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UAE to Ban Single-Use Plastic January 1, 2024

Posted on April 20, 2023April 20, 2023 by dishanth

In one of the world’s most crucial oil pricing regions, single-use plastic will be all but eliminated on January 1, 2024.

In 2017, we came to the island of Bali approximately halfway through a 10-month trip around the world with my family. We had been looking forward to the beaches and surfing for months, but when we arrived, we found them polluted with single-use plastic of all types. Due to a proliferation of corporate peddling of plastic convenience items but no meaningful way to manage trash or recycling in the communities, the local population discarded their waste in local ravines. The waste, flushed out to sea by winter monsoons, was deposited upon the (formerly) pristine beaches.

It is wonderful, therefore, to read that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently announced a ban on single-use plastic items, from cutlery to cigarette butts. The ban is part of an effort to reduce the plastic waste in the world’s oceans, a number generally estimated at around 8 million new tons each year. The announcement brings hope to environmentalists worldwide, showing us that even countries with an economic interest in oil-based plastic production are stepping up to make positive changes.

By banning single-use plastic products, the UAE is taking a big step forward regarding sustainability. Not only will this help reduce the amount of plastic waste in the ocean, but it will also encourage people to make more sustainable choices when they shop or eat out.

According to a 2019 report from the World Bank, the UAE ranked 11th in per capita consumption of single-use plastic. The report states that 11 billion single-use plastic items in the UAE are consumed annually, an average of 4.8kg per person or about 4 million tonnes per year for the entire country. This number contrasts with the global average of 3.25 kilograms per person. For reference, the highest-ranking countries for plastic waste are Japan, with 8 million tonnes and the USA, with 7.2 million tonnes, but a much higher population, resulting in lower per capita rates.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) will ban most single-use plastics starting January 1, 2024. The ban includes everything from food packaging to plastic bottles, cotton sticks, crackers and chip bags, wet wipes, balloons and even balloon sticks that contain plastic. They also include cigarette butts and compostable plastic shopping bags, which while a good idea when used properly, often end up in the environment and can take decades to biodegrade outside a civic composting facility.

The UAE has introduced incentives for businesses to switch to reusable packing. They include subsidies for investments in reusable packaging, tax incentives for companies that reduce their plastic consumption, and grants for research projects on reducing plastic waste. The government has also introduced a new “Plastic Smart” program encouraging citizens to reduce their use of single-use plastics. It also enables businesses to reward customers who bring reusable items.

With these incentives in place, many businesses in the UAE have already begun to take steps to reduce their plastic consumption. For example, many hotels and resorts have started replacing plastic straws with paper or metal alternatives, while others are providing refillable bottles to customers instead of single-use plastic ones.

The immediate environmental benefits of the UAE’s ban on single-use plastics are apparent. By eliminating single-use plastics, the UAE will significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste in the ocean every year. This plastic ban, in turn, will prevent the destruction of marine life and reduce the risk of pollution from microplastics in the food chain and the greenhouse gasses emitted as plastic degrades over time.

The UAE is one of many countries to reduce plastic pollution in recent years. Countries like Canada, China, France, and the UK have also implemented similar bans. With continued effort, single-use plastics can be reduced or eliminated in the coming years.

Source Happy Eco News

Plastic bottle deposit return scheme finally looks set to start in England

Posted on January 24, 2023 by dishanth

The launch of a long awaited deposit return scheme for plastic bottles in England is expected to be announced by the government.

Five years after Michael Gove first promised to bring it in, it is understood ministers will on Friday give the go-ahead for a deposit return scheme (DRS) that will not include glass, according to a report in the Grocer magazine.

The failure to include glass in the scheme, which was a manifesto promise, has been criticised by campaigners as a missed opportunity.

Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), which has campaigned for a DRS to tackle plastic pollution, said: “Whilst we should celebrate action being taken against the scourge of plastic pollution, this much delayed announcement on DRS appears a huge missed opportunity.

“The government has rolled back on its 2019 manifesto commitment to include glass, one of the most environmentally damaging materials. This is frankly nonsensical and puts England at odds with systems being introduced in Scotland and Wales, hindering UK-wide compatibility.”

The introduction of the deposit return scheme will not happen until 2024 – six years after it was announced by the government as a key environmental policy.

The delay has been criticised by SAS, which said it would result in an additional 16bn containers leaching into the environment, choking rivers and seas. “We demand greater ambition from government,” said SAS.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it would be making an announcement on Friday.

A DRS was first announced in 2018 by Gove, the then environment secretary, to cut the litter polluting the land and sea by returning a small cash sum to consumers who return their bottles and cans. It came after years of campaigning and with a warning from Gove that it was “absolutely vital we act now to tackle this threat and curb the millions of plastic bottles a day that go unrecycled”.

The government’s manifesto promise in 2019 was to introduce a deposit return scheme to incentivise people to recycle plastic and glass and the first consultation was met with a high level of support for the scheme.

Across the UK, consumers go through an estimated 13bn plastic drinks bottles a year. Only 7.5bn are recycled. The remaining 5.5bn are landfilled, littered or incinerated.

Scotland’s DRS will begin in August this year and will include glass, plastic and cans. The public will pay a 20p deposit when they buy a drink that comes in a single-use container made of PET plastic, steel and aluminium, or glass. They will get their money back when they return the empty container to one of tens of thousands of return points.

Campaigners urged the government to reconsider the exclusion of glass from the English DRS. Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet, said: “We are set to disincentivise consumer recycling of what would otherwise be perfectly recyclable containers like glass bottles.

“An all-in deposit return scheme across all four nations of the UK is the only way we will radically reduce our dependence on natural resources. We cannot continue to ignore the UK’s chronically low levels of glass recycling. We need urgent systems change that do not create perverse incentives in the market and leave our environment open to perpetual degradation.”

Source The Guardian

Plastic pollution: This tiny worm can dissolve plastic bags with its drool

Posted on October 13, 2022October 17, 2022 by dishanth

A tiny wax worm can dissolve plastic pollution with its saliva, new research has found.

Plastic can take up to 1000 years to decompose, clogging up landfill and polluting the ocean.

But climate campaigners have recruited an unlikely new ally in their fight to reduce this waste – wax worms, the moth larvae that infest beehives.

The worm’s saliva contains two enzymes that can degrade polyethylene, a tough material used in plastic bags and bottles.

According to Spanish researchers, one hour’s exposure to the worm’s saliva degrades the material as much as years of weathering.

The impetus for the study came in 2017 when a scientist – and amateur beekeeper – was cleaning out an infested hive.

The larvae had started eating holes in a plastic refuse bag.

“To the best of our knowledge, these enzymes (in the saliva) are the first animal enzymes with this capability, opening the way to potential solutions for plastic waste management through bio-recycling/up-cycling,” the research report – published in Nature this month – reads.

Scientists have discovered that enzymes in wax worm saliva dissolve plastic

How bad is plastic for the planet?

Humans have littered the entire planet with damaging plastic debris.

The hardy material takes millions of years to decompose. Of the 10 billion tonnes of plastic that have ever been created, a whopping 6 billion sits in landfill sites or pollute the environment.

This has a devastating impact on wildlife – more than 90 per cent of the world’s seabirds have plastic in their guts.

Recycling can help mitigate some of the worst effects of plastics. Yet a 2022 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that just 9 per cent of plastic is successfully recycled.

This is where the wax worms come in. They can help dissolve polyethylene, which accounts for roughly 30 per cent of plastic production worldwide.

Wax worms aren’t the only solution that scientists have come up with to combat our ever-growing plastic problem.

Plastic-munching superworms

From eating less meat to buying local ingredients, there are lots of ways to make environmentally friendly food choices. And according to a 2022 Australian study, certain types of worms can adopt an eco-diet too – but not in the way you might think.

Queensland scientists have discovered that the Zophobas morio – a type of beetle larvae commonly known as a superworm – can survive on polystyrene alone.

Over three weeks, the research team fed three groups of superworms different diets.

The worms on the plastic diet acted like “mini recycling plants,” lead author Dr Chris Rinke explains, destroying the plastic with their unique gut enzymes.

They even put on weight in the process.

“[The superworms] shred the polystyrene with their mouths and then fed it to the bacteria in their gut,” says Dr Rinke.

If scientists can work out how to grow the gut enzyme in a lab, they could use it to dissolve plastics on a mass scale, forming these byproducts into bioplastics.

“We can then look into how we can upscale this process to a level required for an entire recycling plant,” said Co-author of the research, PhD candidate Jiarui Sun.

Given that polystyrene accounts for around one-tenth of all non-fibrous plastics, this would be a significant breakthrough.

Source euronews.green

InterContinental Hotels Group turning plastic bottles into plush hotel bedding

Posted on November 23, 2020 by dishanth

Hospitality businesses have a special opportunity when it comes to driving positive change. Whether you’re a restaurant owner or run thousands of hotels like InterContinental Hotel Group, hospitality companies work in a connected, people industry and exist at the heart of communities — employing local people and operating with a network of partners and suppliers.

IHG is uniquely positioned to be able to make a difference because of its scale and, importantly, this is all underpinned by the company’s culture of doing business responsibly, which guides our decisions and how we work.

IHG has almost 6,000 hotels around the world and the vast majority — around 80 percent — are franchised, which presents a unique challenge when it comes to implementing change at scale. It means the IHG team is in constant dialogue with our hotel owners, who operate and finance these hotels, so that we can work with them to drive sustainable change. We also know that our guests and colleagues are hugely passionate about how we behave towards the planet and our communities, so this makes engagement, collaboration and partnership key to getting things done.

For example, when it comes to minimizing IHG’s waste footprint, our teams consider each stage of the hotel lifecycle to find solutions that can be amplified and rolled out at scale. We do this in a way that supports the hotel’s operational needs, while enhancing the guest experience wherever we can.

Today’s technology plays an important role in making such changes because it enables IHG to identify suppliers and partners that have developed innovative solutions to find new ways to embed sustainability into their products, and in turn create solutions that help us reduce our environmental footprint, drive a more circular approach and produce an even better experience for our guests.

IHG has around 400,000 colleagues around the world. Source: IHG.

One great supplier relationship that illustrates this at IHG is with The Fine Bedding Company, which is working with us to help minimize the global plastic waste footprint through our growing voco hotels brand.

The supplier takes single-use plastic bottles that have been discarded and repurposes them in its eco factory to become plush, cozy filling inside the duvets and pillows of our voco guest rooms all over the world. In fact, more than 3 million water bottles have been diverted from landfill and into our bedding to date. When you think of the scale this innovation ultimately can create over time, it’s a huge amount of waste that’s being repurposed and also helping to drive more circular operations for our hotels.

Filling is extruded and spun from recycled plastic bottles. Source: The Fine Bedding Co.

Since forming this partnership, we have received great feedback from our guests, who say that this initiative not only provides them with a great sleep experience, but knowing it is good for the planet brings extra value to their stay.

For us, it’s exciting that consumers are becoming more aware of sustainable innovations such as these, and we are seeing uptake grow across our hotels, with our owners showing increasing interest. It’s a great opportunity for the suppliers themselves, too. Claire Watkin, managing director at The Fine Bedding Company, says working with IHG has many benefits for her business.

“At The Fine Bedding Company, our aspiration is to find ways to recycle products at the end of their life so that they can be truly circular, and so this bedding was really exciting for us,” Watkin said. “We worked in partnership with IHG to create something that had never been done before in the hospitality sector, and it achieved many firsts: It was fully traceable with Global Recycling Standard, it used more sustainable cotton and it was produced in our zero-waste factory that uses 100 percent renewable energy. A few years on, it’s great to see the positive feedback from the guests at voco hotels on both the quality and innovative nature of the product. For us, it has set a new standard in sustainability of bedding, which we look forward to seeing roll out across other brands as it becomes more mainstream.”

The Fine Bedding Company’s Nimbus Smartdown collection. Source: The Fine Bedding Co.

As we begin to recover from the impact of COVID-19, the focus must remain on the long-term sustainability agenda, ensuring we adapt to a new normal in a way that continues to drive circular economy practices and protects environments and communities.

This makes partnerships such as the one we have with The Fine Bedding Company more important than ever. If we want to emerge from the events of this year in a stronger position that helps protect the planet, it’s important we share ideas and collaborate to find solutions. You can’t isolate a business from its value chain, so working together towards common goals becomes even more central to moving forward.

By Sopan Shah

Source Green Biz

Norway is now recycling up to 97% of it’s plastic bottles thanks to their regulations.

Posted on September 20, 2020September 20, 2020 by dishanth

It’s no longer news anymore – plastic is a menace and we need to deal with it. As of now, tons of plastic are being produced all over the world, and as a consequence, tons are getting disposed of too. It needs to be lowered if we want this planet to survive. But it’s not an easy task. While we might say pollution is bad and we need to put a stop to it, we can’t say the same about plastic. This cheap product has played a major role in the advancement of human civilizations and we still haven’t found cheaper and feasible replacements for plastic. Ideas are floating out there but nothing concrete has manifested yet. The best way we can deal with this issue is by recycling plastic.

Norway understood this problem a long time ago. The country which almost always stays among the top 10 ‘happiest countries’ in the world knew that plastic is malleable, light, cheap, and extremely useful to simply ban it. Rather, they could incentivize people and companies in such a way that encourages them to dispose of plastic in a better way so that it could be recycled.

The plan was simple. Since 2014, the government of Norway imposed an environmental tax on every plastic importer and producer, marked at 40 cents per bottle. Now, these producers are generating millions of bottles per year – so the math makes the final tax amount huge. But the Norway government also offers a way out. If a company engages in active recycling of plastic products, then the tax starts to get lower. Once the company recycles about 95% of the plastic, the tax is completely dropped.

The Norway government has not forgotten the role of citizens either. Citizens play a major role in both the creation of plastic waste as well as its management. So, it is up to the government to encourage them to do the right thing. In Norway, when a citizen buys a bottled product, they have to pay a ‘mortgage’. Of course, they can get back their mortgage – they just have to deposit the used bottle in any one of the 3,700 mortgage machines found in convenience stores and markets all over the country. These mortgage machines analyze the barcode and then the bottle is registered. It gives a coupon back to the customer.

It is quite an efficient system which is controlled by a non-profit organization called Infinitum. Quite surprisingly, this organization is owned by organizations and companies that are in the beverage industry and produce plastic themselves. So, they are pretty responsible about it. If any international importer wants to sell their plastic products in Norway, they have to sign an agreement with the organization and join them.

It’s not like this is the only country that is taking such a step towards plastic waste creation. Similar schemes are also present in Germany as well as in California, along with some other states in the US. But this system has been the most effective, as mentioned in Positive News by Stan Nerland, the director of logistics at Infinitum. As of 2017, it was seen that Infinitum had collected above 591 million plastic bottles. The CEO of the organization, Kjell Olav Meldrum, mentioned to The Guardian back in 2018 that because of their effective system, many of the bottles circulating in the hands of the people of Norway are actually made of recycled plastic. About 97% of the plastic present in Norway is being recycled!

The situation of plastic in the world as of now is dire. About 8 million tons of plastic is being released into the ocean every year and if this rate continues, then by 2050, plastic products will be outweighing fish population in the water bodies. Norway’s model provides hope. And numerous countries are also looking forward to start similar models. The UK wants to set up such a scheme where consumers are rewarded for their part in recycling plastic. Representatives from countries like US, China, Canada, France, Croatia, Kazakhstan, India and others have visited Norway to gain more insight.

If the countries join together to help us in this fight, then we still have some hope of winning this war against plastic. But we should not forget our individual roles in this war and remain conscious of the waste we are generating.

By Mayukh Saha

Source: Truth Theory