One of the main and already known villains of the oceans is the dumping of garbage in its waters. Most of this garbage is made up of plastic waste which, according to a UN report, accounts for 85% of the waste that ends up in the seas around the planet.
An initiative of a Canadian social enterprise, in partnership with more than 200 global companies, Plastic Bank, has been trying to join efforts to reduce the impacts of this high incidence of plastic dumping in the oceans.
Since its founding in 2013, the company has collected more than 40 million kilograms of plastic waste before it is dumped into the oceans.
All this collected volume, which is equivalent to about 2 billion PET bottles, is sent for recycling. Of the total volume collected, almost two million kilograms are the result of the operation in Brazil, which is equivalent to 97 million plastic bottles.
In 2021 alone, more than one million kilograms of plastic waste were collected in Brazil. The forecast for this year is that the collection will triple and that there will be at least three million kilograms of recycled material.
There are 30,000 collectors working to preserve the oceans and 520 collection points around the world, in countries such as Brazil, Egypt, the Philippines and Indonesia.
The company’s goal is to build ethical recycling ecosystems and reprocess materials to reintroduce them into the supply chain for manufacturing, the so-called circular economy.
For this, the company structures selective collection points and integrates the collectors in a program that offers extra remuneration for the volume of plastic collected.
According to the director of Plastic Bank in Brazil, Helena Pavese, there are more than 10,800 people impacted by the program and 2,700 collectors registered in Brazil alone. Globally, more than 150,000 people benefit from this collection and recycling production chain.
The collector interested in participating in the initiative collects plastic within a radius of up to 50 kilometers from coastal areas and takes the material to a registered collection point (whether it is a recycling cooperative or even a junkyard).
When selling at these locations, Plastic Bank monitors the entire process from collection to sale, through its own application. At the end of the month, each collector receives a bonus of 35 cents on each sale made at one of the registered locations.
According to Pavese, the benefits of this program are not limited to environmental protection, but it is a chain effect that impacts a number of people.
“We transform something that for many is considered as garbage, into something with a monetary value. In addition to this material being reintroduced into the plastic buying and selling chain, it acquires an added value: social, environmental and economic value. It prevents pollution in the oceans, contributes to strengthening coastal communities and generates an economic impact on these communities and their surroundings with the economy generated in these locations”, pointed out the director of the initiative in Brazil, who also adds:
“Through this work we have actually managed to change people’s lives. People who live in very vulnerable conditions and make recycling their livelihood, with a very large environmental and social contribution. These workers have managed to increase their incomes from 40% to 100%.
When the materials reach the final recycling chain, they are transformed into resin – a recycled plastic with social added value.
This resin, this plastic, is sold to large companies that use the material to make packaging for these products with the brand ‘Plástico Social’.
Currently in Brazil, the initiative takes place mainly in Rio de Janeiro, but has already expanded to the states of São Paulo and Espírito Santo.
The intention is that this year the states of the South and Northeast can count on the collection and recycling program.
Disadvantages of plastic dumping into the oceans
According to an analysis by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the volume of plastic in the seas could triple by 2040, with an annual amount between 23 and 37 million tons.
Which means around 50 kg of plastic per meter of coastline worldwide. It is estimated that there are about 14 million tons of microplastics on the seabed.
UNEP estimates also indicate that the losses from the dumping of this waste into the oceans in tourism, fishing, aquaculture and other related activities reached between US$ 6 to US$ 19 billion in 2018.
In 2016, scientists at the World Economic Forum in Davos released a study projecting that unless there is a drastic change in the situation of plastic waste dumps in the seas, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans. Since then, nothing has changed.
Source: CNN Brasil
