Asia waste alarms: WWF Plastic Smart Cities lead urges global treaty to protect Eastern development

14 Dec 2023 --- Asian cities are suffering from mounting pollution because of a lack of policy, law enforcement, investments and infrastructure. WWF’s Plastic Smart Cities (PSC) initiative is working with industry stakeholders to combat the issue but faces resistance from international governments and petrochemical corporations.

WWF set up PSC to support cities and coastal communities by engaging with provincial governments, businesses, social enterprises and communities to take on-ground, scalable actions to stop plastic pollution. 

Yumi Nishikawa, WWF’s Plastic Smart Cities lead, tells Packaging Insights: “We recognize cities as being at the forefront of the waste and plastic crisis. Their leadership and commitment are integral in the fight against the tide of overwhelming waste on this planet.”

“When more cities are empowered to put in place better waste management systems, particularly through sound policies and regulations and innovative, scalable solutions that make sense for residents and for businesses, this can drive positive change on a global scale.” 

Urban pollution 
This year, the World Bank found that 56% of the world’s population — 4.4 billion inhabitants — live in cities. This trend is expected to continue, with the urban population more than doubling its current size by 2050, at which point nearly 70% of people will live in cities. 

Asia produces far less plastic than the West but manages the majority of plastic waste. WWF and the PSC initiative use various pilot projects to prevent and manage plastic waste piling up in urban areas. These projects vary from improving local waste infrastructure to changing consumer and business behavior to enhancing monitoring systems that can help cities accurately understand their choke points, Nishikawa explains. 

“PSC is the pillar where global rules, local solutions and corporate accountability coalesce — cities and coastal centers are where WWF strives to tackle the plastic crisis with a bottom-up approach and where the work we do on driving global policy change and corporate accountability begin to have a real-world impact on the lives of communities.” 

Pricing and policy hurdles 
However, the WWF mission’s key hurdles include the continued high usage of low-value, high-risk and hard-to-recycle plastic products and a lack and fragmentation of policies and incentives for implementing new systems such as reuse and refill, Nishikawa says. 

The low and fluctuating prices of virgin plastic also increase the demand for secondary raw materials and reduce the economic viability of interventions in comparison and a lack of standards and requirements for products to be safely reused, refilled, repaired and recycled, and the use of recycled content. 

Moreover, weak enforcement of existing rules and regulations that ensure environmentally sound management of plastic waste are also critical issues. Most Asian cities do furthermore not allot enough public budget and financing to invest in needed infrastructure and systems. 

PSC answers 
PSC’s work begins with research to understand the city’s environment and capacity through baseline studies on waste and plastic, supporting the city in developing or improving its City Action Plan to tackle plastic pollution and then identifying its goals and priorities. 
Although the West consumes more plastic, the material’s lifetime cost is eight times higher in developing countries, finds WWF.

“The process helps to identify where and how a city can start to tackle their waste problem and develop specific intervention projects,” says Nishikawa. The PSC program now works across over 35 cities in Asia. But the brunt these cities bear is unequal to what they produce, Nishikawa says. 

“Plastic production, disposal and pollution incur high costs on our environment, health and economy. However, these costs are not felt equally. Asia consists of many low- and middle-income countries that are feeling the worst effects of the plastic crisis.” 

“Western — or high-income — countries consume, on average, three times more plastic than low- and middle-income countries. Despite this, the lifetime cost of plastic is eight times higher in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. The cost to low-income countries specifically is ten times that of high-income countries.” 

According to Nishikawa, the role of Western countries in the plastic crisis is two-fold: production from petrochemical industry nations tends to be concentrated in high-income countries, such as the US and Saudi Arabia, and waste exports from Western nations to low income nations such in East Asia. 

“With limited environmental, health and safety regulations, as well as little to no producer accountability, 93% of deaths linked to global plastic production occur in low- and middle-income countries.” 

Inequalities in the plastics system 
Establishing a strong UN Global Plastics Treaty is now essential, Nishikawa says, since “national and voluntary actions have done little to end plastic pollution and remove inequities in the plastic system.” 

In 2019, 353 million tons of plastic waste was generated globally, with 65% going to landfill or incineration. Around 20% of plastic waste evades waste management systems and goes into uncontrolled dumpsites, is burned in open pits, or ends up polluting terrestrial or aquatic environments, she notes. 

“While a lot of progress was made at INC-3, the negotiations ended without an agreement on how to move forward. Over the next 5 months in the lead-up to INC-4, it is important that progressive countries reconvene to work through some of the key measures that will be included in the treaty, including which products, chemicals and polymers will need to be regulated.” 

In 2024, Nishikawa says WWF “hopes to see more innovation and breakthroughs in the [Asian] packaging industry. Increased awareness and changes in behavior when it comes to single-use and multi-layered plastic in Asia is slowly on the rise but is not changing fast enough, and also continues to be more prevalent in certain communities.”

“Unless we are able to drive this change and demand better and environmentally safer packaging, there remains little incentive for policymakers and, particularly, packaging industries, to make the drastic changes we urgently need.”

Nishikawa says Asia’s high usage of low-value, high-risk and hard-to-recycle plastic products will remain prevalent, and so will continued reliance on landfills and the heavier dependency of incineration for end-of-life management in Asia.

“We need to break this toxic cycle, and we hope the finalization and clearer guidance from the outcome of the global plastic treaty at the end of 2024 can be the impetus for the change we have been waiting for.” 

By Louis Gore-Langton