The Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBF) and Greenpeace held a press briefing last Thursday (12 December) at the Heinrich Böll Foundation Southeast Asia office in Bangkok, in which representatives of the two organizations called for a new global convention on the plastic crisis and for a whole-cycle approach to managing plastic waste.

Barbara Unmüßig (left) and Tara Buakamsri (right)

Barbara Unmüßig, President of HBF, gave a presentation on information published in a new report “Plastic Atlas: Facts and figures about the world of synthetic polymers,” which HBF and the Break Free from Plastic movement published together in November 2019. Data in the report shows that more than half of the plastic ever produced has been made since 2000, the majority of which is made into plastic packaging, most of which is single-use. The report also states that only 10% of the more than nine billion tonnes of plastics that have been produced since the 1950s have been recycled, and that 40% of plastic products become waste after less than a month.

“The world does not only face a climate crisis, but very much so a plastic crisis,” said Unmüßig. She also stressed that despite the omnipresence of plastic in our daily life and our economy and the idea that it has become indispensable, plastic is a new invention and that it is possible to live without it.

Unmüßig also emphasized that it is important to hold to account the main players in the production of plastic, such as the food industry and the petrochemical industry, since both plastic production and consumption contribute to climate change, and that it is also important to reduce plastic production.

According to Unmüßig, we should come up with new packaging and new recyclable materials. She stressed that it is important that we take a full life cycle approach to managing plastic waste, including chemicals and microplastics, in order to solve the plastic crisis, which goes hand in hand with solving the climate crisis.

“Only to ban plastic bags, to ban single-use items is a good first step, but definitely not enough,” Unmüßig said. “We need full life approach, including chemicals and microplastics. We have to look at the whole life cycle and come up with solutions that really fit into that.”

Unmüßig also said that it is important we have a global convention to address the plastic crisis, and that Southeast Asian leaders must step up and take the lead.

“We have no conventions on the plastic issue,” Unmüßig said. “This is why, together with many actors, like the coalition Break Free from Plastic, we have Greenpeace as our partner; we are asking for a global UN convention that is really addressing the plastic crisis from the source to the consumer and this is why we are so much behind that issue, because we need political action now, not tomorrow.”

Tara Buakamsri, Country Director of Greenpeace Thailand, then gave a presentation on the waste trade in Southeast Asia. He noted that plastic waste is not covered by the Basel convention, which restricts the importation of hazardous waste, unless it is contaminated.

He also noted that, according to Greenpeace’s data, Southeast Asia received 2.2 million tons of plastic waste in 2018, and that Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines are the main destination for plastic waste coming from the western world, mostly from the US.

All of these countries, with the exception of Thailand, now have restrictions on plastic waste imports, and while the Thai government said they will ban plastic waste imports by 2021, Tara said that nothing is being done.

Greenpeace data also found that 47% of plastic production in Thailand becomes single-use packaging, such as plastic bags, 80% of which becomes plastic waste. Tara also presented marine biology research data, which found that 300 marine animals die from eating plastic each year in Thai waters.

“To effect change, we have experts who are sharpening the point, and then we need the hammer of public opinion to actually nail it. This is the challenge,” Tara said. “We need to work together with experts to mobilize public opinion, and to fight overconsumption, we need to build human relations, instead of material ones.”