Lor­raine Bar­row

In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs

Plas­tic pol­lu­tion con­tin­ues to be the world’s most press­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sue in the 21 st cen­tu­ry with dis­pos­able plas­tics pol­lut­ing the world’s oceans. As ubiq­ui­tous as the sand, dis­card­ed sin­gle-use plas­tics are per­sis­tent­ly found on al­most every beach, wa­ter­way and in seas across the world, harm­ing ma­rine life through en­tan­gle­ment and in­ges­tion, and pos­ing a se­ri­ous risk to ma­rine ecosys­tems.

The per­ceived cur­rent sta­tus quo of ‘busi­ness-as-usu­al’ can no longer be an op­tion for coun­tries and so the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs, joins the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in ob­serv­ing World En­vi­ron­ment Day 2025 un­der the theme #beat­Plas­tic­sPol­lu­tion in sup­port of end­ing plas­tics pol­lu­tion and adopt­ing a ze­ro-waste lifestyle.

Em­bed­ded in­to every as­pect of mod­ern life, from what we wear, how we trav­el, to what we eat, plas­tic pol­lu­tants can be found in the deep­est re­cess­es of the ocean to the high­est peak of the Hi­malayas to traces of mi­cro-plas­tics found in our blood ac­cord­ing to re­cent med­ical re­ports.

This has dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for hu­man health and the glob­al econ­o­my. Plas­tic pol­lu­tants can con­t­a­m­i­nate food sources and wa­ter pos­ing grave health risks to our well-be­ing. Ac­cord­ing to a 2022 med­ical re­port, mi­cro-plas­tics, de­fined as a break­down of poly­mers and in­dus­tri­al waste, have been de­tect­ed in hu­man breast milk for the first time with med­ical re­searchers great­ly con­cerned over the po­ten­tial health im­pacts for ba­bies.

A study pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2022 found that more than 3,600 chem­i­cals have been de­tect­ed in plas­tic food pack­ag­ing, all of which have es­ca­lat­ed in­to sig­nif­i­cant costs to the en­vi­ron­ment, hu­man health and the econ­o­my.

While this mod­ern-day scourge is wide­ly ac­knowl­edged and dis­cussed at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, plas­tic pol­lu­tion sta­tis­tics are wors­en­ing each year ow­ing to the ex­po­nen­tial growth plas­tic pro­duc­tion. At the glob­al lev­el, a re­cent Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UN­EP) Re­port stat­ed that over 460 mil­lion tonnes of plas­tic is pro­duced every year, tw0-thirds of which are sin­gle-use plas­tics, in­evitably en­ter­ing seas and oceans.

At the re­gion­al lev­el, a re­cent ECLAC re­port in­di­cat­ed that Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean gen­er­at­ed 231 tonnes of waste with near­ly 1 kilo­gram of waste per capi­ta each day, which is high in com­par­i­son to the glob­al av­er­age.

At home in Trinidad and To­ba­go, a 2019 Rochester In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (RIT) Re­port stat­ed that 26,000 tonnes of plas­tic con­tain­ers are dis­card­ed every year, with a large pro­por­tion end­ing up in land­fills and wash­ing ashore on to our beach­es, shore­lines and coastal ar­eas. With­in re­cent years, a re­port by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme on Sus­tain­able Plas­tic Waste Man­age­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, iden­ti­fied this coun­try as the sixth-high­est plas­tic pol­luter in the Caribbean and ranked fifth in the world “for per capi­ta pro­duc­tion of mis­man­aged waste.”

Amidst this es­ca­lat­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sue lies an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­duce plas­tic pol­lu­tion by coun­tries en­dors­ing and adopt­ing the Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my Ap­proach.

What is the Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my Ap­proach? De­fined by the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum as, “an in­dus­tri­al sys­tem that is restora­tive or re­gen­er­a­tive by in­ten­tion and de­sign”, the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my ap­proach favours the de­sign of prod­ucts (in­clu­sive of plas­tics) for dura­bil­i­ty, reusing, re­pur­pos­ing, re­man­u­fac­tur­ing and re­cy­cling com­po­nents and ma­te­ri­als for as long as pos­si­ble. It is an econ­o­my that en­cour­ages many dif­fer­ent us­es for ma­te­ri­als in­stead of dis­card­ing af­ter a sin­gle use. The con­cept of the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my ap­proach can be bet­ter un­der­stood by com­par­ing it to the cur­rent in­dus­tri­al econ­o­my ap­proach, which is dom­i­nat­ed by the lin­ear process­es of pro­duc­ing prod­ucts us­ing raw ma­te­ri­als sell­ing the prod­ucts con­sumers buy­ing and us­ing prod­ucts dis­card­ing prod­ucts af­ter a sin­gle use dump­ing the used prod­uct which ei­ther ends up in a land­fill, il­le­gal dump­site or en­ters the sea.

The lin­ear econ­o­my ap­proach, which is cur­rent­ly used across the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, is of­ten re­ferred to as the take-make-use-dis­card’ or the ‘take-make-con­sume-throw away’ ap­proach, char­ac­terised by high re­source con­sump­tion, waste gen­er­a­tion and high en­vi­ron­ment im­pact.

The cir­cu­lar econ­o­my ap­proach clos­es the loop on the lin­ear ap­proach of ‘take-make-con­sume-throw away’ by re­tain­ing the high­est util­i­ty and val­ue of com­po­nents, ma­te­ri­als and prod­ucts for as long as pos­si­ble. With cir­cu­lar eco­nom­ic ap­proach, waste re­duced con­sid­er­ably to a min­i­mum be­cause all the prod­uct is trans­ferred and used some­where on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis.

Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my

Ap­proach with Plas­tics

A cir­cu­lar econ­o­my ap­proach of plas­tics should hope­ful­ly see man­u­fac­tur­ers and con­sumers move away from the ‘take-make-con­sume-throw away’ mind­set to one en­hanced by re­design­ing prod­ucts that can be re­cy­cled, re­pur­posed and reused. Re­search stud­ies pro­duced by the Ellen McArthur Foun­da­tion in­di­cate that should cir­cu­lar­i­ty be em­braced and adopt­ed, the an­nu­al vol­ume of plas­tics en­ter­ing our oceans can be re­duced by 80 per cent by 2040 with re­duced green­house gas emis­sions by 25 per cent.

Ben­e­fits of the Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my Ap­proach

Po­si­tioned as a dri­ver of in­no­va­tion, the prin­ci­ples of cir­cu­lar­i­ty, such as re­cy­cling, re­man­u­fac­tur­ing, reuse and re­gen­er­a­tion, of­ten de­mand in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to op­ti­mise re­source ef­fi­cien­cy and min­imise waste. This fos­ters a mind­set of cre­ativ­i­ty and prob­lem-solv­ing, lead­ing to the de­vel­op­ment of new busi­ness mod­els and tech­nolo­gies and gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment.

Tran­si­tion­ing to a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my avoids the use of fos­sil fu­els and non-re­new­able en­er­gy which leads to the preser­va­tion of re­new­able re­sources and re­turns valu­able nu­tri­ents to the soil there­by en­hanc­ing re­gen­er­a­tion of ter­res­tri­al and ma­rine ecosys­tems. The ap­proach al­so de­signs out waste and pol­lu­tion, safe­guards en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­duc­tion and con­tributes to cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion through re­duced re­liance on raw ma­te­ri­als re­sult­ing in re­duced green­house gas emis­sions.

This ap­proach is key to achiev­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) as it sup­ports Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 12 – Sus­tain­able Con­sump­tion and Pro­duc­tion; Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 13 – Cli­mate Ac­tion; and, Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal 9 – In­dus­try, In­no­va­tion and In­fra­struc­ture.

The cir­cu­lar econ­o­my ap­proach is gain­ing mo­men­tum in­ter­na­tion­al­ly due to its po­ten­tial to ad­dress the plas­tics pol­lu­tion, pro­mote sus­tain­abil­i­ty and stim­u­late eco­nom­ic growth. While there are sev­er­al note­wor­thy cam­paigns tak­ing place in T&T to re­duce plas­tic pol­lu­tion, one such ini­tia­tive is the Pre­ven­tion of Ma­rine Lit­ter in the Caribbean Sea (PRO­MAR) Project.

The PRO­MAR Project, which is fund­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the En­vi­ron­ment and Nu­clear Safe­ty (BMUV), is be­ing rolled out in sev­er­al Caribbean na­tions of which one is Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Project aims to re­duce waste streams gen­er­at­ed by plas­tic pack­ag­ing and sin­gle-use plas­tics process­es from en­ter­ing the Caribbean Sea.

The In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs re­mains stead­fast in its role as tech­ni­cal part­ner col­lab­o­rat­ing with the im­ple­ment­ing agen­cies of Adel­phi and the Carta­ge­na Sec­re­tari­at in re­duc­ing the flow of sin­gle-use plas­tics and pack­ag­ing from en­ter­ing the sea us­ing cir­cu­lar econ­o­my so­lu­tions.

Some of the ac­tiv­i­ties be­ing un­der­tak­en by the IMA in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Adel­phi and the Carta­ge­na Sec­re­tari­at in­clude im­ple­ment­ing a mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem for waste streams, test­ing and repli­cat­ing Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my so­lu­tions, rais­ing aware­ness of the lit­ter prob­lem among stake­hold­ers, and, pro­mot­ing the con­cept of Ex­tend­ed Pro­duc­er Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at na­tion­al and re­gion­al lev­els.

#beat­Plas­tic­sPol­lu­tion!