Strengthening consumer knowledge base
To identify actions in promoting sustainable use of necessary plastics, the UN Environment Economy Division released two major reports. The Stocktaking Report highlights the largely unknown fate of plastics in the marine environment including its impacts on marine food webs and seafood safety. Monitoring plastics and its environmental impacts from source to sea is key to better understand the sources, stocks, fates and long-term impacts of marine plastics.
The second report mapped and identified key points in the global plastics value chain, and where and in what quantities plastics are leaked to the environment. This report finds that majority of losses and potential impacts on the marine environment for plastics occur during the use and end-of-life stages of the value chain. Largest losses in macroplastics (> 5 mm) occur in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East. For microplastics (< 5 mm), most of the losses are in North America, China, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe.
In response to the need for systematic monitoring, the UN Environment Global Partnership on Marine Litter (GPML) has initiated regional capacity building for countries to conduct national source inventories of marine litter. This includes conducting analyses of strengths and gaps in national legislation on waste management. These activities are being piloted in Kenya, Eastern Africa.
Waste Management
OCcommissioned GA Circular to conduct a gender assessment of women’s roles in the waste collection industries in India, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, culminating in the report “The Role of Gender in Waste Management.”The assessment found that women participate both individually and alongside men (as a family unit) in the waste sector, and that while gender differences are significant, the conventional challenges of gender inequality don’t apply to this sector. For example, despite women typically holding more informal roles in the waste sector than men, overall women’s earnings were not significantly different than their male counterparts in the countries studied. While there are some similarities across countries in terms of the roles women play in the waste sector, factors unique to each country necessitate a range of interventions designed to best support female workers in this sector.
In Vietnam, OC and partners including the Centre for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development, the University of Toronto, and local and national government officials conducted a baseline assessment in five locations in the Xuan Thuy National Park to characterize marine debris and microplastics and assess measures of biodiversity and ecosystem health of the Red River.
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