?️Did you know that e-waste and some plastics contain Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), dangerous for your health and the planet?

?️ISLANDS is supporting 33 SIDS to improve waste management & recycling practices.

?In August 2022 ISLANDS supported a Study Tour to Australia for Pacific SIDS representatives to learn about and share innovations on waste management in the Pacific.

How can we transform waste into something new and useful?
? Watch the reel to find out! https://youtu.be/huh-uYiytVI

Just in case we still had any doubts... --> A new study found that plastics cause wide-ranging health issues from cancer to birth defects.

Published in the medical journal Annals of Global Health, the article states that “Plastics’ harms are further magnified by low rates of recovery and recycling and by the long persistence of plastic waste in the environment.”

Protecting people and the environment is exactly why ISLANDS works on preventing plastic pollution and supporting plastic recycling and management practices in SIDS.

Hello there everyone! My name is Ashawnté Russell and I am super excited to be apart of this community!

During the course of this month, I have been actively working to facilitate as many youth led initiatives as possible. Earlier this month, alongside the members and executive board of the University of The Bahamas' Environmental Club, we hosted our first beach clean up!

In comparison to our last clean up, the areas were littered with a significantly lower amount of trash and plastics, so I instead of one beach, we cleaned a total of 3!

We will be having another clean up soon and we'll definitely share more about it!

Community Spirit to bring people together to keep Savai'i, Samoa Clean.

Reimagining the plastic life cycle and waste management requires new and innovative means to redesign, re-cycle, and re-distribute plastics across a variety of industries.
The fashion and clothing industry is one area that has increasingly recognized plastic use and is starting to rethink the the contribution to the problem and opportunities for innovative solutions--all of which we need to reduce the overall consumption, use, disposal and transport of plastic waste to ISLANDS countries and communities.
The designer Tom Ford along with the nonprofit Lonely Whale powered a global competition to source and scale marine-safe and biologically degradable alternatives to traditional thin-film plastic made from fossil fuels--of which the fashion and beverage industry contributes to massively.
Winners were announced after rigorous testing across environmental, economic and social metrics for sustainability, with testing done in the Caribbean and elsewhere. And all of the options include seaweed as base to the alternatives of thin-film plastic.
The winners are:
Sway — a US-based company offering seaweed-based, home-compostable replacements for regenerative thin-film plastic packaging at scale;

Zerocircle — an India-based company making wildlife and ocean-safe packaging materials from locally cultivated seaweed that will dissolve harmlessly in the ocean after use;

Notpla — a London-based startup inspired by the way nature encapsulates liquids, on a mission to make plastic waste disappear by pioneering natural-membrane packaging that uses seaweed as an alternative to single-use plastic.

Check out the article and learn more about the organizations redesigning for biodegradable plastic.

And…We are out!!

Today, ISLANDS is launching #ISLANDSVoices – a ISLANDS produced video series aiming to spotlight and share waste & chemicals stories from SIDS around the world!

This first video is dedicated to the winner of the ISLANDS Call to Action on Plastics, Leon Labuga, who shared the story of the Solomon Islands 2022 Clean-up Day. Congratulations Leon!

Quick reminder that the Gender Equality Call to Action is still open, so don’t miss the opportunity to submit your story!

Have you heard of HS-3915? It's the code used by the UN data on global waste trade to indicate the total volume of plastics traded globally, comprised of plastic waste, parings, and scrap.

The new International Pollutant Elimination Network (IPEN) report argues that this HS-3915 category of the UN data on global waste trade misses out on the substantial portion of plastics waste, since it excludes plastic components in other waste categories.

Discarded clothing is one example - of which 60-70% are made out of some kind of plastics - and paper bales another - which may contain 5-30% of plastics which must be removed and discarded before recycling.

As a whole, such 'hidden figures' in global waste trade data can lead to a whopping 1.8 million metric tonnes of underestimation of plastic waste, annually. Majority of these arise from the streams of waste exported from the developed countries like the US, UK, Japan, and EU countries to developing countries, paralysing their waste management infrastructure.

As the communities in SIDS and beyond focus on equipping themselves with better waste management systems, how can we match this effort by more efficiently tracking the global waste streams, holding the waste exporting countries accountable?

The scale and rapidly increasing volume of marine litter and plastic pollution is putting the health of all the world’s oceans and seas at risk. Despite current initiatives and efforts, the amount of plastics in the ocean has been estimated to be around 75-199 million tons and this projection could nearly triple to 23-37 million tons per year by 2040.

This is according to the ‘Global Assessment of Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution-From Pollution to Solution ’ conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme in 2021

To raise public awareness, SWAP produced a multi-lingual (English, French, Fijian, Samoan, Tongan, Bislama, Pidjgin) short film on how plastics and micro-plastics are entering our diets through contaminated fish, and what we may do to help address this growing problem.

All the videos are available on the SPREP YouTube channel.

The videos can also be made available in MP4 version on request at [email protected].

To save whales we need to keep our oceans safe from plastic. More than 750 000 people have signed WWF`s petition to fight plastic pollution – the scariest “predator of the sea”.
Healthy whales serve as a critical indicator of ocean health. Whales contribute to the development of the tourism industry of whale-watching amounting to more than $2 bln. globally.
Marine litter harms marine life through ingestion and entanglement. Flexible plastic like plastic bags and plastic packaging is responsible for the lion`s share of lethal cases from debris. Plastic-based fishing nets and ropes stand behind around 10% of the ocean`s plastic pollution. Annually, 300 000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises accidentally get trapped in fishing nets and end up slowly dying through suffocation and starvation.
To save the whales for future generations, we need to keep our oceans clean. Coordinated global response to prevent plastic bags, packaging, fishing nets, and rope from entering the ocean is urgent to move from being a plastic-depended society.

Interesting food for thought - which should we prioritise, cuts in plastics production or recycling and better waste disposal?

This article reports on the differing country stances on plastics, ahead of second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.

While the EU and African countries call for legally binding cuts in plastics production, US, China, and Saudi Arabia placed emphasis on recycling with country-specific flexibility and discretion vouched for.

The article quotes AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) statement on their priority on reducing the amount of plastics ending up in the sea, as the reduction of plastics production could increase the price of plastics which SIDS communities utilise.

Interesting considerations concocted into this debate - the pollution and emissions throughout the entire life-cycle of plastics (triggering stronger calls for limiting plastics production), its ties with the fossil fuels sector (since plastics are made from oil and gas), and dependency on plastics in our everyday lives.