-Cola, Nestlé and PepsiCo are pumping and selling common water resources that belong to the public, harming the environment, and depleting community water supplies. In India, for instance, soft drink giants PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have bottling operations with a long history of using and polluting residents’ scarce water supplies.120 121 While the companies slurp up precious water during the soft drink-making process, the finished beverages are sent outside the community and region. This becomes even more contentious during times of drought in these already water-scarce areas.122 In 2014, Coca-Cola was ordered to shut down its bottling plant in Varanasi following local complaints that the company was drawing excessive amounts of groundwater.123 Since Coca-Cola announced plans in 2018 to recycle the equivalent of 100% of its packaging by 2030, touting the effort as building on its success with sustainable water use, their exaggerated ‘World Without Waste’ and water record 124 should be viewed with scepticism. By substituting ‘net green’ for green water and thereby limiting attention to only the water that goes into each bottle, the company does not count water in its full supply chain – including the water-guzzling sugar or orange crops – in its ‘every drop’ maths. Although the company invests in water and sanitation projects, to expand basic services in poor communities in Africa and elsewhere through well digging, water purification, water distribution and metering systems, the company has been criticised for the science behind elements of its replenish-ment programmes that ‘offset’ its water use.125

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“

Coke is symptomatic of the economy that is ecologically unsound. Bartow J. Elmore, Citizen Coke 2015 126

Global bottled water sales were estimated at US $169.8bn in 2015, and growing at a compound annual rate of 9.5%, the bottled water market size is expected to reach US $319.8bn in 2022.127 By volume, the consumption of bottled water stood at 204.54 billion litres as of 2017 and was likely to reach 282.54 billion litres by 2018.

Still water accounts for 47.6% of the market, followed by sparkling water at 23.9%, flavoured

In the USA, most bottled water comes from the same municipal sources that supply tap water, and of concern, bottled water sales increased by 57% in March 2020 compared to March 2019. In Detroit for example, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are making millions, as residents face water shutoffs. The business model is hugely profitable. The cost to buy the municipal water is exceedingly low – and once bottled – the markup can be around 133 times higher. Because the water supply, including the processing and infrastructure, is paid for by local taxpayers, the companies are essentially doubledipping – receiving low-cost water subsidised by taxpayers and then turning around and selling it back to the public at a significant mark-up.

Dasani Water: From Tap to Bottle

Disparity in Detroit’s Water Shutoffs

Market research forecasts to 2024 indicate that while North America and Europe are expected to remain more or less stable, Asia-Pacific is the largest and fastest growing market in terms of total consumption, accounting for 33% market share due to an increasing large population, high demand, untapped market, favourable demography, and rapid urbanisation. Latin America and the Middle East and Africa are likely to experience rapid growth too over the next four years due to their poor water infrastructure, and unsafe and unclean tap water.

TAP

PURIFICATION

Average cost $0.01 per gallon

BOTTLE

Average wholesale price $1.33 per gallon

Source: Consumer Reports (2020)

water at 9.6%, and functional water at 18.9%. In terms of pack size, up to 0.5 litres was responsible for 63.7% of the market while 1 to 3 litres and above 20 litres contributed 32.9% and 3.4%, respectively. Nearly 95.4% of bottled water and drinks are packaged in PET plastic bottles, while glass bottles accounted for 3.3%. Key players in the current global bottled water market are Nestlé Waters, Danone, PepsiCo, the Coco-Cola Company, Fiji Water, Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co Ltd, Bisleri International Pvt Ltd, and MaiDubai Water Company.128

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RESIDENTS

Water can be shut off if residents are US $150 overdue or 60 days late

COCA-COLA

Water was not shut off though the company was US $287.250 overdue

Detroit’s temporarily suspended shutoff policy states that residents or businesses potentially risk having their water shut off if payments above a balance of US $150 are 60 days overdue. Records show that both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo considerably exceeded that threshold at several points, ranging from US $1,410 to US $287,250 since 2017. The city never shut off the companies’ water, and bottling continued. And it’s not just in Detroit – the story repeats itself in other major US cities. From a regulatory point of view, there are few requirements and minimal costs for companies using tap water. Some experts have called for a tax on the water bottling industry, which could be put towards the cost of maintaining the water system or to provide financial aid for residents with problems to pay water bills. Meanwhile, Aquafina and Dasani continue to rack up dramatic sales for PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, respectively. Each company cleared US $1 billion in US sales of their bottled tap water brands in 2019.129

from Louisiana to Texas in North America. Industrial expansion around Corpus Christi, Texas includes thirsty petrochemical facilities that process plastic using fracked oil and gas. Fracking has a notoriously large water footprint.130 Just one of the facilities – the huge Exxon-SABIC ethylene cracker – is projected to use around 20–25 million gallons of water per day, more than all the water currently used each day in San Patricio County’s municipal water district, even when the area is prone to drought. The project has faced stiff opposition from local residents, worried about safety, pollution and the environment.131 132

Amongst many other countries, where water resources are already at risk from scarcity and pollution, burgeoning giant petrochemical infrastructure – pipelines, crackers, polyethylene plants, tanker terminals – are poised to make the water crisis much, much worse along the Gulf Coast

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Oil and gas development boom in Texas

Source: The Center for Public Integrity, Review of Corporate Plans (2018) In an effort to fast-track the fossil fuel industry, the Trump administration dismantled and reversed most major climate and environmental policies in the USA over three years in office. The list includes 100 environmental rules and regulations (68 completed and 32 in progress) governing air pollution and emissions, drilling and extraction, infrastructure and planning, animal protection, toxic substances and safety, and water pollution.133 The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who have carried out the bulk of the rollbacks, finalised a new rule to repeal the Clean Water Rule (2015) in December 2019 and changed the way the landmark Clean Water Act (1972) has been applied for half a century in June 2020 to curtail the rights of states, tribes and the public to oppose or block pipelines and other fossil fuel ventures that could pollute waterways across the country.134 Dubbed the ‘Dirty Water Rule’ by environmental organisations such as Earth Justice, Clean Water Action, Surfrider and the River Network the new rule:

• • • • •

Throws away 1,200 science-based studies and reverts back to an old convoluted system. Allows producers to discharge toxic waste into headwaters, streams, rivers and ultimately the ocean. Removes protections for more than half of remaining wetlands and one-fifth of streams that provide drinking water to 117 million Americans. Severely limits ability to regulate or stop pollution from poisoning waterways and watersheds. Adds confusion for states and other permitting agencies and those seeking permits as to how to proceed due to the ambiguity of the new rule.135 136 137 138

The politicisation of science-based policy making threatens our environmental resilience, particularly in the face of climate change. Now more than ever, we require environmental rulemaking anchored in an understanding of ecology, hydrology, and dynamic systems based on the best available science.139

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SOUTH AMERICA Amidst political turmoil, social unrest and alternating economic models in South America, governments ramped up plans to expand oil exploration and production by creating, auctioning, and selling new oil leases to both foreign and domestic oil companies over 2019. Argentina’s new Peronist government hailed a big new shale oil development in Patagonia as a lifeline and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro’s administration touted multi-billiondollar oil rights auctions as transformative. And, smaller South American economies caught the oil bug too. Amid this petroleum bonanza, the result of Brazil’s oil auction offers a cautionary tale – the auction flopped – highlighting the need to think beyond an oil-powered economy. The region’s citizens understand the risks of fossil fuels and lead the world in believing climate change is affecting them. Prolonged droughts in Brazil and Chile, melting glaciers in Patagonia and serious floods in Peru have focused minds on the risks, and residents of smog-choked and car-dependent cities, such as São Paulo, curse the fume-belching vehicles that fill the streets. As a result, promising sites for solar and wind generation abound in Chile’s Atacama Desert and Argentine Patagonia. But while the private sector has seen the opportunity, with rising foreign direct investment, ambitious plans for renewables rarely feature in South America’s government strategy, with the exception of Chile.140 The water-energy connection is important. As energy demand from industrial and domestic uses increases and water availability decreases, the energy industry in water-stressed locations around the world face increased business risks. Hydropower and thermoelectric power, which make up 98% of the world's electricity generation, are also the most water-intensive, which makes them extremely

vulnerable to drought, competition over water resources and other water shortages. Such was the case during Kenya's drought in 2017 which was declared a national disaster and the drought that hit Brazil in 2016, affecting hydroelectric power producers such as the Itaipu Dam, that forced the country to turn to more expensive and more polluting energy plants.141 While agriculture and industry withdraw the majority of the world’s freshwater (70% and 19%, respectively), demand from households is rising precipitously. Domestic water use grew 600% over the past 50 years. To keep pace with growing populations and economies, humanity’s thirst for freshwater has more than doubled since the 1960s and one-quarter of the world now faces extremely high water stress, where more than 80% of the available supply is withdrawn every year. Demand for agricultural water for crops and livestock grew by more than 100% in the last century – while industrial water demand more than tripled – thanks to rising demand for electricity, fuel and waterintensive goods like textiles.142 Today, the WHO reports that half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas by 2025 143 and the UN predicts that global demand for water will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030, unless water use is ‘decoupled’ from economic growth. Without altering current levels of water consumption and pollution, almost half of the world's population will suffer severe water stress by then, damaging the wellbeing of millions of people and forcing governments to spend US $200 billion per year on upstream water supply as demand outstrips cheaper forms of supply.144

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Projected Water Stress by Country 2040

Ratio of withdrawals to supply Low (<10%) Low to medium (10-20%) Medium to high (20-40%) High (40-80%) Extremely high (>80%)

Source: World Resources Institute (2020) Stress levels will continue to increase as demand for water grows and the effects of climate change intensify. Twelve out of the 17 most water-stressed countries are in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), because the region is hot and dry water supply is low to begin with, and India is experiencing worrisome groundwater decline.145 Chile will be one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most water-stressed countries by 2040. In the tenth year of a megadrought covering more than 75% of its territory, citizens are facing shortages and paying ever higher prices for water. The countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main industry, agriculture, is suffering. Animals are dying in droves and once-fertile regions are turning into deserts. Chile has declared agricultural emergency zones in six of its 16 regions.146 In Peru, receding glaciers are exposing metals which contaminate water supplies. Mining industries are contaminating groundwater, waterways and lakes. Droughts are intensifying desertification of agricultural land. Farming conglomerates have extracted over 90% of groundwater to produce asparagus and other vegetables for export, while residents can only access water for a few hours per week. Mining conflicts have stalled operations over concerns that mines contaminate water supplies and crops. According to government data, 25% of the 101 current conflicts in Peruâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s southern mining corridor are related to water access and quality.147 As a result, significant shortfalls in both public infrastructure and household facilities remain. Three million people lack access to safe water and eight million lack access to adequate sanitation. In addition, communities in the remote regions of the

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Amazon and Andes now have no access to piped or treated drinking water or safe human waste disposal.148 The spatial and social dimensions in water footprint assessment are important. Over 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress, and about 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year. One of the most troubling aspects of the global water crisis is that those least able to afford access to water are also the ones paying a disproportionately high percentage of their income for it.

Mismanaged waste kills up to a million people a year in developing countries globally HAMAR TRIBE ETHIOPIA

For example, WaterAid (2016) reported that poor people in low and middle-income countries typically spend 5–25% or more of their income on water to meet their basic needs. Women and girls, ethnic and other minorities, including indigenous peoples, migrants and refugees regularly experience discrimination, inequality and almost no basic human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation in many parts of the world. Almost half of people drinking water from unprotected sources live in Sub-Saharan Africa where the burden of collecting water lies mainly on women and girls, many of whom spend more than 30 minutes on each trip to collect water. Challenges include risks to physical safety, lost time for education and other incomegenerating activities, as well as adverse health outcomes. Though water supply and sanitation, and issues of equality for all people and for specific disadvantaged groups in particular, are recognised through international human rights law and agreements, these have not been enough to bring about the necessary changes. With or without privatisation, weak governance is the root cause of failure of water and sanitation operations, often caused by a lack of financial resources or by failure to prevent corruption.149 Persistent water syndromes show local water governance unable to prevent global damage.150 Despite their admirable intentions, the legally binding UN Convention on the Protection and Use

of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (Water Convention) 1992/2013 151 – to prevent, control and reduce transboundary impact – and the UN Convention on the Law of the NonNavigational Uses of International (Watercourses Convention) 1997/2014 – to help conserve and manage water resources for present and future generations – are legally fragmented, dominated by local and mesoscale solutions, took years to enter into force, and the majority of key countries remain outside their scope. Other non-binding strategies, plans and partnerships, such as the Ramsar Convention Strategic Plan 2016–2024,152 for conservation and sustainable use of wetlands, the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) 1992/2015, the High Level Panel on Water (HLPW) 2016, the UN Water Strategy 2030 153 in support of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Global Water Partnership,154 alone will not effect a transition to global governance. In essence, global water governance appears woefully inadequate to prevent, reduce and control pollution in international watercourses, with a view to avoiding significant transboundary harm. Principles like polluter/user pays and equitable water sharing are key to avoiding perverse incentives that have historically externalised impacts and acknowledging that local actions on water continue to trigger global-scale syndromes is essential toward effective governance.155

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PLASTIC AND COVID-19 To compound the interrelated problem of water and the coronavirus pandemic, mainly via mouth and nose droplet and aerosol transmission, SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID-19) could also be water-borne in natural freshwater water systems and infected faecal matter accidentally entering the natural aquatic environment 156 – with further implications for low sanitation countries.157 Not to waste a crisis, the oil, gas, petrochemical and plastic industry is now exploiting the catastrophic global pandemic to aggressively push their pre-existing corporate agendas, including lobbying governments worldwide to seek direct and indirect support, including bailouts, buyouts, regulatory rollbacks, suspension of environmental law enforcement, exemption from measures designed to protect the health of workers and the public, and criminalisation of environmental protest, among others. Industry groups have seen this crisis as an opportunity to exploit people’s fears around COVID-19 to push their pro-pollution agendas. Greenpeace USA

While some of these lobbying efforts seek legitimate government support to help companies, workers, and communities confront an economic and social emergency, many seek to exploit the crisis to advance their pro-pollution agendas. Among the most active in these lobbying efforts worldwide, nine key oil industry executives met with the US President in an effort to secure additional government intervention on the industry’s behalf.158 Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the converging public health, human rights and economic crisis, oil and gas are among the industries hardest hit by the current economic crisis, with leading companies losing an average of 45% of their value since the start of 2020. Triggered by the coronavirus pandemic crisis, widespread suspended air travel, combined with stay-at-home or lockdown orders and quarantine measures in many countries, has sharply curtailed demand. Shock triggering an oil price war among nations competing for rapidly shrinking market share, global oil and gas prices 159 and petrochemical prices 160 have plummeted to unprecedent lows 161 disrupting the deeply integrated economics of the petrochemical and plastic industries. The knock-on effect of the oil crash has led to a dramatic decrease in the value of plastics, and companies are making tough decisions about whether recycling is still an economically viable option. Meaning many consumer brands, such as beverage companies like Nestlé, PepsiCo and CocaCola, could have difficulty meeting commitments to adopt more sustainable practices and replace all or portions of their products with recycled plastic. As a result, companies could return to producing virgin, or new, plastic – adding to the unsustainable levels of plastic production and mismanaged waste

“

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we were seeing before the pandemic.162 Though industry efforts may succeed in diverting significant public resources to the sector and delaying a clean energy transition, a new report by CIEL considers that they are unlikely to reverse the underlying trends driving their long-term decline or growing investor scepticism about the long-term prospects for fossil fuels in a world that must act urgently to confront the climate crisis.163 The last major bastion of oil demand growth is being eroded and the shock to the global economy of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to all but guarantee that a ‘peak oil moment’ will come a great deal earlier than expected. In the meantime, however, reusable drinking bottles, cups and bags are being shunned, and sales of throwaway bottled water, cups, bags, containers, masks, gloves, bottles of hand sanitiser and antiseptic wipes – made from plastic – are soaring. While there is no denying that personal protective equipment (PPE) has been a lifesaver in the fight against COVID-19, especially for frontline health workers – and have facilitated adherence to socialdistancing rules, by enabling home delivery of basic goods, especially food – pandemic plastic has also become the symbol of global plastic pollution in 2020. Widely circulated images and reports from around the world 164 of plastic sacks of medical waste piling up outside hospitals, and discarded masks and gloves 165 clogging drains and washing into waterways, floating in coastal waters, washing up on beaches and littering the seabed, illustrate yet again the dark side of single-use plastic pollution that already threatens marine life. If we are not careful, this ecological ticking timebomb and short-term thinking during the crisis could threaten to stall and even reverse progress

Photo Credit: Reuters

and lead to an even larger environmental and public-health calamity in the future. Though it will take time to learn exactly how much additional plastic waste has been generated due to the pandemic, the preliminary data is dire. According to the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), which represents recycling bodies in 102 countries, the consumption of single-use plastic may have grown by 250-300% in America since the coronavirus took hold. And global sales of disposable face masks alone are set to skyrocket from an estimated US $800 million in 2019 to US $166 billion in 2020, according to business consulting firm Grand View Research.166 167 In the UK, if every person used one disposable surgical mask each day for a year, this would create over 124,000 tonnes of unrecyclable plastic waste (66,000 tonnes of contaminated waste and 57,000 tonnes of plastic packaging).168 In China, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment estimates that hospitals in Wuhan produced more than 240 tons of waste daily169 at the height of the outbreak, compared with 40 tons during normal times. Based on this data, it is predicted that the US could generate an entire year’s worth of medical waste in just two months because of COVID-19.170 In China, daily production of face masks soared to 116 million 171 in early 2020, 12 times higher than the previous month. Hundreds of tons of discarded masks were being collected daily from public bins alone during the outbreak’s peak, and there is no telling how much more is being discarded in household waste systems around the world. Intensifying the problem even further, many wastemanagement services have not been operating at full capacity, owing to social distancing rules and stay-at-home orders. While hospitals and research groups are racing to roll out new ways to reuse

face masks safely, the ill-equipped trash industry is braced for a potential deluge of contaminated ‘coronavirus waste’. In the UK, fly-tipping 172 – illegal waste disposal – has risen by 300% during the pandemic. And, in some countries, companies that are advancing innovative methods of recycling and reusing waste plastics are reporting reduced amounts of plastic coming through waste streams, 173 which suggests that growing volumes of plastic is ending up in landfills or leaking into the environment.174 In response, more than 20 top experts have issued a stark warning to the UK government over industry attempts to block new laws on plastic pollution. In an open letter, coordinated by the Plastic Health Coalition, scientists, campaigners and politicians have expressed concerns about ill-founded faith of plastic as a weapon against coronavirus.175 And counteracting the plastic industry claims, over 125 health experts signed a statement to assure retailers and consumers that reusables are safe during COVID-19. The health experts – joined by Greenpeace USA and UPSTREAM, both members of the Break Free From Plastic movement – emphasise that disposable products are not inherently safer than reusables and that reusable systems can be utilised safely during the pandemic by employing basic hygiene.176 Unleashing a tidal wave of plastic pollution, the planet is now awash with pandemic plastic. Whatever the cause or origin, the occurrence of COVID-19 has emphasised the need to improve the mutually affective connection between humans and nature. At this point of time, while it is indispensable to control the source of disease, cut off the transmission path, and use drugs and means to control the progress of the disease proactively, human beings should recognise the limits to which they can thrust nature, before it is too late.177

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Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Arcor and Mondelez International AMAZON RIVER

PLASTIC WASTE Immeasurable quantities of long-term plastic debris and particles litter the world’s earth and oceans 178 179 – from the Arctic 180 to the equator to the Antarctic 181 – plastic is now in the air we breathe,182 the water we drink,183 the clothes we wear 184 and the food we eat.185 Since we began our love affair with this now ubiquitous material, a staggering 91% of all plastic waste ever discarded (75% of all plastic ever produced) has either been incinerated, openly burnt or ended up in landfills, open dumps, the oceans and the natural environment. Only 9% has been recycled.186

9% RECYCLED 12% INCINERATED 79% IN DUMPS,

At least 8–12 million tonnes of mismanaged plastic waste ends up in the oceans every year. The vast majority originates from the land – from wind, wastewaters, waterways and coasts.187 This includes both macroplastic (>5mm) and microplastic (<5mm) pollution.

Source: UNEP (2018)

The primary source of macroplastic pollution, namely single-use products and packaging,188 stems mainly from mismanaged municipal waste (open dumps and inadequate landfills), followed by littering, abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear (often known as ‘ghost gear), and other marine activities. Microplastic sources are varied and include both primary microplastics, such as tyre dust from vehicles, plastic pellets, microbeads from personal care products, and microfibres from synthetic textiles, as well as secondary microplastics derived from the fragmentation of larger, macroplastic items already in the environment.189 190 191 192

AND LANDFILLS OR THE ENVIRONMENT

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Estimated quantities of plastic in major marine areas, total and by size, in billion pieces.

Estimated Quantities of Plastic in Global Marine areas (2017) North Pacific 1,990 billion pieces

Mediterranean Sea North Atlantic 930 billion pieces 247 billion pieces 532

324

146

0.4

Indian Ocean 1,300 billion pieces

South Pacific 491 billion pieces 176

269

Size of plastic particles according to study authors

455

3 749

South Atlantic 297 billion pieces 106

167

0.5

Small microplastics 0.33-1.00mm

688

Large microplastics 1.01-4.75mm

Mesoplastic 4.76-200mm

1,160

132

Macroplastic >200mm

Source: Plastic Atlas (2019) / Lebreton (2017) In the marine environment, new research estimates that the amount of ocean microplastic pollution has been vastly underestimated, and that there are at least double the number of particles than previously thought – an increase from between 5 trillion and 50 trillion particles to 12 trillion to 125 trillion particles. With concentrations of 3,700 particles per cubic metre or more – that’s far more than the number of zooplankton you would expect to find.193

Plastics in the Marine Environment (2016)

Source: Eunomia (2017)

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MULTIPLE RISKS FOR THE ENVIONMENT, SOCIETY AND THE ECONOMY Environmental Risks Adding millions of tonnes of plastic into the environment will have severe impacts on habitats, wildlife biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. Though it has not been established if the damage to the ocean is irreversible or not, a precautionary principle is imperative. Ocean: From tiny corals to majestic whales, over 90% of the damage caused to marine wildlife is due to man-made plastics. More than 800 marine species, including sea mammals, fish, seabirds and marine reptiles – and even crustaceans and filter feeders such as crabs, shrimps and zooplankton – are already known to be affected by marine plastic pollution. That includes all sea turtle species,194 more than 40% of cetacean species, and 44% of marine bird species.195 Through ingestion or entanglement, macroplastics can cause death by drowning, injury, and sublethal impacts such as malnutrition, infection and habitat degradation. Globally, around 17% are listed by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as ‘threatened’ or ‘critically endangered’, like the Hawaiian monk seal and loggerhead turtle.196 There is no lack of images illustrating the severity of plastic pollution: rivers and canals filled with plastic garbage, beaches strewn with plastic bottles, seals entangled in pieces of plastic, and dead birds and whales whose stomachs are filled with plastic waste. Extensively documented by Greenpeace, WWF, National Geographic, scientists and filmmakers, such as the BBC’s Blue Planet II, A Plastic Ocean and Chris Jordan’s Albatross, to name just a few, opened our eyes to the damage we are doing to the oceans and the creatures that live in them and inspired wide-reaching change. The uptake and trophic transfer of microplastics has also been observed in aquatic food webs,197 and laboratory studies have demonstrated impacts on growth, health, fertility, survival, and feeding in a range of invertebrate and fish species.198 Potential impacts on ocean carbon sequestration have also been discovered.199 And other studies show that invasive

species and diseases are being carried on plastic debris to new locations where they can cause harm to local populations.200

Freshwater: As the arteries of the planetary

ecosystem, plastic pollution in freshwater lakes, rivers and streams, has been on the research back burner. Though two sides of the same coin, more than 98% of articles have focused on ocean environments, while less than 2% have dealt with freshwater species.201 As evidenced by Sherri Mason’s research on plastic microbeads in personal care products in the Great Lakes,202 more emphasis on freshwater systems is essential. Thus far, data from freshwater systems, indicate that these systems are important hotspots of plastic pollution, holding some of the highest concentrations of microplastics recorded in either water or sediments across the globe. However, there are several ecosystems that remain largely unexplored. In particular, groundwater and cryospheric (e.g. sea ice, glaciers and frozen ground) ecosystems, as well as riparian areas (land adjacent to streams, river, lakes and wetlands e.g. riverbanks or lake shorelines), have received relatively limited attention. Thus, the total mass and flow of plastics from terrestrial sources, through hydrological networks to marine systems, is likely to be much higher than previous estimates. And within the cryosphere, increasing melt rates (e.g. glaciers) may lead to a significant release of plastics to other ecosystems. We are only starting to understand the implications of flows of plastics through hydrological networks across a range of ecosystems.203

Atmosphere Marine

Terrestrial Freshwater Riparian

Ground Water

Source: Windsor, F. M. et al. (2019)

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Cryosphere

Microplastics trigger combined physical or chemical-like effects PLASTIC LITTER MICROPLASTIC NANOPLASTIC

Soil physico-chemistry

5000μm

Terrestrial food webs

150μm

Growth reduction

0.1μm

Lethal toxicity

0.05μm

General cytotoxicity

Source: de Souza Machado et al (2017)

Terrestrial: Likewise, there is a current deficit

of information on plastic pollution in terrestrial ecosystems compared to marine environments. There is very little data about the sources, effects and transfer of macro and microplastics (including nanoplastics less than 0.1µ micron) in terrestrial animals and organisms. This includes wild animals, domestic livestock, insects such as bees and other organisms such as earthworms. Emerging concerns suggest that terrestrial microplastic pollution may be four to 23 times higher than marine microplastic pollution, depending on the

environment.204 Terrestrial, freshwater and marine food-webs are all at risk, with potential implications for individuals, populations and ecosystems, as well as human health. Further research is required to better understand the interaction between organisms and plastic transport across habitats and ecosystems. Addressing this deficit is a priority for improving understanding of flow through major food-webs across the Earth to developing accurate risk assessments and improving understanding of how, where, and through which pathways, plastics threaten the global biota.205

Human Health Risks

produce the main feedstocks for plastic have known human health impacts, including cancer, neurotoxicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, impairment of the immune system, and more. These toxins have direct and documented impacts on skin, eyes, and other sensory organs, the respiratory, nervous, and gastrointestinal systems, liver, and brain.

At every stage of its lifecycle, plastic poses distinct risks to human health, arising from both exposure to plastic particles themselves and associated chemicals. These arise during raw material extraction, refining and production, consumer use, plastic waste management, plastic in the environment and our food and water. Microplastic particles, such as fragments and fibres, can enter the body through contact, ingestion, or inhalation, and may be contributing to a wide range of health impacts as a result of their small size and ability to penetrate tissues and cells, and as a consequence of the complex symbiotic burdens of the chemicals they carry. Microfibres and other plastic microparticles are increasingly being documented in human tissues.206

Extraction and Transport: The extraction of oil

Refining and Production: Transforming fossil

and gas, particularly the use of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, releases an array of toxic substances into the air and water, often in significant volumes. Over 170 fracking chemicals that are used to

fuel into virgin plastic resins and additives releases carcinogenic and other highly toxic substances into the air. For example, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, styrene and propylene, and persistent bio-accumulative and toxic pollutants (PBTs) such as lead and mercury. Documented effects of exposure to these substances include impairment of the nervous system, reproductive and developmental problems, cancer, leukaemia, and genetic impacts like low birth weight. Industry workers and communities neighbouring refining facilities are at greatest risk and face both chronic exposures and acute exposures due to uncontrolled releases.

DIRECT CONTACT .......... Extraction and Transport .......... Refining and Production .......... .......... Consumer Use .......... Waste Management

Freshwater and Oceans Air .......... Farmland

Emissions: include benzene, volatile organic compounds, and 170+ toxic chemicals in fracking fluid Possible health effects: affect the immune system, sensory organs, liver and kidney; cancers, neuro-, reproductive, and developmental toxicity Emissions: include benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and styrene Possible health effects: cancers, neurotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, low birthweight, eye and skin irritation Emissions: include heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, carcinogens, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, microplastics Possible health effects: affect renal, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurological, reproductive, and respiratory systems; cancers, diabetes, and developmental toxicity Emissions: include heavy metals, dioxins and furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, toxic recycling Possible health effects: cancers, neurological damages, damages to immune, reproductive, nervous, and endocrine systems

ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURE Emissions: microplastics (e.g. tyre dust, textile fibers) and toxic additives, including persistent organic pollutants, endocrinedisrupting chemicals, carcinogens, heavy metals Possible health effects: affect cardiovascular, renal, gastrointest nal, neurological, reproductive, and respiratory systems; cancers, diabetes, neuro-, reproductive, and developmental toxicity Inhalation Ingestion Skin contact

Microplastics ..........

Source: CIEL, Plastic & Health (2019)

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Chemicals ..........

From the air we breathe to the water we drink and the food we eat BELEM, AMAZON BRAZIL

Consumer Use: Use of plastic products leads to

ingestion and/or inhalation of large amounts of both microplastic particles and hundreds of toxic substances with carcinogenic, developmental, or endocrine disrupting impacts. Microplastics entering the human body via direct exposures through contact, ingestion, or inhalation are linked to an array of negative health impacts including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic inflammation, autoimmune conditions, neurodegenerative diseases, and strokes. Chemical additives migrating from plastic products, food and drink packaging and other non-food-contact materials can be harmful even at very low doses, especially after undergoing wear and tear, such as through dishwashing, microwaving, or exposure to sunlight. Most plastic additives are not bound to the polymer matrix and can easily leach into disposal method in middle-income countries and open dumping and burning are common in lowincome countries. In stark contrast to high-income countries, where only 2% of waste is dumped, about 93% of waste is burned or dumped in roads, open land, or waterways in low-income countries. For example, in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa the majority of waste (75% and 69% respectively) is disposed of in open dumps and in Latin America (including the Caribbean) about 68% is disposed of in some form of landfill. air, water, food, or body tissues. Of the chemical additives, polybrominated flame retardants (BFRs), bisphenol A (BPA), phthalate plasticisers and antimicrobial agents are of particular concern. For example, BFRs, added to a wide variety of products to make them less flammable, are commonly used in plastics, textiles and electrical/electronic equipment. Bisphenol A

(BPA), found in a wide range of products from water bottles, food containers, metal can liners, hygiene products and baby bottles, can cause fertility problems, possibly miscarriage, and behavioural issues in children. Though BPA-free plastics are considered to be the safest plastic option in terms of potential impact on human health, recent results show that common BPA replacements â&#x20AC;&#x201C; BPS, BPF, BPAF and diphenyl sulphone â&#x20AC;&#x201C; can interfere with the very earliest part of making eggs and sperm.207 And the di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) can interfere with cell division in several ways, causing defects during egg and sperm formation and early embryonic development.208

Plastic Waste (Mis)management: All current

waste management systems result in the release of toxic substances from plastic into the environment (air, water and soil). According to the World Bank, globally around 37% of waste is disposed of in some form of landfill (8% of which is disposed of in sanitary landfills with gas collection systems), 33% ends up in open dumps and 11% is burned in incinerators. Sanitary landfills and incinerators are most prominent in high-income countries, unsanitary landfills are the most common disposal method in middle-income countries and open dumping and burning are common in low-income countries. In stark contrast to high-income countries, where only 2% of waste is dumped, about 93% of waste is burned or dumped in roads, open land, or waterways in low-income countries. For example, in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa the majority of waste (75% and 69% respectively) is disposed of in open dumps and in Latin America (including the Caribbean) about 68% is disposed of in some form of landfill.209

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Landfills

with a whole host of pollutants such as mercury, lead, cadmium, dioxins, furans, flame retardants, acid gases, particulate matter and many other toxic substances into the air, water, and soil. Exposure to these pollutants has been linked to an increase in the risk of asthma, heart disease, reproductive health complications, respiratory infections, cancer, and neurological damage, as well as damage to the central nervous system. All these technologies lead to direct and indirect exposure to toxic substances for workers and nearby communities, through inhalation of contaminated air, direct contact with contaminated soil or water, and ingestion of food grown in an environment polluted with these substances. Toxins from emissions, fly ash – classified as hazardous waste – and slag can travel long distances and deposit in soil and water, eventually entering human bodies after accumulating in the tissues of plants and animals. In some countries, newer incinerators apply air pollution control technologies, including fabric filters, electrostatic precipitators, and scrubbers. These filters do not prevent hazardous emissions, such as ultra-fine particles that are unregulated and particularly harmful to health, from escaping into the air. The pollutants that are captured by filters still pose an environmental problem since they have to be disposed of in landfills.

As the easiest and cheapest waste disposal method, burial of waste in the ground is the oldest form of waste management. However, landfilling plastic is acknowledged to have significant drawbacks. Huge landfills are overflowing and running out of space, necessitating additional landfill sites. Many landfills, which are not managed or covered effectively, can be just as likely to leak plastic into the environment as open dumps. Although macroplastics are unlikely to breach landfill liners, microplastics can pass through even the most modern liners into leachate to contaminate soil, groundwater and waterways. The long-term stability of landfill liners is unknown, but they are unlikely to fully function beyond 100 or 200 years.210 At the same time, they generate methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas. Even with capture systems, around 10-65% of methane can escape,211 depending on how well the landfill is engineered and managed.

Incineration Other plastic waste management technologies, including incineration, gasification, and pyrolysis – also known as Waste-to-Energy and Plastic-to-Fuel – release CO2 and other greenhouse gases, along

NOx

MIXED WASTE

VOCs

Ozone PM Brain Neurological System

Respiratory System

Heart Liver

PAH

INCINERATION

Dioxins Furans PCBs

CO2

Stomach Reproductive System

Methane

Aldehydes

Source: CIEL, Plastic & Health (2019)

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Open Burning and Open Dumps Plastic waste is creating a growing public health emergency in many towns and cities around the world, with the poorest and most vulnerable people most at risk. Discarded plastic blocks waterways and drains, causes flooding, which provides a breeding ground for disease-carrying flies, mosquitos and vermin and increases outbreaks of cholera, diarrhoeal diseases, typhoid, tuberculosis, dengue, rabies and malaria. Affected by a buildup of uncollected waste, open burning is the only practicable means of disposal. Some of the most harmful health risks, such as heart disease and cancer, respiratory ailments, skin and eye diseases, nausea and headaches and damage to the reproductive and nervous systems, result from open burning. Ambient air pollution is responsible for as many as 3.7 million deaths per year and open burning is believed to be a significant contributor. Yet, standard assessments do not consider emissions from open burning of waste.212 The negative impacts on human health and the wider environment make open burning an entirely unacceptable disposal option. In many places lacking formal waste collection and management systems, informal waste pickers play a vital role in collecting, sorting and recycling municipal waste, especially in low and middle-income countries. Either by collecting waste directly from households and commercial

organisations or by picking materials directly from streets, waterways, landfills and open dumps, they provide invaluable economic, social and environmental benefits. Waste pickers divert and recover tonnes of waste materials from landfills and open dumps, provide reusable materials to other enterprises – which lessens demand for raw materials, conserves natural resources and reduces environmental pollution – improving public health and sanitation and contributing to local economies. All at little or no cost to local municipalities. In many cities in developing countries, waste pickers supply the only form of waste collection. Despite their invaluable contribution, more than 15 million people continue to live at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, struggling just to survive. Some rummage for basic necessities, others scrape a living on the streets and on open dumps working for waste brokers, who in turn sell to manufacturers, and some work in recycling transfer stations owned by businesses, cooperatives or associations. However, their labour-intensive work is low paid, unregulated, unprotected, unsecured and excluded from most waste management frameworks. Trapped in a cycle of poverty, waste pickers are some of the poorest and most vulnerable demographic – typically women, children, the elderly, the unemployed, or migrants – at high exposure and risk to accidents, infection and chronic diseases from physical, chemical, mechanical, biological, ergonomic and social factors.

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Annual Income of Informal Workers (2010) Ratio of Formal to Informal Workers

Annual Income of Informal Workers (2010) Formal Sector

Informal Sector

Average income of workers in the informal sector (euros per year)

CAIRO Egypt CLUJ Romania LIMA Peru LUSAKA Zambia QUEZON CITY Philippines

€ 2,721 :

€ 2,070 :

€ 1,767 :

€ 586 :

€ 1,667

Waste Quantities in Formal and Informal Sectors (2010) Waste Quantities in Formal and Informal Sectors (2010) 433,000 tonnes

979,400 tonnes

9,400 tonnes

Formal Sector

529,400 tonnes

117,000 tonnes 8,900 tonnes

CAIRO Egypt

14,600 tonnes

CLUJ Romania

Accidents caused by sharp items such as broken glass and needles, heavy equipment, trucks, fires, explosions, dump subsidence or landslides, can lead to injury or death. Infections are caused by direct contact with waste and infected wounds, infected dust, bites from wild animals, and enteric infections transmitted by rats and insects feeding on waste or contaminated food and water. Chronic diseases include a wide range of diseases as discussed earlier from asthma to emphysema, cancer to cardiovascular disorders, dysentery to diabetes, hepatitis to HIV and AIDS, as well as chronic musculoskeletal and mental health disorders, and hearing loss. Without access to health insurance, health care, social services or education, waste pickers are also subject to exploitation by middlemen, social stigma and harassment by authorities.

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12,000 tonnes

LIMA Peru

Informal Sector

15,600 141,800 tonnes tonnes

5,400 tonnes

LUSAKA Zambia

PUNE India

QUEZON CITY Philippines

As RAW Foundation witnessed on its last research expedition from Cairo to Cape Town in Africa – from Garbage City in Cairo, Egypt to Koshe Dump in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Oudtshoorn Dump in South Africa – the shocking truth conveyed the sheer quantity of scale. The amount of waste was staggering and signified our undeniably gluttonous global society. Living on mountains of festering rubbish, families fashioned makeshift homes from rubbish, breathed in and ate rubbish, and even died over rubbish. Dump trucks roared, dark plumes of putrid smoke filled the air and violence flared as pickers fought for the most valuable hauls. The stench of decaying detritus, acrid burning plastic and foul black water was overwhelming. It was hell on earth. Dumps are dangerous.

It is estimated that between 400,000 to 1 million people die each year in low and middleincome countries because of diseases related to mismanaged waste. At the upper end, one person dies every 30 seconds from diseases caused by mismanaged waste. This is having a direct impact on over half of the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which simply won’t be met without tackling the crisis. Until these impacts are better understood, a precautionary principle should be adopted to limit the production and use of these persistent contaminants. Uncertainties, knowledge gaps and extreme lack of transparency, undermine the full assessment of health impacts, and prevent consumers, communities, and regulators from making informed decisions.213 These waste picker warriors account for 15% to 20% of waste collection globally. They are uniquely skilled at identifying and collecting valuable waste and often operate in places where improved waste collection and recycling rates are needed most. They fill the knowledge and infrastructure gaps on the front line, keep waste out of the environment and push us towards a more circular economy. Now, the coronavirus pandemic environment is putting their lives and livelihoods at even higher risk. As instability rises with increased uncertainty, they are facing deep and life-altering challenges amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.214 In some regions they must continue to work, often without the proper protective equipment, jeopardizing their health. In other places, recycling programmes are temporarily shut down for sanitation purposes and workers are left unemployed for the duration of the shutdown without reliable income outside of potential government assistance.215

Plastic in the Environment: Once plastic reaches the environment (in the form of macro or microplastics) it fragments over time into smaller particles – down to the molecular level – to contaminate entire ecosystems (air, water, soil and livings things). Weathering, such as wave action, sunlight, or other physical stress, breaks the plastic into smaller pieces. As it does so, these particles accumulate through food chains and release toxic additives – or concentrate additional toxic chemicals in water – making them bioavailable again for direct or indirect human exposure. Central to food production and safety, plastic is widespread in agricultural soils. Sources include agricultural polyethylene bale sheets (from weathering), littering, biosolids and sewage sludge (from wastewater treatment plants), and grey water (from washing clothes made with synthetic fibres). Sewage entering municipal treatment systems is high in microfibers from textiles, microparticles from personal care products, and microplastics from other consumer products. Being so small, they pass through sewage filters into our waterways and into our oceans. During heavy rain, combined sewage systems can’t cope with the extra volumes of water and have to open the floodgates, into our rivers and seas. These Combined Sewage Overflows (CSOs) discharge everything that’s been flushed down the toilet – such as wet wipes made of plastic, tampons and pads – to bypass sewage filters and head for the open ocean.216 As much as between 80% to 90% of microplastics can remain in residual sewage sludge, which is often used as a field fertilizer, resulting in several thousand metric tonnes of microplastics being deposited on agricultural soils each year.217

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

Socioeconomic Risks The current methods of mishandling plastic waste have significant costs that are not reflected in markets, such as loss of land value due to proximity to plastic pollution and reduced quality of life and income, especially for coastal and ocean communities. To date, few studies have addressed the socioeconomic costs associated with marine plastic. One study suggests a loss of US $1.5 trillion per year from the ocean due to the reduction in seafood, genetic resources, oxygen, clean water, cultural value, and the reduced ability to regulate climate.218 Another estimates the social and environmental impacts of marine plastic even higher, at US $2.2 trillion per year.219 Although these specific estimates are contested, the socioeconomic risks of a polluted ocean are clearly significant. To date, there are no estimates on the full environmental, social and economic cost of plastic pollution across all environments. Expenses are also incurred through increased research and development relating to water treatment methods, damages to equipment and blockages of infrastructure. In particular, wet wipes have been shown to cause problems – blocking sewage infrastructure and generating private and public effects.220 The net costs of plastics to the water industry are, however, difficult to calculate as removal and blockages occur alongside other problematic items (e.g. fat, grease and organic pollutants). And, microplastic leakage from land-based sources into municipal drinking water is not yet fully understood, which calls for further assessment of the potential impacts on human health 221 and the potential long-term socioeconomic consequences and costs.

Economic Risks There are direct economic and physical risks from marine plastic pollution to businesses that rely on a clean ocean. Though the total economic impact is still emerging, UNEP estimates the cost of this pollution to shipping, fisheries, tourism and clean up operators to be US $13 billion, adding that this was likely to be an underestimation.222 Indirect risks stem from the response to plastic pollution from regulators, investors, employees and the general public. With an increasing public backlash, businesses face significant supply chain disruptions, reduced demand for plastic-intensive products, and reputational risk from brand association with plastic pollution.223

Shipping: The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) estimates that commercial shipping vessels lose US $297 million a year from physical damage

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to ships in that region alone. Due to collisions with plastic objects, entanglement of floating objects with propeller blades, and clogging of water intakes for engine cooling systems, which could endanger human lives.224

Fisheries: Dwindling fishing assets include reduced fish catches from declining fish stocks, reduced demand over concerns for sea life or safe seafood and damage to fishing boats and equipment. Plastic debris, including abandoned fishing gear, can cause collision and maintenance damage, clog boat engines leading to disruption and delays caused by fishing nets filling up with plastic rather than fish. Costs from the interruption of business due to plastic pollution in the European Union have been estimated at €61.7 million per year.225

Tourism: Plastic pollution can reduce income and increase costs in the tourism industry. For example, plastic pollution has led to reduced tourist numbers in Hawaii, the Maldives and Korea. Cleanup costs impose additional costs for governments and municipalities. The French city of Nice for instance, spends €2 million each year to keep municipal beaches clean.226 The tourism sector’s consumption of key resources – energy, water, land and materials (such as fossil fuels, minerals, metals and biomass) – has grown commensurately with its generation of solid waste, sewage, loss of biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emissions. In a business-as-usual scenario, tourism would generate an increase of 154% in energy consumption, 131% in greenhouse gas emissions, 152% in water consumption and 251% in solid waste disposal, including plastic by 2050.227 Although we know most mismanaged macroplastic plastic waste stems from the continents of Asia (including China, India and Japan) (33%), followed by South America (including Central America and Caribbean) (22%) and Africa (21%) – and that most mismanaged microplastic plastic waste stems from Asia (including China, India and Japan) (44%), followed by Africa (8%) and South America (including Central America and Caribbean) (7%).228 But whose mismanaged waste is it really, and who is ultimately responsible for it? Thanks to Ocean Cleanup, we now have a clearer real-time understanding of the global geography of mismanaged plastic waste generation and leakage into the environment from rivers. Ocean CleanUp estimate that over 1,000 rivers are accountable for 80% of global annual plastic emissions, with small urban rivers amongst the most polluting. The remaining 20% of plastic emissions are distributed over 30,000 rivers, represented by small blue dots.

Global Plastic Waste Produced and Mismanaged (2015)

Source: UNEP GRID Arendal (2018) 229

River Inputs of Plastic into the Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Oceans

Source: Ocean CleanUp (2020) 230

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Until January 2018, much of the developed world’s (predominantly the G7 nations) hard-to-recycle waste was shipped to China. Now that is no longer an option. Shortly after the Basel Plastic Amendment – which effectively bans the vast majority of plastic imports and creates a moment of reckoning for international recycling markets – was agreed in 2019, and due to increasing environmental and human health impacts, many other importing countries began to restrict or ban plastic imports. Both Thailand and Malaysia announced bans on imports of plastic scrap by 2021; India and Vietnam followed suit with their own plastic import bans

and Indonesia restricted imports of non-recyclable waste. Also cracking down on contaminated foreign waste imports, these countries are sending them back to where they came from. In 2019, the Philippines succeeded in sending mislabelled waste that had been dumped there six years earlier, back to Canada. The same month, Malaysia announced it would ship back around 50 containers to countries like the USA and UK, Indonesia announced it would return 49 containers to the USA, Australia, France, Germany and Hong Kong because their contents violated Basel Convention laws on the import of hazardous and toxic waste, and Cambodia declared

Plastic Waste Export Destinations (2018)

Top 5 Exporting & Importing Countries (2018)

Total plastic waste exports in tonne

In percent

EXPORTERS

SEVEN LARGEST DESTINATIONS Malaysia 102,088 Turkey 80,247

UK 429,711 tonnes

Indonesia 71,929 Taiwan 50,044 Netherlands 49,414 Hong Kong* 39,784 Poland 36,204

16.2

USA

15.3

Japan

12.7

Germany United Kingdom

6.9

Belgium

Malaysia 200,022 Canada** 123,579 USA 787,631 tonnes

10.7

Malaysia

5.5

Thailand

Hong Kong* 115,310

5.2

Vietnam

Thailand 101,632 Taiwan 50,685 * Figures for Hong Kong are high because it is a transshipment point for global waste ** Mainly to nearby processing facilities across the border in Canada

Source: Plastic Atlas / Greenpeace (2019)

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IMPORTERS

India 121,907

Vietnam 74,496

9.5

4.7 4.2

Hong Kong* USA

* Figures for Hong Kong are high because it is a transshipment point for global waste

it was ‘not a dustbin’ for foreign waste and would send back 1,600 tonnes of waste. Though the Basel Plastic Amendment will help many low to middle-income countries without infrastructure or resource availability for waste management, these countries will continue to struggle without significant government or business waste management investment from middle to high-income countries. Without such investment, low to middle-income countries may be tempted to continue receiving more legal or illegal exports to generate income, which in turn will detriment domestic waste management capacity, have serious repercussions on the local environment and people, and in turn global mismanaged waste leakage. Left to face mounting piles of post-consumer plastic and a collapsing global recycling market, exporting countries have resorted to burning or landfilling recyclables. Among the top exporting countries, municipalities in the USA are incinerating or landfilling recyclable materials they cannot stockpile. And in the UK, mixed plastics are being sent to incinerators or still being sent to alternative importing countries 231 such as Turkey.232 According to the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment Progress Report 2019, of the world’s largest Fast-moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and PepsiCo collectively produce at least 7 million tons of plastic every year, with Coca-Cola alone producing

3 million tons. The volume of plastic production from these corporations is significant. Although progress has been made, the report identified that an increase in the ambition to go ‘beyond recycling’ will be required to address plastic waste and pollution at source. To eliminate plastic waste and pollution, efforts on recycling need to be matched by a similar investment and ambition level across the full range of solutions, including elimination and reuse. It is crucial that sufficient ambition and investment are put behind reuse efforts in order to move towards deployment at scale.233 Even though many of the world’s largest plastic polluting companies may have disclosed how much they produce and have made commitments to reduce the impact of their products by promising to make them ‘100% recyclable’, making a product recyclable does not mean it will actually be recycled. Their commitments to confront plastic pollution, which overwhelmingly focus on increasing recycled or recyclable content, promoting recyclability or technological recycling solutions and working with non-profits to better collect their waste, are not an adequate response to either the climate or plastics crisis. To date, none of the major FMCG companies have made a commitment to reduce the total volume or number of units of the single-use packaging they sell, or to significantly invest in clean reuse and refill delivery systems, and only a handful of companies have even disclosed their plastic footprint.

BUSINESS-AS-USUAL A new first-of-its-kind system-wide analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts and SystemIQ finds that without immediate and sustained action, the annual flow of plastic into the ocean could nearly triple by 2040. If no action is taken to address the projected growth in plastic production and consumption, the amount of plastic entering the ocean each year is likely to grow from 11 million metric tons to 29 million metric tons over the next 20 years, equivalent to nearly 50 kg (110 lb) of plastic on each metre of coastline worldwide. Because plastic remains in the ocean for hundreds of years and may never truly biodegrade, the cumulative amount of plastic in the ocean could reach 600 million tons by 2040 – equivalent in weight to more than 3 million blue whales.234 Although progress has been made in addressing the global plastic challenge, the report finds that current commitments by government and industry will reduce the amount of plastic flowing into the ocean by only 7% by 2040. And without meaningful change, about 4 billion people worldwide are likely to be without organised waste collection services by 2040, contributing significantly to the projected amount of ocean plastic pollution; closing this gap

Source: Pew Charitable Trusts and Systemiq (2020)

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would require connecting more than 500,000 people to collection services per day until 2040. In addition, uncollected macroplastic waste will triple by 2040 (from 47 million metric tons (22% of total plastic waste) to 143 million metric tons (34% of total plastic waste) per year) – with the vast majority in low to middle-income countries – with profound implications for communities and ecosystems. The amount of macroplastic waste being deposited in dumpsites or unsanitary landfills per year will likely double by 2040 (from 49 million metric tons to 100 million metric tons per year). And, open burning of plastic waste would release over double the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) from 1 gigaton of equivalent carbon dioxide (GtCO2e) to 2.1 GtCO2e of GHGs, under a Business-as-Usual Scenario. And mismanaged microplastics could grow from 4.4 million metric tons to 10 million metric tons by 2040.

Fast Facts: Breaking the Plastic Wave in numbers (2020)

Source: Pew Charitable Trusts and Systemiq, Breaking the Plastic Wave (2020) This presents significant health risk to communities – with a three-fold growth in open burning of plastics, increasing the release of persistent toxic chemicals, and a 2.4-fold growth in primary microplastic leakage to the ocean. Not only are we destroying nature at an unprecedented rate, threatening the survival of a million species – and our own future, too 235 236 – it makes absolutely no sense economically. Exceeding the industry’s profit pool, approximately US $80 –120 billion is lost to the world economy every year – purely because 95% of all single-use plastic is thrown away every year.237 If current consumption patterns and waste management trends continue, it is more than probable that there will be about 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste in landfills and the natural environment by 2025 238 and that the oceans will contain more plastic (by weight) than fish by 2050 239 – which will inevitably continue to outpace any waste management systems put in place.240 A layer of plastiglomerate, forming an anthropogenic marker as a permanent geological record will forever mark humanity’s impact on the world.241

Untitled, Wax, Rubber Gloves, Plastic Rock, Plastic Lemon, Beached Wood Sticks. Reproduction 5x4 Transparency from original art work.

As far back as 1989, artist Andy Hughes discovered a most unusual material, it felt and looked like ‘plastic rock’. He photographed this material and made artworks that were integrated in a number of his early photographic works. These works formed part of his masters degree graduating exhibition in 1991 at the Gulbenkian Gallery, Royal College of Art, London.

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SYSTEM CHANGE

There’s no single solution to ocean plastic pollution, but through rapid and concerted action we can break the plastic wave... we can invest in a future of reduced waste, better health outcomes, greater job creation, and a cleaner and more resilient environment for both people and nature. Tom Dillon, Pew Charitable Trust Vice President for Environment (2020)

“

Source: Pew Charitable Trusts and Systemiq, Breaking the Plastic Wave (2020)

The Breaking the Plastic Wave Report identifies eight measures that together could reduce by 2040 about 80% of the plastic pollution that flows into the ocean annually, using technology and solutions already available today. Among them are reducing growth in plastic production and consumption, substituting some plastics with alternatives such as paper and compostable materials, designing products and packaging for reuse and recycling, expanding waste collection rates in low and middle-income countries, increasing recycling and reducing plastic waste exports. In addition to improving ocean health, adopting the system changes outlined in the report could generate savings of US $70 billion for governments by 2040, relative to businessas-usual; reduce projected annual plastic-related greenhouse gas emissions by 25%; and create 700,000 jobs.

Fully eliminating the flow of ocean plastic pollution will require dramatically increasing innovation and investment, with significant technological advances, new business models, and a greater emphasis on research and development. Although the present value of global investments in the plastic industry can be reduced from US $2.5 trillion to US $1.2 trillion between 2021 and 2040, the system change would require a substantial shift of investment away from virgin plastic.

While the system change scenario could reduce annual ocean plastic pollution rates by more than 80%, it will take unprecedented levels of action and will still leave more than 5 million metric tons leaking into the ocean each year in 2040.

The report leaves no viable excuse on the table. We already have all the solutions required to stem plastic flows by more than 80% – all we need now is government and the fossil-fuel-plastic industry’s resolve to do so.

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While the scope of the report excluded medical waste, hazardous waste, electronics, textiles, furnishings, agricultural waste, transportation, construction, and other industrial waste, (as these do not typically enter municipal solid waste), and nanoplastics (due to data limitations), their results indicate that the plastic crisis might be solvable in one generation.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CONSUMERS It has now become virtually impossible to make any purchase, large or small, without coming home with a pile of plastic packaging that will end up in the bin. Leaving many people feeling overwhelmed, disconnected and helpless within the current consumerist system, as consumers continue to be blamed for the waste problem. But a growing movement of grassroots and environmental organisations around the world have started coming together to expose and confront the oil and gas, petrochemical and plastics industries to show where the fault truly lies â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with the global industries that produce and use most of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plastics. For example, WWF, founded in 1961, works for wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. Greenpeace, founded in 1971, uses peaceful, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and develop solutions for a green and peaceful future. Amazon Watch, founded in 1996, campaigns for human rights and corporate accountability to protect Indigenous peoples in the Amazon and preserve the Amazon's unique ecological systems. The

Story of Stuff, founded in 2007, works to hold polluters accountable and inspire and encourage civic engagement. The Plastic Pollution Coalition (PPC), founded in 2009, is a growing global alliance of organisations, businesses, and thought leaders working toward a world free of plastic pollution. Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), launched in 2016, is a growing global movement working to put an end to plastic pollution by demanding massive reductions in the production and use of fossil-fuelbased plastics. In the UK, organisations like RAW Foundation, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), City to Sea, A Plastic Planet and Plastic Oceans UK have been exposing how plastic pollution is a systemic problem that needs to be tackled at source. Supported by scientists and world-renowned academic institutions such as Plymouth University and the University of Exeter, these groups are standing up to the plastics industry and are calling for transparency, accountability and action. First, they put pressure on corporations to massively reduce the production and use of singleuse plastics. Second, they unmask the industry narrative around plastics, to reveal the truth. Third, they continue to build and strengthen the plasticfree movement.

AMAZON RIVER

The Ten Biggest Brand Sources (2019) Results of 484 ‘brand audits’ (garbage counts) In pieces of plastic waste and number of countries in which they were found

11,732

in 37 countries

4,846 in 31 countries

3,362

in 28 countries

3,328

in 21 countries

2,239

in 17 countries

1,160

in 18 countries

1,090

in 17 countries

1,083

in 23 countries

642

in 18 countries

543

in 20 countries

Source: Plastic Atlas / BFFP (2019) In addition, BFFP promotes zero waste cities, especially in Asia. By putting a spotlight on the problematic and unnecessary plastics being churned out by companies, global and regional waste audits have found plastic packaging from large FMCGs such as Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, CocaCola and Mondelez to be the most frequently identified branded plastic pollution collected worldwide.242 243 244 As BFFP note, brand audits expose the real players behind the pollution, helping to debunk the industry myth that consumers, and waste management systems – are the problem – particularly in poor Asian countries. Brand audits do not just criticise, they also help advance solutions. The goal is to achieve fundamental change by tackling pollution along the whole plastics value chain, focusing on prevention rather than cure to advance safe, just, long-term reuse solutions for generations to come. Following decades of research and campaigning on ocean plastics, with important films like Trashed in 2012, and A Plastic Ocean in 2016, the issue finally broke through into the wider public consciousness with David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II in 2017 and The Story of Plastic in 2019. It has remained high on the agenda ever since, helped by National Geographic, consistent media attention like Sky Ocean Rescue, other documentaries like the BBC’s War on Plastic and extensive campaigning from environmental NGOs. The urgency to act on climate and plastic pollution is now widely understood and this awareness is making people want to change their behaviour. Helping to tip the balance, Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and Stop

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

Ecocide have recently accelerated the pressure on governments to ‘listen to the science’ and brought together people from all walks of life to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. As industrialised governments continue to offshore plastic waste to receiving countries that are illequipped to deal with it for now and ‘big plastic’ continues to wage war by pushing the plastic recycling myth, corporate communication and public awareness campaigns by the industry like Unilever’s Get Plastic Wise,245 Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola’s World Without Waste 246 continue to hoodwink consumers. As BFFP conclude, the plastic industry polluters are tough to beat, but despite these corporations’ best efforts, real peoplepowered solutions are popping up and blooming like wildflowers. All over the world, community-led solutions show us that a world without single-use plastic is not only possible – it already exists. In the face of the undeniable evidence provided by the global brand audits, top industry polluters have been quick to acknowledge their role in perpetuating the plastic pollution crisis by equally aggressively promoting false recycling solutions to address the problem.

BUSTING THE RECYCLING MYTHS Recent reports by Greenpeace USA, Green Alliance and GAIA have criticised novel recycling processes and exposed companies like Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola that are investing in false solutions by relying heavily on an already overburdened and broken global recycling system, including harmful chemical recycling and incineration.

PAPER PROMISES Many companies are attempting to address their plastics problem by switching their disposable packaging from plastic to paper or card. Nestlé in particular has emphasized a shift to paper-based packaging 247 and will switch to paper straws and paper packaging for Milo drinks in 2020.248

•

Paper bags and straws are still a single-use, disposable consumer item and an increase in paper production would lead to increased deforestation. The global market for paper straws, for instance, is growing by 13.8% a year.249 Over 250 chemicals with potential health concerns, including phthalates and bisphenols (used in adhesives, inks and thermal paper) have been detected in recycled cardboard used for food packaging and can migrate into food. Cardboard and other compostable materials are also sometimes lined with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)* and paper straws can produce more overall emissions than polyethylene plastic straws.250 Many paper straws on the market are not

•

compostable or recyclable, as promised and most recycling facilities will not accept foodcontaminated paper products and since paper absorbs liquids (e.g. from drinking smoothies), they may not be recycled. The thickness of many paper straws and the use of adhesives, also make them incompatible with current recycling systems

* This group of toxic chemicals is used to improve water resistance, but it is linked to health problems, including high cholesterol, lowered fertility and testicular cancer. Its presence in compost is especially worrying as PFAS can migrate into food and accumulate in humans.

It’s easy to promote natural alternatives – such as paper and card – and alternatives that sound ‘natural’ like bioplastics. But the volumes and scale of resources needed would put unacceptable pressures on natural resources such as forests and agricultural land, which are already strained from overexploitation. Overall, current paper recycling cannot provide a sustainable route for an increase in paper packaging.

PREVAILING PLASTICS Conventional recycling methods essentially chop up plastic and re-formulate it without changing the chemical structure. This works well for ‘downcycling’ plastics, but less well for creating ‘like-new’ plastic due to quality loss, degradation and contamination.

•

• •

•

Only 9% of all the plastic ever produced has been recycled.251 The vast majority is more likely to be incinerated, openly burnt, end up in landfills, dumps, the oceans or the natural environment. Only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling and close to half of PET is not collected for recycling, only 7% is recycled bottle-to-bottle. The majority of plastic packaging that is recycled is ‘downcycled’ into products of lesser quality or value which are not possible to recycle again without adding virgin material. Tetra Pak cartons and flexible plastic packaging such as wrappers, sachets, pouches and savory snack bags are often made of multiple materials that are difficult, if not impossible, to recycle. Recycling collection facilities not equipped to handle the complexity of these materials have become overwhelmed. Recycling systems have failed to deliver on targets to recover enough material to reduce demand for virgin plastic and cannot keep up with the huge volume of plastic waste generated. In Germany, which has one of the highest collection rates in the world, more than 60% of all plastic waste is burned, and only 38%

• •

•

is recycled. In the EU, much of the 31% of the reported as recycled plastic waste in 2016 was exported. And in the USA, where just 9% was recycled in 2015 (the most recent Government data available), the amount actually recycled domestically may be as low as 2%. Plastic not recycled domestically is typically packed into mixed bales and largely exported to other or lower income developing countries to deal with where its ultimate fate is unknown. BPA free plastics are considered to be the safest plastic option in terms of potential impact on human health. However, research raises concerns that BPA-free plastic (such as BPS) may also release hazardous compounds after undergoing wear and tear, such as through dishwashing, microwaving, or exposure to sunlight.252 Oxo degradable plastics, that do not do not fit in a circular economy, are being produced and sold in many countries, where societies are being led to believe they are safely biodegrade. Yet significant evidence suggests oxo degradable plastics fragment into small pieces, contributing to microplastics pollution.253 The collective and individual efforts to collect and recycle single-use plastic and packaging, albeit worthy, are not a solution and never will be. Although a preferred process because of its lower energy requirements, mature technologies and so-called existing infrastructure, the fact is that, even though recycling has a part to play in the transition to a plastic-free economy, recycling alone will never be sufficient to address the rising scale of the problem.

INVESTIGATING INCINERATORS The vast majority of all of the plastic that has ever been produced globally has been released to the environment, with 79% landfilled or released into the natural environment and 12% incinerated.

• • • • •

•

Despite the known pollution generated by incineration, Nestlé Philippines has announced it is sponsoring recovery of plastic waste to burn in kilns that make cement, which is a highly polluting practice. Focusing only on end-of-life strategies for plastic waste also ignores the human health and environmental consequences of the entire plastic life cycle.

In the EU the majority (41.6%) of plastic waste collected in 2016 was incinerated, an increase of 61% between 2000 and 2016. This rush to burn is also happening in China, which has 231 operating incinerators, with another 103 planned (for comparison, Europe has 500 incinerators). The USA could be burning 13% of its plastic waste, or six times the plastic waste that it recycles, according to one analysis. Incinerating plastics creates air pollutants, fly ash, bottom ash, and boiler ash/slag. that can harm human health and the planet by emitting respiratory irritants, cancer-causing dioxins/furans, heavy metals including mercury, cadmium and lead, and major greenhouse gases – contributing to the climate crisis. It is also an environmental justice issue. For example, approximately 80% of the waste incinerators in the USA are located in lowincome communities, communities of colour, or both. Facilities are often costly to run and require a constant ‘hungry monster’ stream of waste, encouraging increased generation of disposable material.

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CRACKING CHEMICALS Chemical recycling is an umbrella term for several risky emerging technologies that are in their infancy. Information about the environmental and health impacts of many of these technologies is currently limited, but there are serious concerns about emissions of hazardous chemicals and their intensive use of energy. These include:

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Chemical solvents and chemical depolymerisation decontaminate the plastic, but the plastic that results from the process is still of degraded quality. They also require a single stream of plastic waste and therefore face the same collection barriers as mechanical recycling. Thermal depolymerization and cracking (also known as gasification and pyrolysis) on the other hand, can process mixed plastic waste as well as address the degradation problem, but can create potentially hazardous byproducts. Gasification converts plastic waste into a gas and pyrolysis, sometimes called ‘plastic-to-oil’, makes plastic waste into tar oil by exposing it to high heat. The oil can then be used for fuel, to make new plastic, or other chemical applications. While this may technically differ from burning as it is not combustion, it is still thermal destruction using high heat (and a lot of energy) and can create hazardous byproducts. Although they are not new technologies, they have a failed track record due to inefficiency, emissions pollution and environmental impact. Chemical recycling (solvent-based and thermolysis) is not an effective form of plastic waste management. With the need to dramatically reduce global fossil fuel consumption, chemical recycling represents a dangerous distraction for a society that must transition to a sustainable future. Multiple environmental impacts exist that are grossly under-assessed. Managing these impacts will impose high costs and operational constraints on technology operators. For this reason, chemical recycling should be treated with extreme caution by investors, decision makers, and regulators. Chemical recycling is energy intensive and has multiple intrinsic and ancillary energy demands which render it unsuitable for consideration as a sustainable technology. No chemical recycling technology can currently, or in the foreseeable future, offer a net-positive energy balance.

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Grossly inadequate reporting exists on the status of chemical recycling which, along with a lack of independent evidence on the technology, have led to it being portrayed as well beyond its capabilities.254 Coca-Cola, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, L’Oreal, Kuerig and Danone have all invested in chemical recycling technologies or have entered into purchasing agreements for future products, even though many are not yet producing material at significant commercial scale and are still in a laboratory, pilot or construction phase. For example: Procter & Gamble developed a process using chemical solvents to convert polypropylene, which it is licensed to a start-up to sell material to Nestlé and L’Oreal. And, PepsiCo touted its intentions to incorporate chemically recycled PET by 2020, despite the fact that PET produced by its supply partner would not be commercially available until mid-2020. Despite the many concerns and the fact that chemical recycling is not yet technically or economically viable, these big brands are promoting these technologies under the guise of ‘recycling’ in their corporate responsibility materials. Often describing them as ‘enhanced recycling’ or ‘advanced recycling’ to give the false impression that these technologies are benign. Despite describing them as ‘closed loop’ or referring to the ‘circular economy’, most processes are highly energy-intensive, require costly infrastructure, and generate waste (such as additives and contaminants). Details of these chemical recycling processes are often not disclosed, obscuring information about their costs, efficiency, and environmental impacts such as air or water pollution, or risks to workers. Neither the USA nor the EU has coherent regulations or agreed definitions for these technologies as a group. Much greater transparency on operational performance, energy balances, and environmental impact assessment must be provided as standard. Until its energy and chemical requirements are fully understood, it should not compete with existing mechanical recycling streams. Thermal cracking should be approached with caution and only used in limited circumstances where material is too degraded for other recycling processes.

BUSTING BIOPLASTICS These terms can confuse consumers (are they plastic or compost?), especially when generic ‘greenwashing’ terms such as ‘eco’, ‘bio’ or ‘green’ are used for marketing advantage. Even they may be made from renewable sources, the infrastructure for collecting and reprocessing bioplastics is currently not well established and there are very few facilities that are able to process them.

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• •

The word ‘bioplastic’ does not have a standardised definition. They vary widely in their base material and their ability (or inability) to biodegrade, and questions continue to be raised over the harmful additives, colourants and plasticisers which are used to produce them. The most common bioplastics include: CA made from wood or cotton; PHB made from sugar or lipids; PHA made from sugar or lipids; PLA made from corn and plants, and starch-based polyesters; corn and rice. Bioplastics made from plant material, such as corn or sugar cane, only represent 1% of the plastic on the market. Though research is underway to increase the amount of bio-based material, currently most bioplastics are still partially composed of fossilbased plastic. The majority of bioplastics are derived from agricultural crops, which compete with food crops, threatening food security and driving land use change and agricultural emissions. Thus, a growing share of land used for nonfood crops, mostly farmed on large industrial plantations, displace both natural habitat and small-scale farmers.

• • •

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Bioplastics are a significantly greater burden to the environment, and have a higher water footprint, than conventional plastics.255 While many consumers may believe that all bioplastics will naturally decompose if littered or landfilled, this is not necessarily true. Both conventional fossil-based plastics or bioplastics can be engineered to degrade under certain conditions; these are known as either ‘degradable’ or ‘biodegradable’ plastics. However, the heat and humidity conditions required are rarely, if ever, met in the natural environment. When biodegradable plastic does break apart, it may not fully disappear but instead fragment into smaller pieces, including microplastics, which can be ingested by animals and enter the food chain. While some new technologies promise biobased packaging made from non-agricultural crops like algae, methane or seaweed, these are emerging technologies and processes which will require transparent assessments on a range of impacts. Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Danone are using bio-based plastics to replace a portion of conventional fossil-derived plastics in their beverage bottles, and many bags or disposable take-away items like cutlery and plates etc. are increasingly marketed as ‘biodegradable’. The impression that that these products are more ‘natural’ because they are from plants is false; the production of bio-based plastic can involve similar chemical additives to conventional fossil-based plastic.

CONFRONTING COMPOSTABLES Another confusing marketing term associated with bio-based plastics and biodegradability is the claim that a disposable item is ‘compostable’. Compostable plastic is engineered to fully decompose (as opposed to breaking into small fragments) under certain condition that are met in either industrial composting facilities, or, less commonly, in home composting systems.

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Contamination of conventional plastic with compostable plastic, and vice versa, is very problematic. Not all municipalities or councils have industrial composting, and many cannot recycle compostable plastic packaging, and thus it

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is most likely to be landfilled or incinerated, making it little different to conventional singleuse plastic. Compost that is contaminated with conventional plastic risks chemicals leaching into soil, microplastics being flushed into waterways and a devaluing of compost’s use in agriculture. Coca-Cola and Nestlé often tout ‘bio-based’, ‘biodegradable’ or ‘compostable’ plastic as a solution. Overall, a highly precautionary approach to industrially processed bioplastics or compostable plastic packaging should be taken. Focused on making packaging recyclable or compostable, does not get to the heart of the problem and all but guarantee the plastic pollution crisis will grow worse.256

CRISES CONVERGE IN THE AMAZON The Amazon is both the world’s largest river basin and the largest rainforest on the planet. The Amazon River Basin (also known as the Amazon Biome) spans more than 6 million square km (2.3 million square miles) – twice the size of India – and covers some 40% of the South American continent, stretching across nine countries and territories: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. As the beating heart of a freshwater system, the Amazon Rainforest spans more than 7 million square km (4.3 million square miles) – 32 times the size of the UK – and covers about 80% of the basin, most of which lies in Brazil.257 VENEZUELA COLOMBIA

SURINAME GUYANA

FRENCH GUIANA

EQUADOR

BRAZIL PERU BOLIVIA

As the most biodiverse region on the planet – the Amazon is of immeasurable ecological importance. Home to an extraordinarily diverse array of species, habitats, ecosystem services and indigenous communities, its rich natural resource base provides a source of livelihoods for millions both within and outside the region. Virtually unrivalled in scale, complexity and opportunity, the area is covered predominantly by a dense moist tropical ‘green ocean’ of rainforest, interspersed with diverse types of other vegetation (such as savannas, floodplain forests, grasslands, swamps, bamboos, palm forests) and unique freshwater ecosystems.258 At least 40,000 plant species (75% of which are endemic to the region), 427 mammals, 1,300 birds, 378 reptiles and 427 amphibians had been scientifically classified for

the region, as well as at least 3,000 species of freshwater fish. This is the largest number of freshwater fish species in the world. The same level of diversity can almost certainly be said for invertebrates. About 50,000 species of insects can be found in any 2.5 square km of Amazon rainforest259 A report by WWF and Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, Brazil in 2017 revealed that, between 2014-2015, a new plant or animal species was discovered in the Amazon every two days – the fastest rate this century. New species of vertebrates and plants included 216 plants, 93 fish, 32 amphibians, 20 mammals (two of which were fossils), 19 reptiles and one bird, as well as a fire-tailed titi monkey, honeycomb patterned stingray, pink river dolphin, a yellow-moustached lizard and a bird named after former US president Barack Obama.260

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According to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) and Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), this unparalleled natural wonder is also home to 34 million people – including 420 different indigenous groups – and at least 60 uncontacted or isolated tribes, with incalculable ecological and medical knowledge.261 In short, the Amazon is home to around half of the planet’s biodiversity and a major provider of ecosystem goods and services, making it critical for climate and ecosystem functioning at local, regional and global levels. As an area of immense socioenvironmental diversity of global importance – the Amazon has undergone rapid change over the last 30 years – characterised by increased infrastructure development, facilitated by road expansion, the opening up of vast areas of forest to agriculture and timber extraction, mining and petroleum activities, migration, and sociocultural change – no less than 17% (about 60 million hectares) of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has been destroyed.262 Set against the decades-long conflict and drug trade, the main challenges in Colombia came from cattle, road expansion, and large-scale industry, including oil and mining. In Ecuador, a lack of public intervention resulted in the development of petrol and mining activities in some areas, while in others it resulted in logging and wildlife trade. In Guyana, migration was a major issue. Deforestation has historically been low, but there were increases, attributed mainly to the mining sector which resulted in the contamination of freshwater systems. After economic expansion and diversification, oil, mining and gas play a significant role in Peru’s economy. As the most forested country in the world, with a forest coverage of 93%, Suriname faces increasing deforestation pressure from extractive industries (gold, oil, and bauxite), which poses a health threat to local populations due to cyanide use. As a result, the reduced quantity and quality of water became a growing problem,

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exacerbated by illegal mining, waste disposal and other socioeconomic activities. And in countries such as Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana and Suriname, river water contamination from heavy metals such as mercury, due to gold mining, directly impacted drinking water quality, leading to negative health effects.263 As the largest river in the world, the Amazon River provides up to 20% of the ocean’s freshwater supply worldwide.264 It is the greatest freshwater drainage system on earth. Stretching at least 6,500 km across South America from Peru to Brazil, the Amazon River drains nearly one third of the entire continent into the Atlantic Ocean. The magnitude of this freshwater source is unique – the Amazon River discharges as much freshwater as the next eight largest rivers in the world combined.265 266 At an astonishing rate, it emits up to around 250,000 cubic metres of water (in May to June) into the Atlantic Ocean every single second. This massive plume which extends into the Atlantic Ocean for more than 1,500 km, carries not only large volumes of sediments, floating vegetation (matupás) and nutrients but increasing amounts of plastic debris as far afield as the Caribbean, North Atlantic and even Africa. The high discharge rate of the river and the high contaminant levels detected strongly suggest that the Amazon River could be a major source of chemical contaminants to the Atlantic Ocean. These included two families of plastic additives: organophosphate esters (OPEs) and bisphenols (BPs such as BPA and BPS), known for their endocrine-disrupting properties, used in the production of thermal paper, plastic bottles and food can linings, among other items; and other related perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) which have water- and oil-resistant properties and are used in outdoor textiles and food packaging as well as in fire-fighting foams. OPEs are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic and PFCs are persistent pollutants in the environment.267

Plastic (OPEs) Concentrations from the Amazon River into the North Atlantic Ocean (2017)

Source: Schmidt, N. et al (2019) According to a recent estimate, the Amazon River carries a significant quantity of plastic waste to the Atlantic Ocean, with an estimated annual input of 38,900 (range 32,200–63,800) tonnes per year. Based solely on surface transport, this estimate now ranks the Amazon as the world’s second most plastic polluted river, only behind the Yangtze River in China.268 As this estimate does not account for suspended or sediment transport, the total mass of plastic transported through the Amazon River to the ocean is likely to be an underestimate.269 New evidence conservatively estimates that 182,085 tonnes of plastic are being discarded into Brazil’s Amazonian environment each year. Although an unknown fraction of this mismanaged waste is retained within the river system (e.g. trapped in the flooded forest), this estimate of plastic waste – which potentially is transported by

the Amazon River to the Atlantic Ocean – is about five times as high as the previous estimate.270 From the largest cities of Manaus and Belem to the smallest remote indigenous villages, most Amazon settlements are located along more than 80,000 km of navigable waters. As a consequence, the region’s torrential rains, coupled with increasingly frequent and severe floods, wash plastic waste into streams and rivers. Preliminary surveys in the Amazon estuary revealed that accumulations of solid waste ranged from 27 to 113 items per metre of vegetated bank, of which 96% was plastic, predominantly disposable bottles and shopping bags. This mountain of plastic waste, much of it trapped within flooded forests, eventually degrades into microplastics that can be incorporated into the soil and/or carried back into the water, thus posing another threat to Amazonian biota.271

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Highlighting the extent to which plastic waste is impacting the aquatic biota of the Amazon, scientists have found the first evidence of plastic contamination in fish both in the Amazon River estuary, and off the coast of Brazil,272 273 revealing microplastic particles in the digestive tracts of freshwater and marine fish, which are commonly consumed by humans. Tests on the stomach contents of fish in Brazilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Xingu River, one of the major tributaries of the Amazon, revealed plastic

particles in more than 80% of the species examined. Analysis identified a dozen distinct polymers used to manufacture plastic items, including bags, bottles, and fishing gear. Most pieces were black, red, blue, white or translucent and varied from 1 to 15mm in length. More than a quarter were polyethylene. Others were identified as PVC, polyamide, polypropylene, rayon and other polymers used to make bags, bottles, food packaging and more.

Plastic Debris from Stomachs of Freshwater Fish from the Xingu Basin (2012-2014)

Source: Andrade, M. C. et al (2019)

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This has considerable potential to harm the health and food security of humans who depend on fisheries and other ecosystem services.274 Although much publicity and emphasis on plastic pollution has focused on the world’s oceans, these scientific papers add to growing evidence that plastics are also a significant risk to the world’s river ecosystems. The importance of the situation is highlighted when future climate scenarios predict an increase in the discharge of the Amazon River 275 and that plastic litter in the Amazon watershed will likely continue to increase as water quality continue to decease. In essence, the Amazon plays a vital role to maintain global life support systems because it:

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Reflects heat back into space, a so-called albedo effect. Functions as the planet’s lungs by sucking carbon out of the air. Absorbs 2 billion tons of CO2 per year (5% of annual emissions) a vital defence to curb climate change. Sequesters and stores huge quantities of carbon (carbon sinks) to mitigate climate change.

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Emits some 20 billion tonnes of water vapour that provides 90% of all the water that reaches the atmosphere via transpiration. Serves as a major source of freshwater to local, regional and global regions. Provides a core natural thermostat to cool and regulate to local, regional and global weather patterns and temperatures. Creates vital rainfall for farms and cities across South America and as far away as Western and Central America. Generates 70% of South America’s GDP from rainfall and water receiving regions.

Yet, as a direct result of incendiary government policies in the region, climate stability is threatened as massive forest fires and deforestation continue to ravage vast swaths of the Amazon, releasing carbon stores and exacerbating the region’s air pollution. In Brazil, home to roughly 60% of the Amazon, forest fires in July 2020 were up 28% on a year ago, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), in charge of satellite monitoring.274 275 And deforestation from August 2019 to July 2020 was up 34%, according to INPE’s Real-Time Deforestation Detection (DETER) system, which provides rapid deforestation alerts.278 And nobody has been charged.279

Photo Credit: Greenpeace

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Since assuming office in January 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro – dubbed the ‘Trump of the Tropics’ – has declared that ‘the Amazon is ours’, systematically weakened environmental regulations, granted amnesty for fines for illegal deforestation, slashed budgets for environmental law enforcement, criticised and fired his own administration’s scientists and ministers and blamed indigenous communities and environmental NGOs for last year’s fires in the Amazon – fires his administration

Source: Amazon Watch (2020)

have been accused of tacitly supporting. At this moment in time when the world needs to be racing to protect the Amazon a new oil boom has erupted in the Western Amazon. The region – known as the Sacred Headwaters of the Amazon – recognised as being the most biodiverse in the Amazon, spans 30 million hectares (74 million acres) across Ecuador, Peru and Colombia and is home to 500,000 indigenous people.

Photo Credit: Lou Dematteis / Amazon Watch

Photo Credit: Amazon Watch

According to a report by Amazon Watch, decades of oil extraction have already caused irreparable harm to the rainforest and indigenous peoples in the Western Amazon. Between 1964 and 1990, Texaco – which merged with Chevron in 2001 – illegally dumped more than 16 billion gallons (60 billion litres) of toxic wastewater, spilled about 17 million gallons (~64 millions litres) of crude oil, and left hazardous waste in hundreds of dangerous open pits throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon. To save money the company deliberately chose to use obsolete environmental practices that violated Ecuadorian and US law.

cancer as well as birth defects and spontaneous miscarriages. Cancer rates in the region are five times higher than the national average. Chevron has never cleaned up the mess it inherited, and its oil wastes continue to poison the rainforest ecosystem. Today, Chevron is a corporate criminal on the run. Even though It was found liable by Ecuadorian courts and ordered to pay US $9.5 billion in 2011, and eight different appeal court judges subsequently confirmed the validity of overwhelming evidence against the oil company, Chevron has thus far succeeded in evading justice and accountability.

The result was, and continues to be, one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet. More than 480,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of forest were polluted, at least 30,000 people were impacted, and the toxic waste made it all the way to Brazil and Peru by Texaco’s actions. Contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface streams has caused local indigenous and campesino people to suffer a wave of mouth, stomach, and uterine

In the Peruvian Amazon, Occidental Petroleum (OXY) dumped about 9 billion gallons (34 million litres) of toxic wastewater and spilled millions of gallons of crude oil on the forest floor and in Amazonian tributaries between 1971 and 2000, many of which were never cleaned up. A lawsuit in the USA brought by the Achuar Indigenous people against OXY for environmental damage was settled finally in 2015.

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Over the last decade, China – a country with a stated ambition to advance an ecological society – has dramatically increased its presence in Ecuador with bilateral lending and investment in the country’s Amazon rainforest. The China Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank provided 15 loans to Ecuador, totalling US $18.4 billion, for energy, infrastructure, and transportation projects, making them Ecuador’s largest creditor, with an outstanding debt totalling 45% of GDP. This does not include billions in hidden cash-for-oil loans from PetroChina to Petroecuador that commits 90% of Ecuadorian crude oil to China until 2024. Petroecuador has seven contracts with state-owned PetroChina and Unipec, the trading arm of the petroleum and petrochemical giant Sinopec. At annual interest rates of 6–8%, loan disbursals have totalled US $12 billion in exchange for 572 million barrels of oil. As those loans come due, Ecuador is scrambling to boost production and investment in oil, driving the push deeper into intact forests. Despite China’s influence, the crude oil is not flowing to Beijing. It’s going to California. More than 50% of Ecuador’s crude oil exports go to California, with another 10% distributed throughout the rest of the USA. Although California claims climate leadership in the face of climate denial from Washington and has taken steps to reign in the expansion of domestic oil production in the state, it continues to be the largest importer of crude from

the Amazon. This means that California’s demand is literally driving continued destruction across the Amazon. Nonetheless, California has incentive to use its outsized influence to end oil expansion in the region because a vanishing Amazon could cause up to 50% less rainfall in California’s Sierra Nevada. To put it into perspective, drilling in the Amazon Sacred Headwaters will generate less than two months of the world’s oil supply but will cause irreparable damage locally and globally. Keeping 5 billion barrels in the ground is equivalent to avoiding over 2 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions, and maintaining the integrity of the living forest is equivalent to 4 billion metric tons of carbon. Collectively this represents the equivalent energy use of 200 million US homes for 10 years.280 Although fossil fuel companies do the drilling, they would not be able to expand their fossil fuel frontier into primary rainforests and indigenous territories were it not for the financial institutions providing the capital. A report from Amazon Watch details how five of the world’s most powerful financial institutions – Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and BlackRock – are actively contributing to climate change by providing US $6 billion equity and debt financing for crude oil extraction projects in the Amazon.

Total Equity and Debt provided for Amazon Crude Oil (2017-2019) Total Q4 2019 Stock and Bond Ownership and Q3 2017-Q4 2019 Loan and Bond Underwriting

2.5

US $2.47 Billion

US $ Billion

2.0

1.5

US $1.24 US $1.02

1.0

US $0.891

US $0.827

0.5

0.0

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Source: Amazon Watch (2020)

It highlights key examples of on-the-ground indigenous resistance to oil extraction, while making clear that it is not only a climate risk but also a major financial risk for these institutions. Though many of these financial institutions have publicly expressed commitments to socioenvironmental corporate responsibility and climate initiatives like the Paris Agreement, they continue to finance the destruction of the Amazon and violate Indigenous rights.281 In response, Amazon Watch, in partnership with other institutions, has launched ‘Stop The Money Pipeline’ campaign to demand that banks, asset managers, insurance companies and institutional investors stop funding, insuring and investing in climate destruction.282 Meanwhile, on the upper Amazon River near Manaus, the ‘Solimões Sedimentary Area’ oil and gas project, threatens Brazil’s last great block of almost entirely intact Amazon forest. Inherent to these operations, the project would allow the drilling of thousands of wells, risk oil spills and pollution, impact isolated indigenous tribes and increase deforestation due to the expansion of a road network. Spread over 470,976 square km (181,844 square miles) and encompassing approximately one third of Brazil’s Alaska-sized Amazonas state, this huge block of forest is essential for maintaining the region’s biodiversity, safeguarding its indigenous

peoples, forest carbon stocks, water and rainfall to places like São Paulo. The city of São Paulo has already come close to running out of water during major droughts, and loss of the water transported from the Amazon via its ‘flying rivers’ would make a catastrophe there much more likely.283 Simply put, if deforestation is not halted – and if it reaches a point where 40% of the Amazon region is deforested – it could lead to an abrupt largescale shift from rainforests to grasslands. This could lead to São Paulo drying up, and to an alteration of global weather patterns, including farmlands lying far to the north of South and Central America.284 Then, the biggest oil spill to occur in more than a decade, creating a crisis within a crisis for Ecuador’s indigenous population in the Amazon. The oil spill occurred on April 7, 2020, due to the rupture of the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE) and the Heavy Crude Oil Pipeline (OCP). It affects approximately 118,617 people, belonging to 22 parishes along the banks of the Coca and Napo rivers, along with communities downriver in Peru. Hundreds of indigenous communities continue to face food scarcity as they rely on these rivers for food and fresh water, and the COVID-19 national lockdown cut off options for outside provisions. The government’s response has been beyond inadequate.285

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Photo Credit: Tyler Hicks / New York Times

During the writing of this report, fires, logging, extractive industries, large-scale agribusiness, food and beverage giants – all exacerbated by climate change – and COVID-19 has crippled life in even the most impenetrable corners of the Amazon. Facing ethnocide by institutional racism and government inaction, indigenous peoples are being especially hard hit by the virus.

A tremendous force, of never-before-seen proportions, is devastating the Amazon on two fronts that are combined in a brutal way: the COVID-19 pandemic […] that affects the most vulnerable, and the uncontrolled increase in violence against the territories. The pain and outcry of the people and those of the earth are merged into one. Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM) and Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA) 286

Four of the 10 countries in the world with the largest number of confirmed cases are in South America. Brazil is the second country in the world with the highest number of deaths, only exceeded by the United States; Peru is sixth. Brazil also ranks second in number of deaths, with Peru ninth. Together, these three countries total close to 160,000 deceased and more than 4,740,000 confirmed cases (approximately one of every five in the world).287 There are indigenous communities at high risk in every country of the region. At stake are the lives of 45 million people who belong to more than 800 indigenous peoples. Of these, some 100 are spread across several countries, around 200 maintain voluntary isolation or are in initial contact, and nearly 500 are at risk of disappearing due to their reduced numbers. Due to their lower immune resistance, lack of access to hospital, testing and basic medical care and the increasing penetration of

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“

extractive activities in their territories, indigenous communities in voluntary isolation or in initial contact are cause for particular concern. For indigenous women, who already suffer triple discrimination because they are women, indigenous and poor, caregiving responsibilities have become even more costly by exposing them to a higher risk of infection. At the same time, they are also more exposed to violence that is known to increase in emergency contexts, and lack social protection. In Bolivia and Peru for example, 83% of women, who are disproportionately represented and employed in the informal sector, also lack social protection. And, the fact that COVID-19 death rates are disproportionately higher among older adults – the custodians and transmitters of ancestral wisdom and knowledge on such vital issues as language and culture, traditional medicine or forest protection – is devastating and has irreparable consequences for indigenous peoples, and the rest of the world.

Indigenous people living on the outskirts of cities, who make up about half of the total indigenous population in Latin America, do not have secure access to water and sanitation, let alone healthcare. Many hospitals have collapsed under the pandemic, as in the regions with the largest indigenous population the healthcare infrastructure is even more deficient. In Colombia, for example, the beds available in the six departments of the Amazon will barely serve to care for less than 1% of the most serious cases expected at the peak of infection. Lack of clean water makes the most basic virus protection measure, that of washing your hands frequently, impossible. In the region, 40% of indigenous households lack access to this resource, double that of the non-indigenous population. In Ecuador, just 30% of the indigenous population has this basic service compared to 60% of the nonindigenous population. In Colombia, access is 41% in indigenous housing compared to 87% nationwide. Furthermore, most indigenous families lack the financial resources to acquire basic protection materials such as soap, disinfectant gels, gloves, and masks. The Amazon region is one of those most affected. Of the 420 indigenous groups that inhabit it, by the middle of July the virus had already reached about 172. In barely two months, the number of deaths increased nine-fold (from 113 to 1,018), double that of the registered population. Peru has the highest number of persons affected among the indigenous Amazonian population. There, more than a third of the fatalities in the Amazonian departments correspond to indigenous peoples, according to data collected by the indigenous organisations

themselves (REPAM and COICA).288 The Amazon River is the central artery in a network of tributaries that sustains millions of people, moving goods and industry deep into the forest. By July, the six Brazilian cities with the highest exposure rates to the virus were all on the Amazon River. The first case in Manaus came from someone who had travelled from England and TefĂŠ, several daysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; journey by boat from Manaus, had one of the highest death rates in the country. As container ships and cargo continued to ply the region, the virus swept through the region like past plagues that have travelled up the river via colonisers and corporations. It spread with the dugout canoes carrying families from village to village, the fishing dinghies with rattling engines, the slow riverboats moving goods for hundreds of miles, packed with passengers sleeping in hammocks, side by side, for days at a time. Now, the hammocks have become stretchers, carrying the sick from communities with no doctors to boat ambulances that race through the water. In just four months, as the epidemic travelled from Mamaus, the biggest city in the Brazilian Amazon, to smaller, seemingly isolated villages deep in the interior, the fragile health care system buckled under the onslaught. Cities and towns along the river have some of the highest deaths per capita in the country. In Manaus, there were periods when every Covid ward was full and 100 people were dying a day, forcing the city to cut new burial grounds out of pristine rainforest, and grave diggers to lay rows of coffins in long trenches carved in the freshly turned earth.289

Photo Credit: New York Times

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THE AMAZON

The Amazon River is South America’s essential life source, it is the ‘superhighway’ that cuts through the continent. No bridges cross the entire width of the river, simply because the Amazon Basin has very few roads for bridges to connect to. But once again, in a painful echo of history, it has brought disease. Despite the pandemic, environmental threats like forest fires, deforestation, industrial farming, mining and oil exploration, chemical contamination and plastic pollution persist across the Amazon. In fact, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for two-thirds of the rainforest’s total area, has not let up since the onset of the pandemic, leaving the Amazon rainforest more vulnerable than ever.

The region’s environmental land defenders are struggling to simultaneously protect the forest and keep the coronavirus at bay and the Amazon is on the brink. Scientists warn it is close, or has already passed, a tipping point of no return, which will convert it from a carbon sink to a carbon source. Clearing and degrading the rainforest is not only contributing to climate change but also taking away from one of the best natural mechanisms we have for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.290 Drilling for new fossil fuels and polluting the most biodiverse rainforest on the planet – a forest ecosystem that regulates vital planetary ecosystem services like the carbon and hydrologic cycles – is a recipe for disaster for us all.

THE JOURNEY

While decades of plastic pollution research have mostly focused on Asia, Europe and North America, comparatively little data for South American rivers, lakes or coastal areas are available to the best of our knowledge. South America’s, lakes, wetlands and rivers are some of the most important ecosystem providers on the planet. These precious waters-of-life however, are undergoing rapid change due to plastic pollution, and many sources of plastic pollution remain largely uncharted. To reduce losses and potential impacts of plastics on the marine environment, focus should be on identifying sources of macroplastics from Municipal Solid Waste, in particular packaging. With particular focus on regions where the largest losses occur, i.e. Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East.291 Leading a world first expedition, RAW Foundation set off with a small team to circumnavigate and track the world’s plastic footprint across South America and the length of the Amazon. Three years on from a similar study from Cairo to Cape Town in Africa, the aim was to shine a spotlight on the sheer scale of the problem, the transboundary nature of plastic pollution and the worst offenders. What types and quantities of plastic waste were there? Where did they originate? What were the impacts? What is being done about it? And what are the solutions? The mission of the expedition was to:

• • • • •

Identify and record pointless plastic pollution, including microplastics. Educate the public about the extent and dangers of plastic pollution. Inform about and promote alternative reuse solutions. Assess waste disposal policies and attitudes, to Support policymakers to make educated decisions based on the data collected.

Over the course of four months, the RAW Foundation team travelled over 21,000 km clockwise from Salvador in Brazil through Argentina, Patagonia, Chile and Bolivia to Lima in Peru – and finally the length of the Amazon from Iquitos via Manus to Macapa and Belem to identify and record the extent of the impact of global brands and individual pointless plastic items – camping and sleeping in riverboat hammocks most of the way. We (literally) dived into dangerous rubbish dumps, located landfill sites and surveyed source-to-sea debris. We opened government official doors, met waste ministers and reviewed reuse and recycling initiatives. As well as carrying out canal, river, lake and beach surveys and cleans, we collaborated with local communities to probe seemingly pristine environments and perform microplastic trawls.

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

OVER 21,000 KM FROM SALVADOR TO BELEM

Bush-camped most the way

Recorded road-side Rubbish every 100km

Located Landfill Sites

Dived into Rubbish Dumps

Surveyed ‘Source’ Debris

Opened Official Doors

Met with Waste Ministers

Reviewed Reuse Recycling initiatives

Tapped into Tribal Wisdom

Carried out Beach Cleans

Collaborated and created Links

Probed Pristine Places

SOUTH AMERICA

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METHODOLOGY

QUADRAT SAMPLING The team recorded samples of rubbish every 100km, within a 1m2 quadrat, placed 1m from either side of road, track or river. The data recorded, of both branded and unbranded items, included: brand names, item descriptions, types of products, types of materials and size, along with the date, time, location proximity and comments. The quadrat and location were photographed and recorded and saved on a handheld Garmin GPSMap 64s GPS tracker. Item descriptions included cup, bottle, bag, fragment, etc. As a minimum, types of products were divided into predetermined OSPAR* ID number categories such as bags, drinks bottles, food containers, personal care, household products, fishing gear, packing materials etc. Whenever possible, types of materials were also divided into seven predetermined categories of the main types of plastic: PET, HDPE, PVC, LDPE, PP, PS, O. Branded items included as much information as possible, for example intermediate brands such as NestlĂŠ Milo ice cream. All data was manually entered into an Excel spreadsheet.

BEACH AND SHORELINE TRANSECTS In each case, the OSPAR criteria was followed as closely as possible. The team recorded plastic waste within a 100m stretch of beach along the strandline, reaching to the back of the beach. The back of the beach was explicitly identified using coastal features such as the presence of vegetation, dunes, cliff base, road, fence or other anthropogenic structures such as seawalls. In the case of two heavily-littered beaches, items were also recorded within a randomly generated 1m2 quadrat to a depth of 2cm. As above, the data recorded, of both branded and unbranded items, included: brand names, item descriptions, types of products, types of materials and size, along with the date, time, location proximity and comments. The transect and location were photographed and recorded and saved on a handheld Garmin GPSMap 64s GPS tracker.

* The OSPAR Commission (2010) Guideline for Monitoring Marine Litter on the Beaches in the OSPAR Maritime Area is the most detailed a standardised methodology protocol for monitoring litter.

OCEAN AND FRESHWATER RIVER TRAWLS The team collected microplastic from surface water with a neuston net (0.52 × 0.36m) of 333μm mesh. In deep water, the net was deployed behind a boat moving at <3 knots while towing the trawl net. For shallower water, the researcher waded in and held the net in place manually at the water's surface (0.5m depth). Holding the net in front of them, perpendicular to the water flow and taking care not to disturb the net tail. An optional flow meter was not used. Deployment time was measured with a stopwatch (15–20 min per sample) and location was recorded and saved on a handheld Garmin GPSMap 64s GPS tracker. Sample preparation included rinsing the material from the net with ethanol into a sterile glass jar, and a plastic-free toothbrush was used to brush it all in. The cod end and toothbrush were also gently rinsed with ethanol to ensure that all plastic particles were included. Subsequently, the material was sieved through a 5mm, 1mm sieve, and a 250μm (0.25mm) sieve when necessary, for sample sorting. All recognisable pieces of plastic were removed using sterile small forceps / tweezers from the 1mm or 250μm sieve and transferred directly onto a glass tray (12 partition) or graph paper. A magnifying glass was used to look closely at the surface of the particles to determine whether they were plastic or not. The tweezers were also used to help determine whether the particles were solid plastic, soft plastic or another material. Using the lines on the graph paper and a Digital Electronic Caliper Gauge Micrometer, plastic pieces were separated into size and type categories:

• •

Size categories – particles (more than) >5mm and particles (less than) <5mm. Type categories – Fragment, Film, Foam, Pellet and Line.

The number of plastics for each category were recorded and photographed, along with the date, time, location and comments. Each sample was subsequently numbered, labelled and stored in a sterile petri dish and sealed. All data was manually entered into an Excel spreadsheet.

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LIMITATIONS Across all methods of data collection, a wide variety of locations represented a valuable ‘snapshot’ country by country. Nonetheless, the brand audits data collected across these locations cannot claim to be fully representative of all plastic polluters, as there are more brands than are captured in this report that were either too degraded to record or could not subsequently be recognised. It is possible, therefore, that some of those brands produce even more plastic pollution than those listed in this report. Nevertheless, considering the number of countries represented, the results across all methods of data collection give a good indication of the most common brands found.

Quadrat Sampling The ‘on-the-move’ data collected day and night has a few inconsistencies associated with it owing to the fact that in some cases it was not always possible to stop at exactly a 100 km interval. In the main, this was due to either heavy traffic, a dual carriageway or a bridge with no hard shoulder where it was not safe to stop. In these instances, the next immediate safe stop (normally within 1-2 km) was used.

Beach and Shoreline Transects The samples are not evenly distributed between each country, and skews more heavily toward countries with coastal accessibility in comparison to lake accessibility by 16:6. For example, Bolivia is completely landlocked and the team were only able to conduct one coastal transect in Peru due to a mechanical breakdown in Peru for a week. Due to other time constraints, it was not possible to conduct two sampling units (100-metre stretches) on the same beach or shoreline.

Ocean and Freshwater River Trawls As opposed to both upstream and downstream freshwater river sites, the sampling was limited to one site at each river or ocean location. Further, limitations of the protocols (i.e. separation from silt), means that the data collected provides a general notion of plastic in the rivers sampled rather than a highly accurate measurement. Due to time constraints, heat and storage conditions and laboratory accessibility en-route, neither Raman, FTIR spectroscopy or micro FTIR spectroscopy analysis could be carried out in a laboratory to detect further microfiber abundance. As in The 5 Gyres Institute Trawlshare Protocol, the data captured in this report focuses on microplastics 1-5 mm in size in the main because these particles were relatively easy to find and could be identified with the naked eye or a magnifying glass.

ANALYSIS The main stages of the analysis for both the Quadrats and Beach and Shoreline transects were as follows: 1) Reviewing the manually entered data points to ensure accuracy and consistency 2) Separating data points related to branded and unbranded items 3) Mapping brands to their parent companies 4) Calculating the total number of items found for each brand and parent company 5) Calculating the total number of items found for the top 5 parent companies in each country 6) Researching the New Plastics Economy Commitment Progress for the top 5 parent companies. The initial cleanup of the data for unbranded and branded items was undertaken manually. Data of branded items were transferred to a separate database, for separate analysis. Spellings of brands were consistent. Once the data had been grouped by brand, data points were sorted by the number of items recorded. This facilitated the process of mapping brands to parent companies, which was also undertaken as a manual task.

When mapping brands to parent companies, in some cases it was necessary to decide about which level of parent company to use. For example, Cheetos, Doritos and Lays crisps are made by the company Frito-Lay, which in turn is owned by parent company PepsiCo. In such cases, the ultimate parent company was used. In instances where a brand is owned by a different company in for example Peru compared to the rest of South America or the world, the global parent company is used. Again, to give an example, in Peru, the Inca Kola trademark is owned by Corporación Inca Kola Perú S.A., a joint venture between the Coca-Cola Company and the Lindley family, former sole owners of Corporación Inca Kola Perú S.A. and Corporación José R. Lindley S.A. The main parent company of Inca Kola, who own the Inca Kola trademark everywhere but Peru, is the Coca-Cola Company, so that is the company used in the analysis. As an important baseline for measuring progress by leading businesses and governments towards creating a circular economy for plastics, the top 10 parent companies were investigated using the Ellen Macarthur Foundation and the UN Environment Programme(UNEP), The New Plastics Economy Global Commitment 2019 Progress Report. This was used to determine whether the companies were part of the signatory group or not, their annual turnover, ranking and progress.

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THE RESULTS

Over four months, RAW Foundation conducted a total of 199 Quadrats, 22 Beach and Shoreline Transects, and 19 Ocean and Freshwater River Trawls, across five countries in South America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru), including the length of the Amazon River. The team surveyed and recorded 242 datasets from both inland and coastal regions, totalling 6,447 items, of which 734 (11.4%) were branded. The ratio of branded to unbranded items does not necessarily provide a reflection of the true situation, as the majority of the plastic 5,713 (88.6%) had eroded to the point where it was impossible to discern who had produced it. Unlike similar reports that focus on city or coastal areas with higher routine waste collection or beach cleaning levels, the plastic had been in situ for a considerable length of time, especially in remote areas. Nonetheless, the data provides a clear picture of the companies whose branded items were most commonly found. These results are ranked primarily according to widespread distribution. To comply with Break Free From Plastic’s methodology, our priority metric was to examine these companies’ presence across five countries and the Amazon region. As a secondary metric, we also factored in the total number of branded items recorded that were produced by these companies. Together, these ‘Top 5 Global Plastic Polluters’ emerged, reflecting both depth and breadth. To put it simply, these results reveal the companies polluting the most places with the most plastics. A total of 734 branded items were audited. Of the 319 brands which contributed to the total, the Top 50 brands accounted for 84% (excluding data points with only one item) of the total number of branded items collectively. The majority of brands were linked to a small number of parent companies. 60 (9%) brands were unable to be mapped to their parent companies. Of the remaining brands which were mapped to a total of 167 parent companies, the Top 50 parent companies accounted for 73% of the branded items. Over half of which were international, 43% were South American local or domestic and 57% were international.

TOP TYPES OF PLASTIC Overall, the most common type of plastic found were: PET, used in bottles and containers; PP, including LDPE and HDPE; polystyrene, in fast-food packaging, foam coffee cups, other packaging and fishing gear, multilayer films in chips, cake, biscuit and sweets packets, and single-portion sachets.

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OPEN DUMPS AND LANDFILLS A total of 12 open dumps and landfills were surveyed in: Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Bonito in Brazil; Ushuaia and San Carlos de Bariloche in Argentina; Santiago, Antofagasta and San Pedro de Atacama in Chile; La Paz, Cusco and Lima in Peru; and Belem in the Brazilian Amazon. Except for Salvador and Santiago, the majority were open unsanitary landfills, with evidence of open air burning in many, with varying numbers of waste pickers living on them. The majority of solid waste collected by municipalities goes into unsanitary landfill, most of which are not adequately controlled. The fact remains that the vast majority of the waste is not collected and is instead thrown directly onto open land or into rivers by the inhabitants. The geographical remoteness in many places, particularly the Amazon, makes it difficult to put in place a financially viable collection network for recycling plastic materials. As a result, the price paid for recyclable plastic waste is very low, which does not encourage its collection.

TOP 10 PRODUCER POLLUTERS TOP

PERCENTAGE 3% NO OF BRANDS 8 ARGENTINA, CHILE, BOLIVIA, AMAZO

PERCENTAGE 32% NO OF BRANDS 14 BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, CHILE, BOLIVIA, PERU, AMAZON

PERCENTAGE 2% NO OF BRANDS 7 BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, CHILE, BOLIVIA, AMAZON

6 PERCENTAGE 5% NO OF BRANDS 13

PERCENTAGE 3% NO OF BRANDS 6 BOLIVIA, PERU

BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, CHILE, BOLIVIA, PERU, AMAZON

PERCENTAGE 2% NO OF BRANDS 2 BRAZIL, CHILE

PERCENTAGE 4% NO OF BRANDS 18

BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, CHILE

BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, CHILE, BOLIVIA, PERU, AMAZON

TOP 5 INTERNATIONAL

Coca-Cola 32%, PepsiCo 5.0%, NestlÃ© 4%, Heineken 2%, Mondelez International 1%

TOP 5 LOCAL

PERCENTAGE 1% NO OF BRANDS 4

PERCENTAGE 1% NO OF BRANDS 3 ARGENTINA, CHILE, BOLIVIA

Arcor Grupo (ARGENTINA) 3%, ISM Group (PERU) 3%, Carozzi Corp (CHILE) 1.4%, La Cascada (BOLIVIA) 1.1%, CCU (CHILE) 1.0%

PERCENTAGE 1% NO OF BRANDS 2 ARGENTINA, CHILE, BOLIVIA

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

TOP 5 POINTLESS PLASTIC ITEMS

18%

26%

10%

PLASTIC BOTTLES TOPS / RINGS / LABELS

CIGARETTE BUTTS

PLASTIC BAGS PACKETS / WRAPPERS

RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

7% FISHING GEAR

TOP 5 PLASTIC PIECES & FRAGMENTS > 5mm

> 5mm

42%

23%

19%

< 5mm

> 5mm

FRAGMENTS

< 5mm

0.1%

> 5mm

0% < 5mm

FOAM POLYSTYRENE

INC EXPANDED POLYSTYRENE > 5mm

OTHER

< 5mm

> 5mm

THIN FILM PELLETS / NURDLES

< 5mm

0.9%

LINE RAW TRUTH: PLASTIC

TOP PLASTIC PRODUCER POLLUTERS BY COUNTRY

100

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101

102

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103

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AMAZON NO. OF AUDITS

TOTAL PLASTIC AUDITED

830

TOP ITEM DESCRIPTION

Bags, Cups, Cigarette Butts, Drinks Bottles, Fishing Gear, TOP BRANDS BY COUNT OF PLASTIC COLLECTED

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FINDINGS FROM THE JOURNEY

From the rubbish tips of Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, and Ushuaia (at the end of the world) to La Paz, Cusco and Lima – to fly-tipping and the rivers of plastic in the waterless Atacama Desert – to the world's largest salt flats at Uyuni, the sacred waters of Lake Titicaca and the mighty Amazon River, the scale of mismanaged plastic debris, pollution and the proliferation of western brands was staggering. The data we collected was so detailed that we have been able to identify the extent of the impact of individual items and global brands which collectively form the world’s plastic waste. Clearly visible in this tsunami of disposable plastic – the items, logos and images of these multinational consumer brands – show where the responsibility lies. Along with many others, plastic waste from Coca-Cola, Nestlé and PepsiCo – respectively the world’s top-three global plastic polluters – turned up in our samples virtually everywhere. These brands, with their throwaway packaging, are responsible for promoting and perpetuating a modern throwaway culture. Their mass production drives overconsumption across the world – which in turn is overwhelming communities and our planet with pointless plastic pollution. In some respects, our results were not surprising. What was alarming, was the extent of plastic pollution throughout the Amazon – everywhere we went, the myth of a pristine Amazon rainforest was well and truly busted. Our use of plastic in the West is affecting communities in the most remote areas of South America and the Amazon – they don’t want it and, worst of all, they have no way of getting rid of it. Having never relied on plastics traditionally, these communities are struggling with the evergrowing volumes of plastic waste and polluted water.

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Of equal concern, inadequate wastewater treatment means they are now reduced to buying bottled water themselves. While we find that idea deeply disturbing, we are sorry to say we don’t find it surprising. And it doesn’t stop there. The appalling practice of waste trade between industrialised developed and developing economies is exacerbating this disproportionately. The inconvenient truth we have to face is that ‘convenience’ has an unacceptable cost. The situation is out of control – the poorest people and the ecosystems on which we all depend are paying the price. The proliferation of fossil-fuel-plastic, especially single-use, has to STOP. We need to put the brakes on right now. As a major source of the climate-plastic crisis, the time has come to firmly place the responsibility where it truly lies – with the multinational corporations and plastics producers. They must now go beyond pledges to improve recycling and commit to massively reduce the amount of plastic and packaging they produce and sell by 2025. This will mean an end to business models which rely on disposable products and one-way packaging, and the start of a new paradigm. One that will allow the co-creation of alternative clean delivery systems – which typically have reuse and refill at their heart.

CASE STUDY From the smallest indigenous villages to the cities of Manaus and Belém, most Amazon settlements are situated on the banks of a river. The region’s torrential rains, coupled with increasingly frequent and severe floods, washes deluges of plastic waste from the vegetated banks of streams and tributaries directly into the Amazon River.

IQUITOS Luis Vela, founder and naturalist guide for Jungle Reps was born in Iquitos. Known as ‘the gateway to the Amazon’, Iquitos is the largest city of the Peruvian Amazon. Luis’s origins are pure Amazonian. While growing up, he would visit his grandparents who lived far from the city on the upper Marañón River every summer holiday. The Marañón River is the principal or mainstem source of the Amazon River. It was there, that his grandfather taught him the ways of the Amazon Rainforest. They spent their time in dugout canoes and on foot in the forest. His grandfather taught him how to spot and identify the animals and flora. He taught him which plants

were medicinal plants and how to use them. He also learned the history and myths of his Amazonian ancestors. After graduating from high school, it was obvious to Luis what he would do with his life. He wanted to share his knowledge of the Amazon Rainforest with others. Over the last decade, Luis has become acutely aware of the escalating damage that plastic pollution is having on the Amazon and its people. “Ten years ago, we used to be able to swim in the river, we were able to drink the water. Now we can’t because the river is so polluted. Instead, we have no choice, we have to buy bottled water. In most areas, people throw rubbish on the ground without worrying about it, because awareness about plastic is very low. On the river and in the markets, the plastic rubbish is a becoming huge problem. Most people take away or get their meals delivered – in Styrofoam fast-food containers or plastic bags – especially at lunchtime.” Luis thinks that the companies that make the plastic should pay a high tax, and that with this over-profit, they should at least make and give reusable bags to the people that go to the markets for free. He concluded that “It may be a little bit hard, but whoever invented the plastic, may rest in hell.”

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Photo Credit: Instituto Mamirauá

CASE STUDY

BOCA DE MAMIRAUA Ruth Cavalcante Martins and her husband Choca run Pousada Casa do Caboclo, in the tiny community (comunidade) of Boca de Mamirauá, located at the southern end of the remarkable Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve (Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá). Mamirauá was Brazil’s first ‘sustainable development reserve’ and Ruth is the daughter of one of the founders, the late Joaquim Martins. Along with the Brazilian primatologist José Márcio Ayres, who came to study the uakari monkey in the 1980s, the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve was founded by the State of Amazonia in 1990, and taken over by the Brazilian Government with help from international organisations six years later. Located at the confluence of the Solimões and the Japurá Rivers, approximately 70km northwest of the city of Tefé, Mamirauá is a 6,984 square mile (11,240 km2) reserve in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It includes mostly Amazonian varzea (seasonal) rainforest and floodplains inundated by white water rivers. Together with the Amanã Sustainable Development Reserve, the Jaú National Park, and the Biological Reserve Anavilhanas, the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve forms the `Central Amazon Conservation Complex´, which totals an area of about 67,000km2 – nearly the size

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of Ireland. Recognised by the international Ramsar Convention, as a wetland of global importance, as well as a UNESCO World Heritage site, it is part of the second largest block of protected tropical rainforest in the world. Mamirauá includes a constantly changing and evolving mosaic of river channels, lakes, and landforms. The floating (and constantly moving and changing) mats of vegetation typical of the varzea watercourses and rainforest include a significant number of endemic species: pink river dolphins that slide their gleaming dorsal fins out of the water just long enough to emit a sputter of exhalation before disappearing; acrobatic displays of scarlet macaws, looking like poster-paint explosions of red and blue; the rare and radiant red-and-white uakari monkey, whose blazing crimson head lights up the deep forest canopy like a lick of flame; sloths, clinging to treetops, jaguars, manatees, toucans, egrets, butterflies, medicinal plants, giant waterlily pads up to 3m in diameter and giant tarantulas that can grow up to the size of a dinner plate, to name but just a few. One of the most extraordinary aspects of Mamirauá, is that, in the wet season, the river breaks its banks and floods the surrounding forest. It is flooded for up to six months of the year – the high and low water level fluctuations are extraordinary – with a range of between 10-15m at the crest. The only way forward is to switch to a small wooden canoe and paddle through the trees. In the semidarkness, the water laps the buttress roots of

the giant kapok trees, amplifying the rainforests grandeur and mystery. It is immensely biodiverse and sublimely beautiful – that makes it easy to forget all the statistics that mark this out as one of the most threatened regions on the planet – and suppress that niggling question of whether we should be here at all. Boca de Mamirauá is one of 177 communities in Mamirauá, with a population of only 100 people, including 12 children. A victim of low fish stocks, it was abandoned for 15 years until the reserve was established. More recently, Pousada Casa do Caboclo became the first and only authorised alternative to the exclusive luxury Pousada Uacari for travellers visiting the reserve. The whole wooden pousada, that overlooks the Japurá river, is built on stilts. The community have their own rainwater collection cistern for drinking water, solar panels for energy, a small school, and community handicraft shop. Ruth described how the income that comes from selling the handicrafts helps them to buy food and basic materials they need. The Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development (IDSM) – Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá – in Tefé supports the management of the community by conservation and scientific research, while promoting sustainable practices and employment for the local population, including ecotourism. Choca explained that the “Institute used to pick up rubbish from the village – but now we have to dig a hole and burn it at times.” Boca de Mamirauá can only be reached by boat, and small motorised boats and canoes with oars are the community’s chief means of transport. Any organic waste goes to their animals, and as an alternative, Choka and Ruth take back any non-biodegradable

rubbish to Tefé when they can, where it is eventually dumped in a simple open landfill site. Except for the fish they catch, the animals they tend and the food they grow, all other basic materials and goods are acquired from Tefé. The journey takes approximately 1.5hrs. Ruth and Choca have seen a dramatic increase of plastic packaging over the last decade in Tefé, and they are concerned about the rising plastic pollution. The bustling urban area of Tefé now has an intense trade and commerce centre, where it is possible to find products of all kinds, from groceries to clothing to electronics and automobiles. These products come by ferries from Manaus or in smaller boats, by request. Tefé is 633km away from Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas state. To reach the area, there are mainly three options: a one-hour flight from Manaus; 12 hours in a speed boat or 36 hours in a slower riverboat. There are no road connections between Manaus or other cities in the Amazon area to Tefé. The hindering factors of plastic packaging waste management in Tefé include: corruption; mismanagement of contracts; high transportation costs; low number of recycling industries in Manaus; poor collection in urban and rural areas; geographical characteristics and distances of Tefé, communities and Manaus; lack of data and monitoring; packaging sector unwillingness to contribute with collection and municipality infrastructure; lack of continuation of governance; lack of enforcement of policies; and low awareness. Burning and dumping are the only cultural practices available. Distressingly, even in the remote tributaries around Boca de Mamirauá, we found evidence of plastic debris, microplastics and the key Western brand culprits.

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CASE STUDY SANTAREM

Davide Pompermaier (Access to Water and Renewable Energies Coordinator) began working at the Health and Happiness Project (Projeto Saúde e Alegria or PSA) in Santarem over 25 years ago. The Health and Happiness Project is a nonprofit civil initiative, that has been operating in the Brazilian Amazon since 1987, promoting and supporting participatory, integrated and sustainable development that demonstratively improve public policies, quality of life and exercise of citizenship with emphasis on traditional Amazonian populations. PSA currently serves approximately 30,000 residents of rural communities – especially traditional communities, many in socially vulnerable conditions – in Santarém, Belterra, Aveiro and Juruti, cities located in the Western region of the state of Pará. Its activities seek sustainable and integrated community and territorial development in the following areas: territorial, land and environmental planning; social organisation, citizenship and human rights; education, culture, communication and digital inclusion; and health, access to water and sanitation. Access to drinking water has been a major focus of PSA’s work, as it is directly related to health conditions and quality of life of the population. The program implements

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independent water treatment and supply systems, built and managed by the communities themselves. Currently, hybrid technology generates savings and reduces environmental impact thanks to the use of solar energy. The program is carried out in partnership with different organisations and networks, such as the Water + Access Alliance (an initiative of collective impact led by companies), institutes (including the Coca-Cola Institute), and civil society organisations that cooperate to expand access to safe water in a sustainable way in rural communities all over Brazil. Executed by Health and Happiness, the National Rainwater Collection Support Program and other Social Technologies (Program Cisterns) of the Ministry of Citizenship of the Federal Government has as its goal the promotion of access to water for human consumption and food production through the implementation of these simple, low-cost social technologies.

Davide’s origins are Italian. Directly linked to water and sanitation, he considers that the rise of tourism, plastic rubbish, low awareness about plastic and lack of public waste management services are the main problems. In Santarem, municipality waste is collected three times a week, but there is almost no waste separation. In the small communities, there are no public services. “It is incredible how much plastic you find in the small villages” because there are “no public services in the small communities.” Davide understands the problems all too well. The rapid change from natural materials to modern packaging, with the products coming from very far away, means people are continuing to burn or bury their rubbish, just as they have traditionally done. They have no other option. He commented that if people are poor, or have no money, why should these people be expected to take care of the rubbish? Davide considers that the companies who make the products are the ones that need to change. He concluded that “Modernity is coming without instruction – and we don’t need that here”. The Health and Happiness Project has established more than 1 million cisterns in North East Brazil in 12 years, but the problem is the filtering process is very slow for large communities. In 2019, CocaCola donated R$197,013 (REAIS) to the Health and Happiness Project – equivalent to about US $36,000.292 This report regards the donation as a pitiful sum, given the profits the company must

be making, and the damage they are causing in this unique region. In November 2019, under the current Brazilian government, heavily armed police raided the offices of the Health and Happiness Project in Alter do Chão in the Amazon state of Pará, seizing computers and documents. PSA has close links to the Alter do Chão volunteer fire brigade, which in September helped battle the huge wildfires raging through protected areas in this popular tourist region. The four arrested firefighters were members of the volunteer brigade, and one of them worked for PSA. 293 The four activists were released two days later, with strong efforts from social movements, networks and lawyers. According to an article from the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, the “investigation regarding the arrested volunteers of the brigade contains telephone tapping with no evidence of crimes”. A delegation of the National Human Rights Commission created a report for the United Nations and the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the abuse suffered by the activists and by their institution. The organisation ended the year alert to the new challenges imposed by the country’s political context, but always keeping its drive and determination to continue to defend human rights, Brazilian democracy and of socioenvironmental activism for the protection of the Amazon and its communities.294

THE CURRENT COMMITMENT OF COCA-COLA, NESTLÉ AND PEPSICO

Global sales (US$) and Forbes World's Largest Public Companies ranking

COCA-COLA (USA) $37.3 billion #96

The Coca-Cola Company is the largest drinks company in the world.295 An integrated manufacturer, bottler, distributor, retailer, and marketer of nonalcoholic beverages, that operates in most countries across the globe and employs about 86,200 people worldwide. Outside of North America, Coca-Cola operates an extensive franchised distribution system.

Global Coca-Cola is one of the top 10 recognisable brands 296 across the globe, with over 500 brands worldwide, including sparkling soft drinks, water, enhanced water and sports drinks, juice, dairy and plant-based beverages, tea and coffee and energy drinks and water such as Fanta, Sprite, Minute Maid, Powerade, Del Valle, Schweppes, Fuze Tea, Aquarius, Dasani, Glaceau Vitaminwater and Smartwater and Ice Dew. They make 117 billion PET plastic bottles* 60 billion aluminium and steel cans (which include a thin film of plastic), 5.8 billion mixed material juice boxes and 1.7 billion pouches a year. The company posted a net profit of $8.9 billion and total cash returns to shareholders of approximately $8.9 billion in 2019.297

* More than a fifth of the world’s PET bottle output a year.298

Latin America Coca-Cola Latin America includes 39 markets (primarily developing and emerging) with more than 650 million consumers and an industry retail value of $87 billion. Brazil delivered the best performance and grew more than twice the rate of consumer spending.299 The sports and energy drinks market is currently valued at $4 billion, and this market is set to grow with rising income and growing urbanisation. 300 Coca-Cola Brazil invested $25 million to design reusable PET bottles and $400 million in expanding reuse infrastructure, to fulfill its aspiration to scale up reusable packaging to 50% by 2030.301 Brands audited in this report across South America: Coca-Cola, Diet Coke/Coca-Cola Light, Coca-Cola Zero, Fanta, Sprite, Ades, Andina Del Valle, Aquarius water, Benedictino, Cappy, Crystal, Inca Kola, Powerade, San Luis, Simba and Vital. Five of which are bottled water.

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Vision: Craft the brands and choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body and spirit. And done in ways that create a more sustainable business and better shared future that makes a difference in people’s lives, communities and our planet.

Slogan: ‘Refresh the world. Make a difference’ New Plastics Economy Global Commitment Plastic Disclosure and Progress 3.0 million tonnes per annum global volume of primary plastic packaging only. In 2018, 99% of Coca-Cola’s packaging design by weight was reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Coca-Cola has eliminated PVC and PS and plans to eliminate singleuse plastic straws by 2025. in Brazil, the Coca-Cola Company invested $25 million to design reusable PET bottles and $400 million in expanding reuse infrastructure, to fulfill their aspiration to scale up reusable packaging to 50% by 2030 in Brazil.302

Vision: Taking a leadership role in a World Without

Waste by making packaging part of a circular economy. Target: Make all consumer packaging 100% recyclable by 2025. Goals: Aspire to create packaging that contains at least 50% recycled material by 2030 Partner with NGOs around the world to help improve collection.303

NESTLÉ (Switzerland) $93.1 billion #41

Nestlé is the largest food and drinks company in the world, that operates in most countries across the globe and employs about 291,000 people worldwide. The company covers almost every category from baby food, powdered milk, bottled water, breakfast cereals, coffee and tea, confectionery, dairy products, ice cream, frozen food, snacks and pet foods.

Global Nestlé owns around 2,000 recognisable brands worldwide such as Nescafé, Coffee mate, Nesquik, Nestlé Waters, KitKat and Purina, including a lucrative licensing agreement with Starbucks and a main shareholding in L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics company. The company posted a net profit of CHF 12.6 billion ($13.8 billion) and total cash returns to shareholders of approximately CHF 16.9 billion ($18.5 billion) in 2019.304

Latin America Sales in North and Latin America (Zone Americas (AMS)) was CHF 33.1 billion ($36.2. billion) in 2019. Growth in Latin America recorded double-digit growth for Purina PetCare and strong mid singledigit growth in dairy and coffee. Brazil reached mid single-digit growth, supported by stronger sales in dairy, infant nutrition, KitKat and Nescafé. Sales in Chile declined following a challenging trading environment in the fourth quarter.305

New Plastics Economy Global Commitment Plastic Disclosure and Progress 1.7 million tonnes per annum* global volume of primary plastic packaging only. In 2018, 65% of Nestlé’s packaging design by weight was reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Nestlé’s plans to eliminate single-use plastic straws, cutlery and bags, along with PVC, by 2020 and PVDA, PS and ePS by 2022 and Nestlé Brazil is transitioning to paper straws, in addition to rolling out straw-less multi-packs.307

Vision: That none of their packaging, including

plastics, ends up in landfill or as litter, including in oceans, lakes or rivers.308 Target: Make 100% of their packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. Goals: Phase out all plastics that are non-recyclable or hard to recycle products worldwide.309 Invest up to CHF 2 billion to lead the shift from virgin plastics to food-grade recycled plastics and accelerate the development of innovative sustainable packaging.310

Brands audited in this report across South America: Cachantun, D’Onofrio, Eco de Los Andes, Igio, Jalo, Las Frutta, Mega, Milo, Nescafe, Ninho, Nido, Pura Vida / Pure Life, Sandwich de Helada, Super 8, Trencito, Trunulu. Three of which were water.

Mission: Provide consumers with the best tasting,

most nutritious choices in a wide range of food and beverage categories and eating occasions, from morning to night. Vision: Be a leading, competitive, Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company delivering improved shareholder value by being a preferred corporate citizen, preferred employer, preferred supplier selling preferred products. Strategy: Through enhancing quality of life and contributing to a healthier future, they aim to deliver sustainable, industry leading financial performance and earn trust.306

Slogan: ‘Good Food, Good Life’

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PEPSICO (USA) $68.2 billion #87

PepsiCo is the second largest food and drinks company in the world. Through direct-storedelivery (DSD), customer warehouse, distributor networks, retailers and e-commerce platforms they operate in more than 200 countries across the globe and employ about 267,000 people worldwide.

Global

Mission: Create More Smiles with Every Sip and

As the primary drinks competitor to Coca-Cola, PepsiCo makes, markets, distributes and sells around 2,000 leading food, snack and beverage brands including sparkling soft drinks, water, enhanced water and sports drinks, fruit juices, branded dips, crisps, cereals, rice, pasta, mixes and syrups such as Diet Pepsi, Aquafina, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Tropicana, Cheetos Doritos, Lays and Quaker, as well as ready-to-drink tea and coffee products through joint ventures with Unilever (under the Lipton brand name) and Starbucks. The company posted a net operating profit of $10.3 billion and total cash returns to shareholders of approximately $7.5 billion in 2019.311

Vision: Be the Global Leader in Convenient Foods

Latin America

2.3 million tonnes per annum global volume of primary plastic packaging only. In 2018, 77% of their packaging design by weight was reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Plans to eliminate PVC band PVDA by 2020 and single-use plastic straws and PS by 2025. Acquired SodaStream for $3.2 billion, which could lead to an estimated 67 billion plastic bottles being avoided cumulatively through 2025.314

PepsiCo Latin America beverages business operates through 12 major bottlers and comprises of 34 emerging and developing markets including beverages, snacks, cookies, crackers and nutrition bars, which generated $7.4 billion in net revenue in 2018. To double down on their commitment to inclusive recycling they launched ‘Recycling with Purpose’, to promote a circular economy, encourage consumer involvement and education, promote inclusive recycling with civil society organisations, and strengthen the local recycling industry.312 Brands audited in this report across South America: Pepsi, 7 Up, Cheetos, Doritos, Frito Lay, Gatorade, H2 OH!, Lays, Mabels, Socosani, Tava, Toddy and Toddynho. One of which was water.

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Every Bite.

and Beverages by Winning with Purpose.

Strategy: Broaden their portfolios to win locally in convenient foods and beverages, fortify their North American businesses and accelerate international expansion, with disciplined focus on ‘right-to-win’ markets.313

Slogan: ‘For the Love of It’

replaced ‘Live For Now’ in 100 countries (not including the USA).

New Plastics Economy Global Commitment Plastic Disclosure and Progress

Vision: Build a world where plastics need never become waste.315

Target: Design 100% of packaging to be

recyclable, compostable or biodegradable by 2025; Increase recycled content in plastics packaging to 25% by 2025; Reduce 35% of virgin plastic use across the beverage portfolio by 2025; Invest to increase recycling rates in key markets by 2025.

RAW TRUTH FACTOIDS The Top 5 Producer Polluters all create the perception there’s a viable way to recycle most plastic waste into new products – and that’s simply not true. On a vast scale they focus on:

• • • • • •

Infinite unsustainable growth through innovation Increasing operational efficiency and profit margins Increasing global acquisitions and divestitures Marketing materials that refute scientific knowledge and evidence Marketing and selling products as recyclable when the vast majority are not Advocating ‘lightweighting’, ‘recycling’ and litter prevention are adequate solutions when they are not

COCA-COLA • • • • •

Make 91% of their plastic packaging from virgin plastic 317 State they will not stop selling single-use plastic bottles as it would alienate customers and reduce sales Claim their bottles are no longer single use because they can be recycled 318 A new single-use plastic bottle using ocean plastic will not reduce their plastic pollution, and reinforces the myth that single-use plastic can be sustainable 319 The Top Global Producer Polluter in the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) Report 2019 320

NESTLÉ • •

•

Make 98% of their plastic packaging from virgin plastic 321 State that the universal challenge requires a well-orchestrated effort among the private sector, governments, NGOs and citizens to focus on making tangible changes in the ways we live and do business 322 The Second Global Producer Polluter in the BFFP Report 2019

PEPSICO • •

•

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Used 2.2 million tonnes of virgin plastic in 2018 323 Joined the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (of plastic producers, oil companies and other consumer goods companies) to promote beach cleanups and recycling to ensure future demand for petrochemicals to make more plastic The Third Global Producer Polluter in the BFFP Report 2019

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They breach their duty of care by failing to:

• • • • •

Disclose the number of their products that are not recyclable Warn the public about the adverse impacts and known risks and injury Mitigate their contribution to climate and plastic emissions Pursue and adopt clean reuse materials, technologies and business practices Repair or pay for the damage they cause 316

To gain acceptance of the recycling technologies Coca-Cola, Nestlé and PepsiCo promote, the plastics industry has employed multiple high-profile industry alliances, like the American Chemistry Council’s Chemical Recycling Alliance and the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, to position plasticsto-fuel as a technological marvel. PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble have joined the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, a partnership of mostly plastics and petrochemical producers which aims to raise US $1.5 billion to improve recycling and waste management infrastructure and develop recycling technologies, including chemical recycling. These are paltry investments compared to the US $180 billion investment into the expansion of plastic production.324 In contrast, Piplsay surveyed 32,677 Americans to see what they thought about Coca-Cola’s plastic bottles. The results showed 51% of Americans would buy Coke even if the bottles were heavier or came in nonsealable packaging, and 42% of Americans thought Coca-Cola should use packaging such as glass or aluminum for its bottles. The survey also showed that 64% of Americans believe brands like Coca-Cola should be more responsible toward the environment, and only 10% think that the company is doing enough now. In addition, 32% said CocaCola should recycle all of the bottles it makes, and 18% thought the company should use less plastic per bottle.325

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CONCLUSIONS “

Just over a decade is all that remains to stop irreversible damage from climate change. United Nations (UN)

For all the positive benefits fossil-fuel-plastics have added to society, the paradox is that they are also at the heart of a global tragedy which is undeniably harming our earth’s life support systems. We are now facing an existential crisis. A crisis that we cannot drill, dig, buy, build or invest our way out of. Aiming to ‘recover’ an economic system that inherently fuels the climate emission and plastic pollution crisis in order to finance climate and plastic remedial action is totally absurd. Our current system is not ‘broken’ – the system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It can no longer be ‘fixed’. We need a new system. When you consider the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming (SR1.5) and the UNEP Production Gap Report, as well as the Paris Agreement to strengthen the global response to climate change, even a child can see that the climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today’s system. The future of every child has been compromised and there is no place on earth where they will be safe.326

INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND ACTION PLANS A path where more fossil fuels remain where they should be – in the ground – and where we are on the way to carbon neutrality by 2050. That is the only way to limit global temperature rise to the necessary 1.5 degrees by the end of this century. António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, ninth secretary-general of the UN

Existing international declarations, treaties and protocols do not adequately address the entire fossil-fuel-plastic crisis that is impacting and threatening all life in every ecosystem on the planet (air, soil, water and living things) or an international duty of care towards the Earth for future generations. Nor do they provide an adequate legally binding framework to hold states or multinational and national corporations to account to prevent climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, air pollution and ozone layer depletion. An effective global response to the entire problem of fossil-fuel-plastic issue requires the immediate negotiation and implementation of a new international legally binding agreement. Such a treaty would make the fossil-fuel-plastic issue a joint global undertaking, setting clear mandatory responsibilities and penalties to ensure state or multinational and national corporation

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accountability. A key role for the new agreement would be to generate an even greater sense of political urgency among states, and to translate this into action on the ground. Through mandatory compliance measures and reporting requirements, states would be forced to contribute their fair (but differentiated) share towards solving the problem. This review system should be accompanied by an existing or new implementation support architecture aimed at assisting states in efforts to implement the obligations of the treaty. Another critical function is to provide a regular and recurring meeting place for dedicated global discussions on this issue, which is sorely lacking in the majority of current international governance structures. The annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs) under the UNFCCC (and its associated meetings) serves as a case in point. Thus far, it has been by far the most important international forum for discussing climate change, providing political attention, impetus and urgency to national and local levels.

The problem is that the Paris Agreement, or the UN Global Compact and Sustainable Development Goals (which attempt to regulate climate emissions) do not prevent serious harm for the simple reason that are voluntary and cannot be enforced. More than two decades of climate negotiations have not succeeded in preventing climate emissions consistent with the 1.5°C global warming target or further damage to all life on the planet. Nonetheless, this dedicated framework for discussions allows for coordination and synergies, which is important given the fragmentation of other existing international governance structures and initiatives. The new treaty would thus need to serve as a platform for catalysing joint action and pooling of resources, which in turn can make national efforts more effective. A key element of the new treaty may necessitate a roadmap on how to achieve the global goal. Such a roadmap will need to identify exactly what is required from each state in order to achieve the global goal of regenerative and distributive economies by 2030. Regardless of the model chosen, the global goal must be translated into specific national obligations, bearing in mind the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’.327 To avoid waiting 20 years for a new international agreement with reduction targets, reporting, and signatories, the scale and pace of solutions will need to match the scale and pace of emissions. Most importantly, a new treaty should be ambitious enough to actually solve the problem. The concept of a Law of Ecocide creates the only framework to actually prohibit dangerous and damaging actions against the Earth and future generations. Making Ecocide a crime would not only act as a brake on the companies themselves by making the senior executives personally criminally responsible; it would discourage government ministers issuing permits for it, banks from lending on it, investors from backing it and insurers from underwriting it. In fact, the whole infrastructure which silently underpins, and sanctions acts of large-scale environmental destruction would be seriously weakened. The impact of making Ecocide an international crime under the Rome Statute would therefore be significant, especially because the statute applies to non-signatory States. As the history of the Rome Statute, which included an environmental provision in many drafts, seems to support its inclusion, the process would actually be very simple. The 1998 Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), would be amended to include a crime of Ecocide to sit alongside the other four international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression.328

Upon closer examination, the proposed Ecocide provision may appear at odds with several other provisions of the existing Rome Statute and the ICC’s overall focus on humanitarian issues and human rights. Although the recent ICC Prosecutor Policy Paper seems to expand the Court’s consideration of environmental harm, it still only considers these issues in relation to its effects on humans. The anthropocentric focus of the ICC could possibly prevent the court from considering the gravity of harm to the earth itself, independent of its effect on human beings. In which case, the law of Ecocide, would seem most appropriate for consideration by a specialised international court. In addition, a new Ecocide Convention could create more flexible and robust remedies that are not present in the Rome Statute (for example, a global trust or injunctions). A new environmental convention, with a focus on ecosystems per se, could incorporate provisions to protect and recover from the ecological harm. A new Convention could also create separate provisions related to climate change and other harms that may not be easily criminalised.329 Though Ecocide may be criticised for being extremely idealistic, unrealistic and impractical, Polly Higgin’s brave ideas are now vital to create new momentum, and great changes can be accomplished with enough vision and drive. As the examples of William Wilburforce, who fought a seemingly hopeless battle to ban slavery, Raphael Lemkin, who spent his life formulating the crime of genocide and eventually saw it enacted as a UN Convention, or Arthur Galston, the biologist who was so appalled by Agent Orange that he joined a group of scientists who stopped the Vietnam bombings, and created the concept of Ecocide exemplify. For the crime of climate Ecocide, the Stop Ecocide Campaign recognises the prime suspects are the leaders and leadership structures of the largest fossil fuel companies in the world.330 331 In essence, the Law of Ecocide would create a legal duty of care for life on Earth, and would radically shift the balance of power in today’s suicidally destructive global economy.

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REGIONAL STRATEGIES AND NATIONAL GOVERNMENT POLICIES

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The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that seven and a half billion people must pay the price – in the form of a degraded planet – so that a couple of dozen polluting interests can continue to make record profits. It is a great moral failing of our political system that we have allowed this to happen. Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (2019)

False theories of ‘sustainable development’, measured myopically by money-based metrics,

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such as GDP, has culminated in rising social and environmental losses: pollution of air, water and land; destruction of biological diversity; loss of ecosystem services, all exacerbated by global heating, rising sea levels, and massive climate disruptions. These myopic policies have also driven social breakdowns, inequality, poverty, mental and physical illness, addiction, loss of trust in institutions – including media, academia, and science itself – as well as loss of community solidarity. They have also led to the SARS, MERS, HIV/AIDS, influenza, and COVID-19 pandemics of this century. Scientists and environmental activists have warned of the dire consequences of these unsustainable societies and retrogressive value systems for decades, but until the present coronavirus pandemic political and corporate leaders, and other elites, stubbornly resisted these warnings. As a result, widespread revolts against the top-down narrow economic model of globalisation and its male-dominated elites are leading to disruptions of the unsustainable paths of development driven by fossil fuels, nuclear power, militarism, profit, greed, and egocentric leadership. In the process, military budgets are gradually shifting to less expensive, less violent information warfare. International competition for power is currently focused more on social propaganda, persuasion technologies, infiltration and control of the global internet.334 Adding fuel to the flames, many governments continue to overturn or weaken existing national policies that have hitherto protected environmental resilience and permitted civil rights opposition to some degree. The global north is disproportionately to blame, especially former colonial powers – environmental reparations are owed – and carbon offsets simply re-establish colonial frameworks.

“

Most existing regional or national policies do not adequately address the entire fossil-fuelplastic crisis that is impacting and threatening all ecosystem service provisions on the planet or provide a duty of care towards the Earth or the public citizens they were elected to represent. Nor do they provide adequate legally binding policy frameworks to hold multinational and national corporations to account to prevent climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, air pollution and ozone layer depletion. Indeed, most governments remain complicit in maintaining the status quo. Contrary to the step’s regional, national and subnational governments have taken to reduce singleuse plastics, many governments and politicians continue to champion finite, dirty fossil fuel exploration and production through national plans and targets, direct investment, R&D funding, public finance, tax breaks and other subsidies, as opposed to renewable, cleaner wind, solar and tidal energy necessary for a transition to a green economy.

“

The current ambition level shown from the world’s largest economies and governments falls far short of what is needed to protect all ecosystem service provisions on the planet. Across the world, several key governments remain in total denial of the science and most governments remain determined to maintain the vicious status quo of a capitalist economic system based on infinite growth on a finite planet,332 at the expense of the Earth and the public citizens they represent. Beyond the hotly debated positive or negative effects of globalisation, we are where we are, and a widespread rise in obsessive nationalist economic policies (de-globalisation) across the globe, due to narrow self-interests and resource protectionism, is hampering international policy coordination during the global slowdown, to the detriment of unified global cooperation and paradoxically even the world economy at large.333

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. Abraham Lincoln 16th President of the United States

These incendiary government policies and recent political rhetoric championing national companies and domestic industries and workers, at the expense of migrants, imported goods, and foreign workers, has created a perfect global storm. COVID-19 has emphasised health, social, economic and environmental inequalities in every country, even in the remotest regions, around the world and laid bare structural racism in every sphere of life. Both within and outside national boundaries. This web of neglect is putting an unforgiving spotlight on health workers, indigenous tribes and waste-management warriors, particularly waste pickers, inequities on the COVID-19 frontline. These people and informal workers in general often face the question of whether to protect themselves from coronavirus by refraining from work and possibly face starvation, or work and be extremely exposed to the virus. As social, economic and environmental custodians they play an invaluable role during these crucial, difficult transition times. Governments, for their part, must recognise the crucial roles they play and make them a high priority. But not all governments can do it alone. Many developing countries struggle with non-existent or broken waste-management infrastructure, highlighting the need for cooperative multi-stakeholder partnerships and action all along the plastic value chain. To show a commitment to public health and welfare, governments, authorities and businesses need to provide emergency relief and long-term social and economic aid, as well as expanding and accelerating waste-management infrastructure and efforts to end fossil-fuel-plastic waste and pollution. As George Monbiot puts it, if Western governments can suddenly decide to spend billions on containing COVID-19, it shows that state failures to address climate and ecological emergencies have nothing to do with a lack of money and everything to do with a lack of will.335 And as Jonathan Porritt adds, governments could put a halt to all these things, specifically to reduce the risk of future pandemics, with exactly the same kind of urgency and resolve theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve demonstrated in addressing this particular coronavirus pandemic.336 On a national basis, individual countries have a range of laws, civil and criminal, regulating environmental damage, but in the main these too are limited in the protection they provide. National Criminal laws can carry penalties for certain environmental crimes, but most of these are directed at companies rather than individuals, and criminal laws in developing countries are often less robust and less able to protect the environment. National Civil laws need to be instigated by individuals or communities affected

by environmental destruction. However, these individuals and communities are very often poor and without the necessary resources to take such action against wealthy and powerful polluters. Even if corporations are ultimately forced to pay compensation, compensation payments are seen simply as a cost of doing business, and they can continue their ecocidal business practices. Nationally, Ecocide is already recognised as a crime in 10 countries. What is of note however, is that most of the penal codes are set down in code and listed as a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Crime Against Peaceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; under the Rome Statute. Although there are Ecocide laws in place, the effectiveness of these laws depends on a number of factors, including the enforcement of the law, an independent judiciary and respect for the rule of law. Many of the countries with national Ecocide laws in place are ranked high for corruption and low for respect for the rule of law by Transparency International. Thus, for a Law of Ecocide to be effective, it would need to be implemented on an international level, to ensure that the law is effectively enforced.337

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MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

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These companies and their products are substantially responsible for the climate emergency, have collectively delayed national and global action for decades, and can no longer hide behind the smokescreen that consumers are the responsible parties. Richard Heede, the Climate Accountability Institute (2019)

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Beyond any doubt, the interconnected, multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic, petrochemical and Fast-moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs) corporations are directly responsible for driving and causing the multiple emergencies of climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, air pollution and ozone layer depletion, that threatens the future of humanity, and all life in every ecosystem on the planet (air, water, soil and living things). In the process, environmental, social and economic inequality is spiralling out of control. The current ambition level shown from the world’s largest multinational and national corporations falls far short of what is needed to protect all life in every ecosystem on the planet (air, soil, water and living things) on the planet. Across the world, several key multinational fossil-fuelplastic, petrochemical and Fast-moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs) corporations continue to subvert the science, evade culpability or penalty and remain determined to maintain the status quo of short-term profit-driven economic growth for wealthy individuals and corporate shareholders, at the expense of the Earth and the public. Most economists, restrict the use of ‘development’ to a single economic dimension, usually measured in terms of per capita GDP. The huge diversity of human existence is compressed into this linear, quantitative concept and then converted into monetary coefficients. Economists recognise only money and cash flows, ignoring all other forms of fundamental wealth – all ecological, social, and cultural assets.338 Only civil society and consumers currently expose and hold multinational and national corporations to account in the main.

every ecosystem on the planet (air, soil, water and living things) on the planet or provide a duty of care towards the Earth or the public. Nor do they provide adequate corporate frameworks to prevent climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, air pollution and ozone layer depletion. Contrary to the step’s multinational and national corporations have taken to reduce fossil-fuel-plastic pollution, most multinational and national corporations continue to champion nonrenewable fossil fuels and virgin plastic production. Investment in clean renewable technologies, clean reuse and refill systems delivery systems or clean waste management systems, has been pitiful. As corporate action plans, shareholder reports and marketing strategies remain determined to hide the truth to mislead and lay blame on consumers, by focusing on technological improvements, recycling, and social and environmental welfare programs, these corporations doggedly persist in a planned obsolescence dead end road for us all, including themselves.

Most existing multinational and national fossil-fuelplastic, petrochemical and Fast-moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs) corporation strategies do not adequately address the entire fossil-fuel-plastic crisis that is impacting and threatening all life in

Thanks to capitalism, global wealth inequality is still on the rise and businesses rule the world. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 69 are corporations.339 The wealthy individuals and corporate shareholders of these corporations

women in Africa. Billions of hours of underpaid or unpaid care work, mainly done by women and people from ethnic minorities – contributes at least $10.8 trillion (£8.4 trillion) to the global economy each year – which is more than three times the size of the global tech industry.342 At the root of this great divide, neoliberal globalisation, rising authoritarian populism and patriarchal structures – interlaced with racism, sexism, and imperialist sentiments – has further exacerbated social, economic and environmental inequalities worldwide. The super-rich are fuelling the inequality crisis by dodging taxes, driving down wages and using their power to influence politics. It is not ok.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Martin Luther King

At the very top of the economic pyramid trillions of dollars of wealth are in the hands of a very small group of people, predominantly men. According to Oxfam, eight men own as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people of the world – while one in 10 people survive on less than US $2 (£1.50) a day.341 Over half of the world’s population lives on less than US $5.50 (£4.30) a day, and the situation is getting worse. As Oxfam’s new report shows, our flawed sexist economies are fuelling the inequality crisis – enabling a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes – at the expense of ordinary people and particularly poor women and girls. The 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the

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At the expense of people and planet, product and profit have been firmly established without penalty. The growth-forever paradigm continues to serve the major corporations and wealthy individuals well, as it creates conditions under which their wealth will grow fastest. To date, much of the debate has focused on either upstream interventions, such as plastic reduction and substitution, or downstream interventions, such as recycling and disposal. The fossil-fuel-plastic apocalypse we are now facing shows that the promise of recycling has already failed. The new chemical recycling technologies promoted by big brands are no silver bullet either. They will lock us further into a never-ending growth of fossil-fuel-plastic production pollution and we could be waiting years before these become a commercial reality, only to find that they will come with an even higher ecological cost. In the same way, switching to alternative single-use or other chemically ridden materials will not be an adequate response either.343 344 We cannot afford to wait.

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Even if we allow for ambitious increases in recycling and collection and substitution of materials, we still cannot get there unless we freeze plastic production at 2020 levels. Martin Stuchtey, co-founder of SystemIQ (2020)

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compromise the health of all ecosystems and undermine living conditions for all life on the planet, putting our lives, and the lives of their families at risk, to maintain the status quo and keep profits flowing. Highlighting the gap between the superrich and the rest of us, the world’s richest 1% own almost half the world’s wealth. These millionaires – who account for just under only 10% of the world’s adult population today – and control nearly 45% of total global wealth, to the value of US $158.3 trillion (£123 trillion). The USA accounts for 40% of the millionaires worldwide (i.e. 40% of those in the top 1% of global wealth distribution), more than the next nine countries combined: Japan, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, India, Spain, Canada and Switzerland.340 The real source of stress is excessive resource use by roughly the richest 10% of people in the world – backed up by the aspirations of a rapidly growing global middle class seeking to emulate those unsustainable lifestyles. Thanks to the extraordinary scale of global inequality, widespread poverty coexists with dangerous planetary stress.

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Reflecting on COVID-19 in all of this, what the coronavirus crisis is waking us up to is that the separation of health and environmental policy is a dangerous delusion. The health emergency is connected to the fossil-fuel-plastic climate and

pollution emergency, which is connected to the extinction emergency of all species on the planet, including our own. Embedded in many Western religions and philosophies, all emergencies are rooted in a patriarchal, mechanistic, militaristic, anthropocentric world view of humans as separate from and superior to nature while other entities (fossil fuels, animals, plants and so on) are resources to own, manipulate, control and exploit to their own advantage.346 It is also rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed which systematically violates planetary boundaries, ecosystem and species integrity on a finite planet. Nature is sending us a desperate SOS message and time is running out. This time, businesses cannot afford go back to business as usual.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Chief Seattle, chief of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes

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Businesses have a critical role to play, depending on where they exist across the supply chain, and whether they are in high, middle or low-income economies. The climate-plastic pollution crisis can only be resolved when the companies that profit from fossil-fuel-plastic production understand the risks and declare peak oil and peak plastic. But even the rosiest system change projections the Pew Charitable Trusts and SystemIQ developed will be impossible unless virgin plastic production is essentially held flat.345 Substantial reductions in the quantity of plastic products and packaging they produce and sell, particularly single use, will not be enough to tackle the scale of the problem on its own. As a priority, businesses will need to invest and innovate not only for a low-virgin-plastic world, more recyclable and recycled plastic, clean reuse and refill delivery systems and sustainable clean substitute materials, but also clean waste management and clean water infrastructures and technologies to achieve near-zero input of emissions into the environment to mitigate risk, along with government funding mechanisms, investors and financial institutions. The time is now.

Industrial agriculture, industrialised food and drink, especially water, systems and other industrialised products and services based on fossil fuels and toxic chemicals derived from fossil fuels, are directly causing species extinction, climate change, plastic pollution, and the chronic disease catastrophe. Indeed, these new diseases are directly being created because the globalised, industrialised, inefficient food and drink model is invading the ecological habitat of other species and manipulating animals and plants with no respect for their integrity or their health. The illusion of the earth and her beings as raw materials exploited for profit is creating one world connected through disease. As forests are destroyed, as farms become industrial monocultures to produce toxic, nutritionally empty commodities, wrapped in toxic chemically-laden plastics, and diets become degraded through industrial processing with more synthetic chemicals and genetic engineering in labs, everything becomes connected through disease. Our health and the planet’s health are inseparable. The interconnected emergencies call for a holistic systems approach based on reverence and mutual respect. Businesses have a stark choice to make. They can continue to be linked to the worldwide spread of – non-communicable diseases, like heart disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases – and contagious diseases like EBOLA, HIV/AIDS, SARS, SWINE FLU, and COVID-19 – by invading, plundering and polluting the homes of other species and marginalised people, and manipulating plants, animals and people for commercial profit and greed. Or, businesses can choose to be connected to the web of life, for the health and wellbeing of all, by protecting ecosystem diversity, biodiversity, integrity and autopoiesis 347 of all living systems and beings, including humans.348 Global, industrial food and drink systems spread disease. Global, fossil fuel, petrochemical, plastic

systems spread disease. Global monocultures spread disease. Global deforestation spreads disease. Global travel and work norms spread disease. Global wild animal trade and wild animal markets – the ideal mixing bowl – is spreading disease. Experts have been warning for years that most new diseases that have emerged since 1960 come from wild animals. Though the risk of pathogens jumping from animals to humans has always been there, our constant encroachment on the world’s rainforests and other habitats has multiplied those risks many times over.349 In the process, the coronavirus scare has exposed the vulnerability of global supply chains, adding fuel to an already existing backlash away from globalisation, and we are entering a new era of slowbalisation or peak globalisation.350 While COVID-19 has emerged as a game-changer, the pandemic has ushered in a new climate of uncertainty which is fuelling protectionism and playing into nationalist narratives. As governments and businesses have started to favour supply chains to improve domestic security of supply and economic resilience, the structure of economies are being fundamentally altered, new innovations and increasing digitalisation are birthing unintended consequences, existing socio-economic inequalities may be deepening and the relationship between governments, businesses and citizens is being reshaped. This will have a profound and complex effect on societies, economies and the environment and the trajectories of the trends remain uncertain. 351 Now more than ever, it is critical to consider if any of the existing or state of flux strategies and practices are adequate for the challenges ahead. The fact is, we are all intimately interconnected with nature, whether we like it or not. If we don’t take care of nature, we will not be able to take care of ourselves. And as we hurtle towards a sixth mass extinction, we will need to go into this future armed with nature as our strongest ally.

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The challenge is to embody the basic principles of ecology and cultivate sustainable communities to meet genuine human needs where competition is perceived in terms of the origin of the word com-petare: to strive together. Melinda Watson, Handbook of Sustainable Literacy (2009) 352

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Though a growing number of circular economy strategies and techniques – such as aiming for zero-waste manufacturing, selling services instead of products and recovering own-brand goods and materials for refurbishment and reuse – are excellent strategies, the trouble is, they just do not go far enough. There is a clear reason why. Shaped to fit in with existing corporate interests, ‘circular advantage’ strategies to date have typically been: top down, driven by large corporations; in-house, with companies seeking to establish control over their used products; opaque, thanks to patented materials and proprietary technologies; and fragmented into disconnected parts, within and across industries. That is by no means a strong foundation for building a regenerative, let alone a distributive, industrial ecosystem.353 It will involve a shift from waging war against the planet and each other to creating thriving twenty-first

century regenerative and distributive economies. Holonomics presents a new world view where economics and ecology are in harmony. Donut Economics acts as a visual compass and framework for true sustainable development by combining the complementary concepts of planetary and social boundaries to create a safe and just space for humanity to thrive in. First, change the goal, second, see the big picture, third, nurture human nature, fourth, get savvy with systems, fifth, design to distribute, sixth, create to regenerate, seventh, be agnostic about growth.354 Above all do them fast. Address climate differently from the other planetary boundaries, because with all the other boundary conditions, it may be possible for nature to heal them in time. With climate, once a tipping point is reached, there is no turning back.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CONSUMERS It always seems impossible until it’s done. Nelson Mandela

As corporate lobbyists and their captive governments continue to try to wear down public resistance with one false promise after another,

there is no clearer signal that public interest continues to be drowned out by corporate power. In spite of decades of increasing evidence and overwhelming scientific consensus – nothing has changed – the situation has worsened faster than predicted. Modern societies have not managed to decouple economic growth from emissions at the dramatic scale that is now required. While global emissions continue to soar – oceans are rising, pollution is spiralling, species extinction is accelerating – political leaders remain in denial or paralysis as they lurch between laissez-faire and lockdown. In response, a growing movement of civil society and consumer rebellions around the world, calling for transparency, accountability and action, continue to rise, strengthen and provide hope. Hope born of an enduring belief that, on balance, most of us want to live our lives guided by the ‘Golden Rule’ – of treating others as you want to be treated. Hope inspired by millions of people, young and old, from all walks of life, around the world are now actively demanding radical change before it’s too late. Not just pushing ‘the solutions agenda’ harder and harder, but actively supporting the use of civil disobedience, encouraging more and more people to be prepared to break the laws of their land, peacefully and non-violently, to oblige politicians and decision-makers to change laws and corporate decision-makers to change corporate practices before it’s too late.355

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Rebellions are built on hope. Star Wars

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Once regarded mostly as an eyesore or a nuisance, plastic waste and pollution is now widely understood to be a cause of species extinction, ecological devastation, and human health problems in most counties around the world – and the perception of the fossil-fuel-plastic industry continues to spiral down exponentially. Civil society and consumers all over the world are beginning to wake up and react to the raw truth that governments and multinational and national fossil-fuel-plastic corporations remain determined to subvert the science, hide the truth to mislead and lay blame on civil society and consumers, and focus on technological improvements, recycling or social and environmental welfare programs, to maintain short-term profit-driven economic growth at their expense, whilst they evade culpability or penalty. Civil society and consumers continue to expose and confront the multinational corporations that are responsible, understand that we cannot recycle our way out of this climate-plastic pollution mess, and figure out that solutions focused on improving the end of life waste management of plastic won’t work without turning off the tap. Along with a growing realisation that existing social and environmental welfare systems will not adequately address grotesque inequality and ecosystem collapse to meet basic needs. With a dwindling fascination for material wants, the coronavirus has unmasked the underlying weaknesses of a social and economic system in crisis.

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Photo Credit: Crispin Hughes – Panos Pictures / Redux

Extinction Rebellion have revolutionised the global conversation, along with Greta Thunberg and the youth climate strikes, to challenge the status quo of government, business pollutocrats and the media. United behind the science they demand and compel action. As a do-it-together movement – Extinction Rebellion provide a bridging community based on bridging networks to bring together people from different groups – on a global scale. By building a ‘movement of movements’ that focuses on a universal cause, they maximise action and provide a mechanism to minimise and navigate collapse through regeneration. The astonishing power of their self-organised bridging network shines a beacon of hope – and the effectiveness of their logistics and support is impressive and empowering. From @XREducators, @XRUniversities and @ XRFamilies to @AmazonWatch, @FilmmakersXr and @ScientistsX to XR Doctors, XR Policemen, XR Farmers, @RebelsAnimal, XR Jews, XR Lawyers and @EcocideLaw to name a few – Extinction Rebellion are impossible to ignore. They are us. As history has shown us, uncompromising advocacy can lead to significant global change. Abraham Lincoln an out-and-out gradualist, only came to accept the case for outright abolition of slavery in the run-up to the Civil War, finally influenced by the passionate advocacy of abolitionists. As with the campaign to end slavery, the Women’s Suffrage

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movement led by the passionate advocacy and activism of women suffragettes won the right to vote for women around the world. Nevertheless, it too took around 50 years to secure women’s suffrage in the UK, and more like 80 years in the USA. The same old gradualist approaches are no longer fit for purpose. More radical campaigning, specifically designed to change the rules of the game, to persuade people to stop pretending that leisurely incrementalism is any longer an appropriate response as the world gets warmer and the weather gets more violent in front of our eyes, is absolutely necessary.356 Accompanying Extinction Rebellion, the conversation on race and gender inequality is just getting started with the rise of #BlackLivesMatter, #HeForShe and #MeToo campaign and other cultural shifts, as people all across the world are taking a united stand against police violence, cultural inequality and misogyny, in solidarity with the struggle for truth, liberty and justice. All combined with a great awakening that is occurring worldwide, in response to the coronavirus crisis and how it affects us physically, mentally and spiritually. Beyond religion, a growing number of people (particularly women) are reconnecting to a deeper sense of spirituality (‘awe’ and ‘wonder’) in their relationship with the natural world, and a deepening sense of meaning, purpose and wellbeing.

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Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. Arundhati Roy

Across the world, as the coronavirus virus crashed the party, as governments held citizens on coronavirus lockdown, as cars, buses, trains and planes were grounded, and as everyone (bar those working in essential services) was urged to stay at home, finding ways to connect to the natural world became increasingly urgent. The global coronavirus ‘pause’ revealed an unexpected global upside of forced lockdown. Nature had time to heal for a brief while. People had time to stop: to remember clear blue skies and clean rivers, to listen to nature’s music without the usual ambient background noise, to spend time with their families and loved ones, to question the pace and meaning of their lives, and reconnect to their wider social community and nature.

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Photo Credit: A. Rentz / Getty Images

Waves of coronavirus lockdowns continue to compel us to revise the choices made over the past few decades, as the futility of unnecessary travel is acknowledged, as the drive to the supermarket is not always available to our beck and call, and as the material things we took for granted are snatched away, there is a deepening realisation that the Amazon rainforest destruction, the countless floods, increasing famines and heat waves, sea level rise and pandemics are but a consequence of our excessive individualistic lifestyle choices. The multiple crises go right to the heart of who we are and demands a response that cannot be entirely met by confronting the science or committing to political and campaigning action. In many ways, these multiple crises are a spiritual crisis, laying bare the cumulative consequences of allowing ourselves to have become so completely disconnected from each other, from the world around us, and from our basic responsibility for all those who come after us.

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Photo Credit: Onaman Collective

In interrogating that unfortunate legacy, we cannot avoid talking about our most fundamental principles and values, about our vision for the world, and what we have to learn from indigenous people around the world.357 One of the most inspiring manifestations of the fight against the fossil-fuel industry has been the role of indigenous people in protesting against pipelines and other new developments in the USA and South America. Sacredness of the land has been the unifying principle behind these protests, particularly the Standing Rock protests seeking to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), stretching over 1,170 miles through many areas of land held sacred by Native American groups. The Stand With Standing Rock #NoDapl campaign sparked a global movement of people and groups standing in solidarity, as outrage grew, and more facts came out about the disastrous project. A crucial court ruling to shut down the pipeline, if upheld, hailed an historic victory. A recognition of never giving up the fight. Never saying no. Despite the odds. Despite the wealth and power of the opposition. Despite the violence and brutality being thrown at people. The lesson is to never give up hope.

Virtually all indigenous or native cultures have regarded nature or the universe or Mother Earth as the ultimate teacher. At few points in history has the need to rediscover this teacher been greater. Senge et al (2004)

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Exactly the same spirit can be seen in the ancient concept of sumak kawsay (‘good living’), or ‘buen vivir’ in Spanish, in South America. Initially incorporated in Ecuador’s new constitution in 2008 and the Bolivian constitution in 2009, they

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became the first countries in the world to codify ‘the rights of nature’, recognising the inalienable rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish. Buen vivir is based on the belief that true wellbeing is only possible as part of a community. The good of the community is placed above that of the individual. Furthermore, expanded community includes nature, plants, animals, and the Earth. Nature itself must be cared for and respected as a valuable part of the community. The land cannot be owned; it should be honoured and protected. The concept is rooted in a specifically anti-colonial, anticapitalist world view, deeply critical of consumerist and individualistic interpretations of wealth and wellbeing, emphasising instead the importance of living in harmony with the cycles of Mother Earth (or ‘Pachamama’). This has now spread far more widely through South America from the Quechua and Aymara peoples to the Mapuche of Chile and Argentina. Though it has to be acknowledged that although much has been promised in countries like Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia, a lot less has been delivered in practice.358 The Environmental Justice Atlas estimates there are now more than 3,000 conflicts over land and resources worldwide, many of which involve notionally protected indigenous territories. The majority of them are the multinational fossil fuel (oil, gas and coal), and mining corporations.359 More than 28% of the global land area is owned, used or managed by indigenous peoples, including more than 40% of officially protected terrestrial areas.360 These Indigenous Defenders are on the front line, and they are paying a very heavy price for protecting rainforests and other ecosystems. Talking of natural defences, there’s one aspect of a just transition that needs a great deal more attention from scientists, policymakers and Western NGOs: the pressing need to protect indigenous people around the world.361

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Avatar asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other, and us to the Earth. And… to appreciate this miracle of the world that we have right here. James Cameron, Avatar Director (2010)

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Make no mistake about it, the Avatar story is being played out on our planet, in our time, today. The case for this is presented with passion in the essay ‘Avatar is Real’ by the indigenous Peruvian writer Carolos Quiroz who takes us on a tour of the many places where corporate and military forces conspire to undermine or destroy indigenous communities to get at resources, usually oil and usually in rainforests of incredibly beauty: “Avatar is real: Pandora exists in our planet and it’s located in South and Central America, and Africa. The Na’vi peoples, the indigenous peoples in those regions are being displaced and killed right now, in order to extract the natural resources laying underground. The names of places and peoples may be different in the movie, but the facts of reality are almost the same. Distant regions of green, tropical forests rich in beauty are in danger, due to their abundance in unknown treasures hidden behind human’s eyes. In order to get those resources needed by rich countries, multinational corporations are using governments, armed forces, paramilitary and guerrillas to massacre

and displace Indigenous peoples. Sadly, in most cases the US military is involved one way or another.” 362 While showing us a natural world of beauty, the raw truth is that it also forces us to acknowledge and deal with the ‘shadow’ side of life, to bring the fullness of all that we are into the light. It represents our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, that we would like to think we are or could be, and invites us to honour the sacred, connect with spirit and remember our interconnectedness. Talking about spirituality, the word ‘spirit’ is derived from the Latin word ‘spiritus’ meaning ‘breath’, which is the difference between life and death in the basic process of life – in what sages and poets throughout the ages have called the ‘breath of life’. The Yogic concept of pranayama preceded and spawned many Taoist chi-gung methods. Prana, chi, or life force is experienced and conceptualised as the connecting link between matter, life, mind, energy and consciousness. Ancient African, Greek, Indian and Chinese traditions have also long recognised the subtle vital animating and energizing aspects of breathing in concepts such as umoya, psyche, prana and chi, which form the essence of various spiritual traditions. And even Maslow’s hierarchy of survival includes the basic physiological needs that are vital for our survival: breathing, water, sleep and food.363 When you think of it in those terms, the spiritual healing that now needs to occur is simple.

Photo Credit: Scott Olson / Getty Images

There is a growing realisation that explicitly addressing this crisis of disconnection is becoming more and more urgent – practically as well as spiritually – as we realise ‘normal’ is a fairyland to which we can never return. The virus has not gone away, and is likely to keep recurring in waves, and if such a land existed, would we want to live there? The polls consistently suggest we would not. In the UK, a recent survey by BritainThinks found that only 12% of people want life to be ‘exactly as it was before’. A poll at the end of June 2020, commissioned by the nursery provider Bright Horizons, suggested that just 13% of people want to return to working as they did before the lockdown. A YouGov study in the same week revealed that only 6% of us want the same type of economy as we had before the pandemic. Another survey by the same pollsters in April showed only 9% of respondents wanted a return to ‘normal’. It’s rare to see such strong and consistent results on any major issue. In our gut, we do know that the unravelling of ecosystems – that are unspooling at shocking speed – are due to the cumulative, compounding effect of ‘normality’ and the perpetual expansion of consumption. Pushing us towards what scientists warn could be global systemic collapse. The polls on this issue are also clear: we do not want to return to this madness. In the UK, a YouGov survey suggests that eight out of 10 people want the government to prioritise health and wellbeing above economic growth during the pandemic, and six out of 10 would like it to stay that way when (or if) the virus abates. A survey by Ipsos produced a similar result: 58% of British people want a green economic recovery, while 31% disagree. As in all such polls, Britain sits close to the bottom of the range. By and large, the poorer the nation, the greater the weight Photo Credit: Surfers Against Sewage

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its people give to environmental issues. In China, in the same survey, the proportions are 80% and 16%, and in India, 81% and 13%. The more we consume, the more our moral imagination atrophies. But Western governments remain determined to shove us back into ‘hypernormality’ regardless of our wishes, as they suspend tax and regulations and intend to rip up environmental assessments and strike deals – which override parliamentary sovereignty and destroy environmental standards – without public consent. Just as there has never been a normal person, there has never been a normal time. Normality is a concept used to limit our moral imaginations. There is no normal to which we can return or should wish to return. We live in abnormal times. They demand an abnormal response.364 The case for civil disobedience is now overwhelming. Just as the suffragettes found that they had no alternative but to be ‘disorderly’, all else having failed, many interrelated campaigners find they have no alternative but to be disobedient, all else having failed. There’s no right or wrong about any individual course of action. But what we all know now, irrefutably, is that this is literally the last decade in which authentic, grounded hope will be available to anchor everything we can do to serve our only home, families, friends and future generations.365 When it comes to civil society, we underestimate the strength of the interrelated global movements and the speed with which things are changing. Embedded in the whole emergency story, the idea of emergence and a new collective energy – is now taking shape. The good news is that systems thinking tells us that systems have the capacity for sudden change, the ability to flip from one state to another.

Photo Credit: Surfers Against Sewage

In systems thinking, there is a concept of spontaneous emergence of new order. There are basic conditions that are necessary for this to happen. First, you need networks of communication. Typically, these involve feedback loops, as do all living systems. The second condition is openness to outside influence. Next, you need a disturbance from the outside, a piece of news, that travels fast. When information or a disturbance travels, it becomes amplified. And it can be amplified to such an extent that the entire network structure needs to change. This is when a new order emerges. News travels very fast today. People can educate one another and communicate ideas and information very quickly. We are shifting from a machine view of life to one based on networks. A small disturbance can travel through a network, leading to the sudden emergence of new order, rather than a breakdown. This provides hope. A shift from quantitative to qualitative growth. Growth is in the very nature of life, but it is not unlimited. Some things grow while others decline. This is qualitative growth. We need balanced, multifaceted qualitative growth that enhances the quality of life through regenerative activity – through cooperatives and other forms of ownership focused on supporting life, rather than on maximising monetary profits.366

Digital activism has transformed political protest in the last two decades, amid an era marked by rapid technological change. NGOs and people around the world are skilfully using the internet to network with each other, share information, and mobilise their members with unprecedented speed. This became evident dramatically in the recent rapid spread of the popular and largely leaderless uprisings, as well as in their mutual declarations of solidarity, all guided by the vast array of social media that have become critical political tools for communities and organisations. The power of this complex ‘meshwork’ of civil society motivated by a coherent set of values, is truly awesome. We are more connected than we have ever been before and we must take this opportunity to ensure system-wide change. Young people recognise that racial injustice and the climate emergency are inseparable issues, as they continue to join the dots between multiple interrelated inequities and crises. So must everyone else. In every corner of civil society, from individuals to global nonprofit organisations, as well as scientists and many more, we need ‘one’ single unified ‘overarching’ message. It is crunch-time. We need concrete commitments.367

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RAW FOUNDATION’S MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE 6

Our travels around South America, including the length of the Amazon, and our review of the scale and current state-of-play on the entire fossil-fuel-plastic issue have made it abundantly clear that rapid concerted action needs to be taken on every single level: the international framework, the governments, the fossil-fuel-plastic producers, civil society, and us – the consumers. This is why we have set out a manifesto for change, starting with the #TaxPlasticPolluters petition aimed at multinational corporations. We need you to add your voice to urge government to act.

The actions we are urging the United Nations to take: • Enact the Law of Ecocide immediately • Expand the International Criminal Court’s consideration of environmental harm in relation to ecosystems, beyond humanitarian issues and human rights, or establish a specialised international court to avoid any loopholes

The actions we are urging all Governments to take: • Establish Ecocide policies, action plans and targets • Utilise the ‘Donut’ economic model for a green regenerative and distributive economy • Ban and phase-out all single-use plastics by 2025 • End exports of plastic waste to lower-income countries and take responsibility for their plastic reduction • • • • • • • • • •

and recycling domestically Lower-income countries should impose bans on importing any plastic waste to prevent the dumping of waste from high-income countries Prohibit the burning of plastic, in the open, in waste incinerators, in cement kilns, and in plastic-to-fuel operations Make it compulsory for companies to disclose their fossil-fuel-plastic footprint, including their greenhouse gas and water footprint by 2022 Introduce a virgin plastic or an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) tax by 2022 Ringfence the tax and invest in waste clean-up, safe waste management and wastewater systems and clean water infrastructure projects, and technical assistance at home and abroad Halt planned exploration and expansion of fossil fuel production Remove fossil-fuel subsidies, including fiscal support and public finance, which drives the production of virgin plastic Incentivise investment in renewable energy and clean, reuse materials and circular economy solutions for a rapid reuse transition Establish Operation Clean Sweep as mandatory to prevent plastic pellet loss Work in partnership with organisations and waste pickers to establish deposit-return collection and recycling schemes, create safe jobs and restore dignity

The actions we are urging all Multinational fossil-fuel-plastic corporations to take: • Disclose their entire fossil-fuel-plastic footprint, including their greenhouse gas and water footprint by 2022 • Eliminate all single-use plastics 368 by 2025

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• • • • • • •

Prioritise and invest in clean reusable packaging and develop innovative delivery systems to encourage high levels of reuse or high-quality one-for-one recycling Replace plastic products and packaging with clean, reuse materials and circular economy solutions for a rapid reuse transition Invest in waste clean-up, safe waste management and wastewater systems and clean water infrastructure projects, and technical assistance at home and abroad Halt planned expansion of fossil fuel, petrochemical and virgin plastic production Invest in renewable energy and clean, reuse materials and circular economy solutions for a rapid reuse transition Establish Operation Clean Sweep to prevent plastic pellet loss Work in partnership with organisations and waste pickers to establish deposit-return collection and recycling schemes, create safe jobs and restore dignity

The actions we are urging Civil Society and Consumers to take: • First and foremost, sign and share our #TaxPlasticPolluters campaign to call for a tax on virgin plastic and •

• • • • •

single-use plastic producers Refuse single-use plastic products and packaging by: - Cutting out non-essential single-use items like cotton buds, glitter, plastic cups, plates, cutlery and straws - Using reusable and refillable alternatives like water bottles, bags and cups - Buying groceries and toiletries in bulk with less or no packaging or compostable alternatives - Choosing ethical companies who are committed to reducing plastic use Take part in community initiatives to clean up plastic waste, such as litter collections or beach clean-ups Hold companies and governments to account for their responsibility in tackling the fossil-fuel-plastic pollution crisis Demand that multinational corporations take responsibility for the plastic they produce, especially in developing countries which have poor waste management facilities Write to elected representatives (in the UK via www.writetothem.com) about fossil-fuel-plastic pollution and ask them to take action Take action to demand a Law of Ecocide on a global level

Photo Credit: Peter Nıcholls / Reuters

APPENDIX

THE BIGGEST PLASTIC PLAYERS

Global sales (US$) and Forbes World's Largest Public Companies rank

1. Exxon Mobil (USA) $256 billion #13

Exxon Mobil is an oil, gas and chemical company that operates in all major countries of the world and employs about 74,900 people worldwide. The company engages in the exploration, production, and refining of gas and oil (across all geological and geographical environments in six continents) and produces diesel, gasoline, plastics and petrochemicals, among many other products.

2. Dow (USA) $86 billion #572

Dow is a chemical company that operates in about 35 countries and employs about 98,000 people worldwide. The company is a leading supplier of every major polyethylene (PE) resin worldwide and provides additives, adhesives, chemicals, coatings, solvents and specialty polymers for more than 6,000 product groups across the globe.

3. ENI (Italy)

$72.5 billion #468

Eni (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) is a multinational oil and gas company that operates in 73 countries and employs over 32,053 people worldwide. The company engages in the exploration, production, and refining of gas and oil, and is one of the major manufacturers of plastics and rubbers.

4. BASF (Germany) $66.5 billion #107

BASF is a chemical company that operates in more than 200 countries and employs about 117,628 people worldwide. The company provides a large number of chemicals for solvents, plasticizers and glues, as well as raw materials for detergents, plastics, textile fibres, paints and coatings, plant protection and pharmaceuticals.

5. INEOS (UK) $60 billion #336

Ineos (INspec Ethylene Oxide Specialities) is a chemical company that operates in 24 countries and employs 22,000 people worldwide. The company produces plastics, resins and

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intermediates for all major markets including packaging, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, textiles, consumer goods, building & construction, and automotive & transportation.

6. SABIC (Saudi Arabia) $37.3 billion #275

SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries Corporation) is a chemical company, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco $329.8 billion, that operates in more than 40 countries and employs over 40,000 people worldwide. The company produces chemicals, petrochemicals and polymers and is the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s third-largest producer of polyethylene (PE).

7. Lyondell Basell Industries (Netherlands) $34.7 billion #336

LyondellBasell is a chemical company that operates in 18 countries and employs over 19,000 people worldwide. As one of the world's largest plastics, chemical and refining companies, the company provides products and technologies for packaging, electronics, automotive parts, home furnishings, construction materials and biofuels.

8. LG Chemical (South Korea) $24.6 billion #61

LG Chemical is a major manufacturer of chemicals and petrochemicals that operates in 17 countries and employs about 20,162 people worldwide. The company produces polyolefins, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, synthetic rubbers and specialty polymers for a wide range of products, such as automobiles, home appliances, toys, electronic materials, and batteries.

9. LANXESS (Germany) $9.4 billion #61

LANXESS is a specialty chemicals company, as a spin-off of Bayer AG, that operates in 29 countries and employs about 15,441 people worldwide. The company develop, manufacture and market plastics, chemical intermediates, additives and specialty chemicals. Through a joint venture with Saudi Aramco, they are also a leading supplier of synthetic rubber.

10. Chevron Phillips Chemical (USA)

Chevron Phillips Chemical is a petrochemical company, jointly owned by Chevron Corporation and Phillips, that operates in more than 7 countries and employs about 5,000 people worldwide. The company produces ethylene, polymers and specialty chemicals for pipes, synthetic rubber, food containers, packaging, textiles, electronics components and personal care products.369

Latin America

19. Braskem (Brazil)

Global chemical sales: $15.9 billion

Brazilian Braskem is the leading petrochemical company in Latin America. The companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s majority shareholder, the Brazilian industrial conglomerate Odebrecht, recently failed to negotiate a sale of its stake in Braskem to LyondellBasell Industries. Brazilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s government delayed the deal. The government controls the state oil company Petrobras, a Braskem minority shareholder and Odebrecht was a key player in a massive corruption scandal, as was Petrobras. Both are eager to sell off assets to raise cash.370

$9.3 billion #61

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REFERENCES

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130 Water Footprint Calculator (2018) Hydraulic Fracturing and its Impact on Water Resources. www.watercalculator.org/ footprint/fracking-water/

146 Development and Cooperation (2020) Parched and privatised. www.dandc.eu/en/article/chile-faces-serious-watershortages-due-climate-crisis

131 The Nation (2019) The Toxic Consequences of America’s Plastics Boom. www.thenation.com/article/archive/plasticspollution-crisis-fracking-petrochemicals/

147 Americas Quarterly (2020) How Countries Manage Water: Peru. www.americasquarterly.org/article/how-countriesmanage-water-peru/

132 The Center for Public Integrity (2018) Surge of oil and gas flowing to Texas coastline triggers building boom, tensions. https://apps.publicintegrity.org/blowout/texas-oil-gas-boom-portcities/

148 Water.org (2020) Peru’s water and sanitation crisis. https:// water.org/our-impact/where-we-work/peru/

133 New York Times (2020) The Trump Administration Is Reversing 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List. www. nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environmentrollbacks.html 134 New York Times (2020) E.P.A. Limits States’ Power to Oppose Pipelines and Other Energy Projects and The Washington Post (2020) EPA limits states and tribes’ ability to protest pipelines and other energy projects. www.nytimes. com/2020/06/01/climate/trump-clean-water-pipelines.html and www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/06/01/ epa-limits-states-tribes-ability-protest-pipelines-other-energyprojects/ 135 Earth Justice (2020) What the Trump Administration Is Doing to Your Water. https://earthjustice.org/blog/2019october/what-the-trump-administration-is-doing-to-your-water 136 Clean Water Action (2020) We All Live Downstream. www. cleanwateraction.org/2020/01/23/trump%E2%80%99s-dirtywater-rule-another-gift-oil-and-gas

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137 Surfrider (2020) Dirty Water Rule Reverses Decades of Clean Water Protections. www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/ dirty-water-rule-reverses-decades-of-clean-water-protections

155 Vörösmarty, C., Hoekstra, A., Bunnet, S. et al (2015) Fresh water goes global, Science 31 Jul 2015: Vol. 349, Issue 6247, pp. 478-79. https://science.sciencemag.org/ content/349/6247/478.2/tab-pdf

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140 Financial Times (2019) Latin America must kick its addiction to oil-powered development. www.ft.com/content/c2a8df7a2182-11ea-92da-f0c92e957a96

158 CIEL (2020) Pandemic Crisis, Systemic Decline: Why Exploiting the COVID-19 Crisis Will Not Save the Oil, Gas, and Plastic Industries. www.ciel.org/reports/pandemic-crisissystemic-decline/

141 World Resources Institute (2017) No Water, No Power. www. wri.org/blog/2017/06/no-water-no-power 142 World Resources Institute (2020) Domestic Water Use Grew 600% Over the Past 50 Years. www.wri.org/blog/2020/02/ growth-domestic-water-use 143 WHO (2019) Drinking-water fact sheet. www.who.int/newsroom/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water 144 UNEP and IRP (2015) Options for decoupling economic growth from water use and water pollution. Report of the International Resource Panel Working Group on Sustainable Water Management. www.resourcepanel.org/reports/optionsdecoupling-economic-growth-water-use-and-water-pollution 145 World Resources Institute (2019) 17 Countries, Home to One-Quarter of the World’s Population, Face Extremely High Water Stress. www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/17-countries-homeone-quarter-world-population-face-extremely-high-water-stress

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186 Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., and Law, K. L. (2017) Op Cit.

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241 Corcoran, P. L., Moore, C. J., and Jazvac, K. (2013) An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record, GSA Today Article, pp. 4-8. www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/ archive/24/6/article/i1052-5173-24-6-4.htm 242 Break Free from Plastic (2019). Branded: Vol. II Identifying the World’s Top Corporate Plastic Polluters. www. breakfreefromplastic.org/globalbrandauditreport2019/ 243 GAIA (2019), Plastics Exposed: How Waste Assessments and Brand Audits are Helping Philippine Cities Fight Plastic Pollution. www.no-burn.org/wp-content/uploads/Plastics-Exposed-2ndEdition-Online-Version.pdf 244 Eunomia (2019) Analysis of Branded Items found on UK Beaches: Results from Surfers Against Sewage Big Spring Beach Clean: Summit to Sea Brand Audit. www.sas.org.uk/wp-content/ uploads/Analysis-of-Branded-Items-found-on-UK-Beaches-1.pdf 245 Unilever (2019) Our five point plastics plan in the UK and Ireland. www.unilever.co.uk/news/news-and-features/2019/ourfive-point-plastics-plan.html 246 Coca-Cola (2018) A world without waste: Coca-Cola announces ambitious sustainable packaging goal. www. coca-colacompany.com/news/coke-announces-ambitioussustainability-goal 247 Nestlé (2019) website. www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/ environment/answers/tackling-packaging-waste-plastic-bottles Global Business News (2019) and Nestlé wrapper breakthrough hailed in fight against plastic, July 2 2019 www.business-supportnetwork.org/Globalbiz/nestle-wrapper-breakthrough-hailed-infight-against-plastic/ and Environmental Leader (2019), Nestlé Launches Nesquik in Recyclable Paper Pouches, March 7 2019. www.environmentalleader.com/2019/03/nestle-nesquikrecyclable/ 248 Nestlé (2019) Nestlé accelerates action to tackle plastic waste, Jan 15 2019. www.nestle.com/media/pressreleases/ allpressreleases/nestle-action-tackle-plastic-waste 249 Transparency Market Research (2019) Paper straws market: global industry analysis 2013-2018 and forecast 2019-2027 250 European Union (2018) European Commission Life Cycle Inventories of Single Use Plastic Products and their Alternatives. https://ec.europa.eu/environment/enveco/circular_economy/ pdf/studies/DG%20ENV%20Single%20Use%20Plastics%20 LCA%20181213.pdf 251 Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., and Law, K. L. (2017) Op Cit. 252 Chun Z. Yang, C. Z. et al (2011), Most plastic products release estrogenic chemicals: A potential problem that can be solved, Environ Health Perspect., 119 (7): pp 989–996. https://doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1003220 253 New Plastics Economy (2018), Oxo Statement. https:// newplasticseconomy.org/publications/oxo-statement 254 Rollinson, A. and Oladejo, J. (2020). Chemical Recycling: Status, Sustainability, and Environmental Impacts, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). www.no-burn.org/crtechnical-assessment 255 Korol, J. et al (2019) Water Footprint Assessment of Selected Polymers, Polymer Blends, Composites, and Biocomposites for Industrial Application, Polymers · November 2019. DOI: 10.3390/polym11111791

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256 Adapted from Greenpeace (2019) Throwing Away the Future: How Companies Still Have It Wrong on Plastic Pollution “Solutions”. https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4international-stateless/2019/09/8a1d1791-falsesolutions2019. pdf and Green Alliance (2020) Fixing the system: Why a circular economy for all materials is the only way to solve the plastic problem. www.green-alliance.org.uk/Fixing_the_system.php

273 Andrade, M. C. et al (2019) First account of plastic pollution impacting freshwater fishes in the Amazon: Ingestion of plastic debris by piranhas and other serrasalmids with diverse feeding habits, Environmental Pollution 244 (2019) 766e773. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.10.088

257 Mongabay (2020) 10 Facts about the Amazon Rainforest in 2020 and The Amazon Rainforest: The World’s Largest Rainforest. https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazonrainforest-facts.html and https://rainforests.mongabay.com/ amazon/ 258 WWF (2014) State of the Amazon: Ecological Representation in Protected Areas and Indigenous Territories. wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/final_report_11_11_14_1. pdf

275 Nohara, D. et al (2006) Impact of climate change on river discharge projected by multimodel ensemble. J. Hydrometeorol. 2006, 7, 1076−1089.

259 Ibid. 260 WWF (2017) 381 new species discovered in the Amazon. wwf.panda.org/?310013/381-new-species-discovered-in-theAmazon 261 ACTO and COICA (2020). www.otca-oficial.info/amazon/ our_amazon and https://coica.org.ec/ 262 UNDP (2016) The Amazon and Agenda 2030 Policy Paper. www.latinamerica.undp.org/content/rblac/en/home/library/ environment_energy/la-amazonia-y-la-agenda-2030.html 263 Ibid. 264 Medeiros, P. M. et al (2015) Fate of the Amazon River dissolved organic matter in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Global Biogeochem. Cy. 2015, 29, 677−690. https://agupubs. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GB005115 265 Coles, V. J. et al (2013) The pathways and properties of the Amazon River Plume in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean. J. Geophys. Res. Oceans. 2013, 118, 6894−6913. https://agupubs. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2013JC008981 266 FAO (2015) AQUASTAT Transboundary River Basin Overview – Amazon. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Rome, Italy. www.fao.org/aquastat/en/ countries-and-basins/transboundary-river-basins/amazon 267 Schmidt, N. et al (2019) The Amazon River: A Major Source of Organic Plastic Additives to the Tropical North Atlantic? Environmental Science and Technology 53 (13) June 2019. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b01585 268 Lebreton, L. C. M. et al. (2017) River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans. Nat. Commun. 8, 15611. www.nature.com/ articles/ncomms15611.pdf 269 Windsor, F. M. et al. (2019) Op Cit. 270 Giarrizzo, T.et al (2019) Amazonia: The new frontier for plastic pollution. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17(6): 309- 310. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2071 271 Ibid. 272 Pegado, T. et al. (2018) First evidence of microplastic ingestion by fishes from the Amazon River estuary. Mar Pollut Bull 133: 814–21. https://aquaticecology.tamu.edu/ files/2018/11/248_de-Souza-e-Silva-Pegado-et-al-2018-MarPoll-Bull.pdf

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274 Ibid.

276 INPE (2020). http://terrabrasilis.dpi.inpe.br/en/home-page/ 277 Reuters (2020) Fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest surge in July, worst in recent days. www.reuters.com/article/us-brazilenvironment/fires-in-brazils-amazon-rainforest-surge-in-julyworst-in-recent-days-idUSKBN24X3SW 278 Aljazeera (2020) Amazon fires rage in early August as fears of mass blazes mount. www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/ amazon-fires-rage-early-august-fears-mass-blazesmount-200807175836159.html 279 Reporter Brazil (2020) ‘Dia do Fogo’ completa 1 ano sem presos nem indiciados; impunidade incentiva destruição da Amazônia. https://reporterbrasil.org.br/2020/08/dia-do-fogocompleta-1-ano-sem-presos-nem-indiciados-impunidadeincentiva-destruicao-da-amazonia/ 280 Amazon Watch (2019) The Amazon Sacred Headwaters: Indigenous Rainforest “Territories for Life” Under Threat. https://amazonwatch.org/assets/files/2019-12-amazon-sacredheadwaters-report.pdf 281 Amazon Watch (2020) Investing in Amazon Crude. The Network of Global Financiers and Oil Companies Driving the Amazon Toward Collapse. https://amazonwatch.org/assets/ files/2020-investing-in-amazon-crude.pdf 282 Stop the Money Pipeline (2020). https:// stopthemoneypipeline.com/ 283 Fearnside, P.M. (2020) Oil and gas project threatens Brazil’s last great block of Amazon forest (commentary). Mongabay, 9 March 2020. https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/oil-and-gasproject-threatens-brazils-last-great-block-of-amazon-forestcommentary/ 284 Juniper, T. (2018) Rainforest: Dispatches From Earth’s Most Vital Frontlines, Profile Books, London. 285 Amazon Frontlines (2020) No more spills in the Amazon. www.amazonfrontlines.org/oilspill/ 286 Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM) (2020) COMMUNIQUÉ: La REPAM llama a una acción urgente y unificada para evitar una tragedia humanitaria y ambiental (May 18, 2020) and the communiqué of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). https:// redamazonica.org/2020/05/la-repam-llama-a-una-accion-urgentey-unificada/ and www.servindi.org/09/04/2020/covid-19-adviertenposible-acto-genocida-de-pueblos-amazonicos-por-desatencion 287 John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre (2020). Retrieved 24 August 2020. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html 288 Oxfam (2020) Averting Ethnocide: Indigenous peoples and territorial rights in crisis in the face of COVID-19 in Latin America. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/ handle/10546/621028/bp-avoiding-ethnocide-210720-en.pdf

289 New York Times (2020) The Amazon, Giver of Life, Unleashes the Pandemic. www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2020/07/25/world/americas/coronavirus-brazilamazon.html

309 Nestlé (2020) Nestlé Website. www.nestle.com/ sites/default/files/asset-library/documents/media/pressrelease/2019-january/nestle-action-tackle-plastic-wastenegative-list.pdf

290 Juniper, T. (2018) Op Cit.

310 Nestlé (2020) Press Release. www.nestle.com/media/ pressreleases/allpressreleases/nestle-market-food-graderecycled-plastics-launch-fund-packaging-innovation

291 UNEP (2018) Mapping of global plastics value chain and plastics losses to the environment. Op Cit. 292 PSA (2020) Activity Report 2019: Health and Happiness Project - PSA Santarém, December 2019. https://saudeealegria. org.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/SaudeAlegriaRelatorioAnual2019-ENGL_297x210mm_200602-bx.pdf 293 The Guardian (2019) Police raid office of Brazil NGO linked to brigade that helped battle Amazon fires. https://amp. theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/26/brazil-police-raid-ngooffice-amazon-wildfires 294 PSA (2020) Activity Report 2019. Op Cit. 295 Coca-Cola (2020) Website. www.worldofcoca-cola.com/ about-us/coca-cola-beverages-products/ 296 Brand Finance (2019) Global 500 2019: Annual report on the world’s most valuable and strongest brands. https://brandirectory. com/download-report/brand-finance-global-500-2019-preview.pdf

311 PepsiCo (2019) Annual Report. www.pepsico.com/docs/ album/annual-reports/pepsico-inc-2019-annual-report. pdf?sfvrsn=ea470b5_2 312 PepsiCo (2019) PepsiCo Latin America Doubles Down on Its Commitment to Inclusive Recycling by Launching “Recycling with Purpose”, a Program That Will Promote a Circular Economy. www.pepsico.com/news/press-release/pepsico-latin-americadoubles-down-on-its-commitment-to-inclusive-recyclingby-launching-recycling-with-purpose-a-program-that-willpromote-a-circular-economy 313 PepsiCo (2020) PepsiCo Website. www.pepsico.com/about/ mission-and-vision 314 Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2019). Op Cit. 315 PepsiCo (2020) Packaging: Our Approach. www.pepsico. com/sustainability/packaging

297 Coca-Cola (2018) 2018 Business & Sustainability Report. www.cocacolacompany.com/content/dam/journey/us/ en/private/fileassets/pdf/2019/Coca-Cola-Business-andSustainability-Report.pdf

316 Earth Island Institute (2020) Filed Complaint to the Superior Court of the State of California. www.earthisland.org/images/uploads/suits/2020-02-26_Earth_ Island_Complaint_FILED.PDF

298 Guardian (2019) Coca-Cola admits it produces 3m tonnes of plastic packaging a year. www.theguardian.com/ business/2019/mar/14/coca-cola-admits-it-produces-3mtonnes-of-plastic-packaging-a-year

317 Abboud, L. (2019) Can we break our addition to plastic? The future of packaging, FINANCIAL TIMES, Oct. 30, 2019. www. ft.com/content/27cf9734-faa7-11e9-98fd-4d6c20050229

299 Coca-Cola (2020) Investor Overviews. https://investors. coca-colacompany.com/about/segments/latin-america and https://investors.coca-colacompany.com/about/presentations 300 Nasdaq (2017) How Has Coca-Cola Turned Around Its Fortunes in Latin America? www.nasdaq.com/articles/how-hascoca-cola-turned-around-its-fortunes-latin-america-2017-12-14 301 Packaging Europe (2020) Reuse: a closer look at CocaCola Brazil’s unique returnable bottle initiative. https:// packagingeurope.com/coca-cola-brazil-returnable-bottleinitiative/ 302 Ellen Macarthur Foundation (2019) New Plastics Economy Global Commitment Progress Report. Op Cit. 303 Coca-Cola (2020) Coca-Cola Website. www.cocacolacompany.com/sustainable-business/packaging-sustainability 304 Nestlé (2020) Press release. www.nestle.com/media/ mediaeventscalendar/allevents/2019-full-year-results 305 Nestlé (2020) Press release. www.nestle.com/media/ mediaeventscalendar/allevents/2019-full-year-results 306 Nestlé (2020) Nestlé Website. https://www.nestle-esar. com/aboutus/missionvision 307 Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2019). Op Cit. 308 Nestlé (2020) Nestlé Website. www.nestle.com/csv/globalinitiatives/zero-environmental-impact/packaging-plastic-pollution

318 City to Sea (2020) Call out Coke. www.citytosea.org.uk/ call-out-coke/ 319 Coca-Cola (2019) Introducing a World-First: A Coke Bottle Made with Plastic from the Sea. www.coca-colacompany.com/ press-center/press-releases/a-coke-bottle-made-with-plasticfrom-the-sea 320 Break Free from Plastic (2019). Branded: Vol. II Identifying the World’s Top Corporate Plastic Polluters. Op Cit. 321 Leila Abboud (2019) Can we break our addition to plastic? The future of packaging, FINANCIAL TIMES, Oct. 30, 2019. www.ft.com/content/27cf9734-faa7-11e9-98fd4d6c20050229. 322 Fast Company (2020) Disposable plastic is bad for the environment, but is it illegal? Coca-Cola and Pepsi are about to find out. www.fastcompany.com/90472270/disposable-plasticis-bad-for-the-environment-but-is-it-illegal-coca-cola-andpepsi-are-about-to-find-out 323 Pepsico (2019) PepsiCo Accelerates Plastic Waste Reduction Efforts Press Release. www.pepsico.com/news/press-release/pepsico-acceleratesplastic-waste-reduction-efforts09132019 324 Greenpeace (2019) Throwing Away the Future: How Companies Still Have It Wrong on Plastic Pollution “Solutions”. https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-internationalstateless/2019/09/8a1d1791-falsesolutions2019.pdf

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325 Forbes (2020) What Consumers Really Think Of Coca-Cola’s Plastic Bottles. www.forbes.com/sites/ lanabandoim/2020/01/27/what-consumers-really-think-of-cocacolas-plastic-bottles/#230db49d1f19 326 Face the Climate Emergency (2020) Open letter and demands to EU and Global Leaders. https://climateemergencyeu.org/ 327 Principle 7 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.93.I.8 and corrigenda), Volume I: Resolutions adopted by the Conference, resolution 1, annex I. 328 Ecocide Law (2020) What is ecocide? https://ecocidelaw. com/ecocide-law-2/ 329 Greene, A. (2019) The Campaign to Make Ecocide an International Crime: Quixotic Quest or Moral Imperative? Fordham Environmental Law Review, Volume 30, Number 3. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1814&context=elr 330 Stop Ecocide (2020) What is Ecocide? www.stopecocide. earth/what-is-ecocide 331 Earth Law (2020) Climate Ecocide Independent Preliminary Examination is a collaboration between Ecological Defence Integrity and INTERPRT. www.earth-law.org/ and Ecocide Law (2020) What is ecocide? Op Cit. 332 Council on Foreign Relations (2020) Coronavirus: How Are Countries Responding to the Economic Crisis? www.cfr. org/backgrounder/coronavirus-how-are-countries-respondingeconomic-crisis 333 De Bolle, M. and Zettelmeyer, J. (2019) Measuring the Rise of Economic Nationalism Working Paper, Peterson Institute for International Economics. www.piie.com/blogs/realtimeeconomic-issues-watch/rise-economic-nationalism-threatensglobal-cooperation

342 Oxfam (2020) Time to care: unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis. https://oxfamilibrary. openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620928/bp-timeto-care-inequality-200120-en.pdf 343 Greenpeace (2019) Throwing Away the Future: How Companies Still Have It Wrong on Plastic Pollution “Solutions”. Op Cit. 344 Green Alliance (2020) Fixing the System. Op Cit. 345 Bloomberg (2020) Ocean Plastic Pollution Is on Track to Triple By 2040. www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/ plastic-pollution-in-oceans-to-triple-by-2040-harming-climate https://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science. aba9475 346 Haddow, G. D., Bullock, J. A. and Coppola, D. P. (2020) Introduction to Emergency Management 7th edition. www. sciencedirect.com/book/9780128171394/introduction-toemergency-management 347 The term autopoiesis from Greek (auto), meaning ‘self’, and (poiesis), meaning ‘making’ refers to a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself. So, autopoiesis meaning ‘selfmaking’, refers to self-generating living networks. 348 Shiva, V. (2020) Ecological Reflections on the corona virus. www.navdanya.org/bija-refelections/2020/03/18/ecologicalreflections-on-the-corona-virus/ 349 Porrit, J. (2020) Op Cit. 350 New York Times (2020) A Global Outbreak Is Fueling the Backlash to Globalization. www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/ business/coronavirus-globalism.html 351 Foreign Policy (2020) How the World Will Look After the Coronavirus Pandemic. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/20/ world-order-after-coroanvirus-pandemic/

334 Capra, F. and Henderson, H. (2020) Pandemics – Lessons Looking Back From 2050. www.fritjofcapra.net/pandemicslessons-looking-back-from-2050/

352 Watson, M. (2009) ‘Materials Awareness’ in A. Stibe (ed) The Handbook of Sustainable Literacy, Skills for a changing World, Totnes: Green Books Ltd.

335 Monbiot, G. (2020) Titter Post. https://twitter.com/ georgemonbiot/status/1303932628513501184

353 Raworth, K. (2017) Doughnut Economics Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Random House Business Books, London.

336 Porrit, J. (2020) Hope in Hell: A decade to confront the climate emergency. Op Cit.

354 Ibid.

337 Ecocide Law (2020) Existing Ecocide Laws. https:// ecocidelaw.com/the-law/existing-ecocide-laws/

355 Adapted from Porrit, J. (2020) Hope in Hell: A decade to confront the climate emergency. Op Cit.

338 Mandalah (2020) Fritjof Capra Answers Your Questions. https://medium.com/@mandalah_/fritjof-capra-answers-yourquestions-d1c87531b7d0

356 Ibid.

339 Global Justice Now (2018) 69 of the richest 100 entities on the planet are corporations, not governments, figures show. www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2018/oct/17/69-richest-100entities-planet-are-corporations-not-governments-figures-show

358 Ibid.

340 Credit Suisse (2019) Global Wealth Report 2019. www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/ research/publications/global-wealth-report-2019-en.pdf 341 Oxfam (2017) Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world. www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/just-8-men-own-same-

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357 Ibid.

359 Environmental Justice Atlas (2020). https://ejatlas.org/ 360 Garnett, S.T., Burgess, N.D., Fa, J.E. et al. (2018) A spatial overview of the global importance of Indigenous lands for conservation. Nat Sustain 1, 369–374 (2018). https://doi. org/10.1038/s41893-018-0100-6 361 Porrit, J. (2020) Op Cit.

362 Quiroz, C. A. (2010) Avatar is real: Pandora is located in Central and South America and Africa. https://venezuelanalysis. com/analysis/5063 363 Edwards, S. (2006) Experiencing the Meaning of Breathing, Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 6:1, 1-13. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/20797222.2006.11433911 364 Adapted from Monbiot, G. (2020) People Want a Greener, Happier World Now. But our Politicians have Other Ideas, Resiliance. www.resilience.org/stories/2020-07-22/peoplewant-a-greener-happier-world-now-but-our-politicians-haveother-ideas/ 365 Adapted from Porrit, J. (2020). Op Cit. 366 Capra, F. (2014) Systems Thinking and System Change, Great Transformation Initiative. https://greattransition.org/ publication/systems-thinking-and-system-change

368 The government’s proposed definition of single-use plastics is ‘all products that are made wholly or partly of plastic and are typically intended to be used just once and/or for a short period of time before being disposed of.’ HM Treasury (2018) Tackling the plastics problem summary of responses to the call for evidence. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/734837/Plastics_ call_for_evidence_summary_of_responses_web.pdf 369 Forbes (2020) www.forbes.com/companies/ basf/#76f9cac81013 and Polymer Properties Database (2020) https://polymerdatabase.com/Polymer%20Brands/Plastic%20 Manufacturers.html and Company websites. 370 Chemical & Engineering News (2019) C&EN’s Global Top 50 chemical companies of 2018. https://cen.acs.org/business/ finance/CENs-Global-Top-50-chemical/97/i30

367 Capra, F. (2020) The Spirituality of Change-Makers and the Global Civil Society, Transition Consciousness. https:// transitionconsciousness.wordpress.com/2017/02/17/guestarticle-fritjof-capra-the-spirituality-of-changemakers-and-theglobal-civil-society/

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Nile River, Cairo, Egypt Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Zanzibar, Tanzania Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Koshe Open Dump, Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia La Paz, Bolivia Koshe Open Dump, Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia Maracaju en route to Bonito, Brazil Oudtshoorn, South Africa Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Amazon River, Santo Antônio do Içá, Brazil Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Florentino Ameghino, Chubut, Argentina Amazon River, Porto do Tonantins, Brazil Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Japurá River, Boca de Mamirauá, Amazonas, Brazil Japurá River, Boca de Mamirauá, Amazonas, Brazil Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Igarapé do Una River, Belem, Brazil Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Porto de Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil Porto de Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil Porto de Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil Caraíva, Porto Seguro, Brazil Ururaí River, Campos en route to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Uyuni, Bolivia Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia Gabaronne, Botswana Caleta Olivia, Santa Cruz, Argentina En route to Puerto Deseado, Santa Cruz, Argentina Puerto Iguazú, Argentina Ourinhos, en route from São Paulo, Brazil Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil Canal do Mangue, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Tefé River, Tefé, Amazonas, Brazil Japurá River, Boca de Mamirauá, Amazonas, Brazil Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Alter do Chão, Santarém, Pará, Brazil Zarate, Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Alexander Mourant Elizabeth Streeter Alexander Mourant Elizabeth Streeter Alexander Mourant RAW Foundation Alexander Mourant RAW Foundation Alexander Mourant Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation Alexander Mourant RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation RAW Foundation

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RAW Foundation RAW Foundation Alexander Mourant Alexander Mourant RAW Foundation Alexander Mourant Alexander Mourant RAW Foundation RAW Foundation Alexander Mourant RAW Foundation RAW Foundation Alexander Mourant Elizabeth Streeter Alexander Mourant Alexander Mourant Alexander Mourant Alexander Mourant Alexander Mourant Alexander Mourant Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Alexander Mourant RAW Foundation Alexander Mourant Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Instituto Mamirauá RAW Foundation Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation RAW Foundation Elizabeth Streeter Elizabeth Streeter RAW Foundation RAW Foundation

Puerto Flamenco, Chañaral, Atacama, Chile Ushuaia Open Dump, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina En route to Gondar, Ethiopia Hamar Tribe, Omo Valley, Ethiopia Alter do Chão, Santarém, Pará, Brazil Local Ocean Conservation, Watamu, Kenya Garbage City, Cairo, Egypt Belem, Pará, Brazil Cusco Open Landfill, Peru Luxor Open Dump, Egypt San Carlos de Bariloche Open Dump, Argentina Cushamen, Chubut, Argentina Oudtshoorn, South Africa Amazon Riverboat, Brazil Luxor Open Dump, Egypt Oudtshoorn Open Dump, South Africa Koshe Open Dump, Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia Garbage City, Cairo, Egypt Arusha Open Dump, Tanzania Mudi River, Blantyre, Malawi Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Japurá River, Boca de Mamirauá, Amazonas, Brazil Japurá River, Boca de Mamirauá, Amazonas, Brazil Amazon Riverboat, Japurá River, Brazil Amazon River, San Antonio, Peru Amazon River, San Antonio, Peru Tefé River, Tefé, Amazonas, Brazil En route to Luxor, Egypt River Nireco / Lago Nahel Huapi, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina Lake Nubia, Wadi Halfa, Sudan Amazon River, San Francisco, Peru Santos Beach Transect, São Paulo, Brazil Cusco Open Landfill, Peru Santarém, Pará, Brazil Regência Beach Transect, Linhares, Brazil Praia do Cruzeiro Beach Transect, Belem, Pará, Brazil Perequê-Áçu River, Paraty, Brazil Puerto Deseado Open Landfill, Santa Cruz, Argentina San Pedro de Atacama, Chile En route to Villa Alota, Bolivia Ollantaytambo, Peru Paraguaçu River, Cachoeira, Bahia, Brazil Japurá River, Boca de Mamirauá, Amazonas, Brazil Luis Vela, Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Ruth Cavalcante Martins, Boca de Mamirauá, Amazonas, Brazil Comunidade Boca de Mamirauá, Japurá River, Amazonas, Brazil Davide Pompermaie, Projeto Saúde e Alegria, Santarem Amazon Riverboat, Tabatinga, Amazonas, Brazil Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Praça do Relógio, Belem, Brazil Amazon Riverboat, Amazon River, Peru Comunidade Boca de Mamirauá, Japurá River, Brazil Praça do Relógio, Belem, Brazil Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Alter do Chão, Santarém, Pará, Brazil Igarapé do Una River, Belem, Pará, Brazil Brazilaça do Relógio, Belem, Pará, Brazil Alter do Chão, Santarém, Pará, Brazil Patara Beach, Gelemiş, Kaş, Antalya, Turkey Amazon River, Iquitos, Peru Amazon Riverboat, Amazon River, Brazil Comunidade Boca de Mamirauá, Japurá River, Amazonas, Brazil Laguna Blanca, Atacama Desert, Bolivia Ushuaia (End of the World) Open Landfill, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

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