plastic

Laura and Ste Knowles, from St Helens in Merseyside, were left red-faced after a hilarious incident was caught on camera during their holiday in Tenerife, Spain

A couple were left in stitches after one of them was caught on camera face-planting onto the pavement while attempting to ride a plastic elephant at a Spanish holiday resort.

Most people will have recollections of doing something daft and amusing after having had a tipple too many. For one pair, from St Helens in Merseyside, this recently occurred during their getaway in Tenerife in Spain, which resulted in them face-planting on the street. Laura and Ste Knowles had indulged in “a few champagne cocktails” before the comical accident, which was recorded and subsequently posted on social media. After finding the bright yellow elephant outside a shop, 42-year-old Laura challenged her partner Ste, 44, to clamber on top for an amusing snap.

If you’ve previously visited Tenerife, you might recognise the yellow elephant, as it’s the renowned logo of the Fund Grube department store chain, which sells an extensive range of cosmetics, perfumes, and jewellery at prices frequently lower than in other European nations, and can be discovered in numerous locations throughout Tenerife.

However, the pair’s boozy dare rapidly transformed into a catastrophe as Ste lost his footing and tumbled forwards, causing both him and the elephant to crash to the pavement.

The tumble left the furious shop owner absolutely livid, as Laura remembered: “She chased us up the street a bit.”

The duo, from St Helens, Merseyside, had been wandering along the Veronicas strip in Playa de las Américas, Tenerife, Spain, when they encountered the plastic creature. Laura went onto reveal it was her idea for Ste to climb onto the elephant.

“We’d had a few champagne cocktails and I stupidly suggested to Ste to climb on the elephant for a photo,” Laura explained. “I thought it was like the Superlambanana sculpture in Liverpool.

“But it wasn’t held down and it was as light as a feather. So he fell and hit the deck, taking it with him,” Laura added. “The shop owner was livid.”

She continued to say: “It had a few bumps on it so obviously it had happened before, but she chased us up the street a bit.”

The pair’s clip became an internet sensation on TikTok, amassing more than 370,000 views and hundreds of responses from entertained followers.

“It didn’t gone so well,” one viewer commented, while another jokingly penned: “Us Brits just love to say sorry! Now was he saying sorry to the elephant for knocking it over?”

“Darling hold my hand… Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday,” another person quipped.

Nevertheless, not everyone was amused, as some grumbled it was ‘typical’ holidaymaker behaviour that residents usually detest, which has recently sparked demonstrations across numerous popular holiday spots in Europe, including Tenerife.

“Quality tourism,” one person moaned, while someone else added: “Tourist Go Home.”

As global plastic treaty talks end in failure, with no agreement, all is not lost in the global momentum to cut plastic pollution. United States lawmakers recently introduced the Microplastics Safety Act, for example, mandating the Department of Health and Human Services to study microplastics exposure and health impacts. The bill reflects growing concern in Congress about the plastics health crisis and the broad bipartisan support to address it.

However, given that plastic production, use, and hence exposure, continue to increase every year, we should not wait idly for the US report’s findings or more failed global plastic treaty talks. There is enough evidence to take action now. Below, we highlight three areas that can help reduce everyone’s exposure to microplastics: culture, business and policy.

In culture, there are many default behaviours that we can rethink and re-norm. What if we saw more people bringing their own metal or wooden cutlery to the next barbecue, more shoppers bringing home whole fruit instead of plastic-wrapped pre-cut, and more kids and employees bringing their own refillable water bottles and coffee mugs to school and work? The more we see it normalised, the more we’ll do it. That’s how social norming works.

And having Hollywood in on this would certainly help. Two years ago, Citywide, a feature film shot in Philadelphia was Hollywood’s first zero-waste film, which is a great start. More of this is welcome, including walking the talk within movie, television and advertising scenes by swapping in refillable and reusable containers where single-use plastics would otherwise be the default or showcasing repeat outfits on characters to decentre environmentally harmful fast fashion, much of which is made from plastic.

In business, thankfully, some local grocers allow shoppers to go plastic-free. More grocers should make this shift because consumers want it. Providing staples like cereal, oats, nuts and beans in bulk bins and letting shoppers bring their own containers is a good start. Buying in bulk tends to be more affordable but unfortunately, few stores offer that option, especially stores that target shoppers with lower incomes. Even shoppers with higher incomes lack options: Whole Foods, for example, has bulk bins but in most of its locations requires customers to use the provided plastic containers or bags, which defeats the purpose.

More low-hanging fruit for grocers: try using the milk bottle approach. In some grocery stores, milk is still available in glass bottles, which is good, albeit it comes with a steep deposit. Let’s extend that model of returnable containers to other products, and at a more affordable rate. Take yoghurt, for example. Stores could have an option to buy it in returnable glass containers, since the current plastic containers aren’t recyclable. This is not a fantasy but a possibility: a newly opened grocery store in France offers all of their items plastic-free.

For restaurants, more and more businesses across the US are supporting the use of returnable containers and cities like the District of Columbia offer grants to help ditch disposables. This is exactly what we need more of. People want the option to bring their own containers or use a returnable container so that they can have take-out without risking their health and the environment with exposure to plastic. Let’s give the people what they want.

Policy is arguably the hardest of the three paths to tackle since culture and business track more closely and immediately with consumer demand. To be clear, most Americans, in a bipartisan way, are sick of single-use plastics, which is why plastic bag bans are popping up across the US, and state capitals are seeing more legislative proposals to hold producers of plastic responsible for the life cycle of plastic. What makes policy the more difficult space is the petrochemical lobby that often stands in the way, keeping policymakers mum about the human health and environmental impacts while encouraging industry subsidies: the US has spent $9bn in tax subsidies on the construction of new plastics factories over the past 12 years.

Given the health and environmental harms associated with plastics production, the obvious policy fix is to make the producers responsible for the pollution, forcing them to clean up in places locally like Beaver Creek, Pennsylvania, where the local economy suffered after an ethane cracker plant started operating there. And then to clean up globally for the harm done, since governments are left with the tab of $32bn while the public is left with the costs of health impacts from endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastic.

The industry, meanwhile, is fighting tooth and nail to keep selling its harmful products, misleading the public into thinking recycling is an effective solution to plastic waste. It’s not, of course, which is why California is suing ExxonMobil for deception about plastics recycling. Meanwhile, the industry continues to interfere with United Nations global plastics treaty negotiations.

It’s time we diverted those billions of dollars that taxpayers spend subsidising deadly plastics production and, instead, develop products, companies and systems that make the low-plastic life the default option for everyone. That’s the healthier future we want to live in.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Negotiations to secure a global treaty to combat plastic pollution were in limbo as talks entered their final day after dozens of countries rejected the latest draft text.

With time running out to seal a deal among the 184 countries gathered at the United Nations in Geneva, the talks’ chair, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, produced a draft text based on the few areas of convergence, in an attempt to find common ground.

But the draft succeeded only in infuriating virtually all corners, and the text was immediately shredded as one country after another ripped it to bits.

For the self-styled ambitious countries, it was an empty document shorn of bold action like curbing production and phasing out toxic ingredients, and reduced to a waste management accord.

And for the so-called Like-Minded Group, with Gulf states leading the charge, it crossed too many of their red lines and did not do enough to narrow the scope of what they might be signing up for.

The talks towards a legally binding instrument on tackling plastic pollution opened on August 5 and were scheduled to close on Thursday, the latest attempt after five previous rounds of talks over the past two and a half years which failed to seal an agreement.

Valdivieso’s draft text does not limit plastic production or address chemicals used in plastic products, which have been contentious issues at the talks.

About 100 countries want to limit production as well as tackle cleanup and recycling. Many have said it’s essential to address toxic chemicals. Oil-producing countries only want to eliminate plastic waste.

The larger bloc of countries seeking more ambitious actions blasted what they consider a dearth of legally binding action. But oil-producing states said the text went too far for their liking.

Lowered ambition or ambition for all?

Panama said the goal was to end plastic pollution, not simply to reach an agreement.

“It is not ambition: it is surrender,” their negotiator said.

The European Union said the proposal was “not acceptable” and lacked “clear, robust and actionable measures”, while Kenya said there were “no global binding obligations on anything”.

Tuvalu, speaking for 14 Pacific island developing states, said the draft risked producing a treaty “that fails to protect our people, culture and ecosystem from the existential threat of plastic pollution”.

Britain called it a text that drives countries “towards the lowest common denominator”, and Norway said it was “not delivering on our promise … to end plastic pollution”.

Bangladesh said the draft “fundamentally fails” to reflect the “urgency of the crisis”, saying that it did not address the full life cycle of plastic items, nor their toxic chemical ingredients and their health impacts.

Oil-producing states, which call themselves the Like-Minded Group – and include Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran – want the treaty to focus primarily on waste management.

Kuwait, speaking for the group, said the text had “gone beyond our red lines”, adding that “without consensus, there is no treaty worth signing”.

“This is not about lowering ambition: it’s about making ambition possible for all,” it said.

Saudi Arabia said there were “many red lines crossed for the Arab Group” and reiterated calls for the scope of the treaty to be defined “once and for all”.

The United Arab Emirates said the draft “goes beyond the mandate” for the talks, while Qatar said that without a clear definition of scope, “we don’t understand what obligations we are entering into”.

India, while backing Kuwait, saw the draft as “a good enough starting point ” to go forward on finalising the text.

The draft could now change significantly and a new version is expected on Thursday, the last scheduled day of the negotiations.

With ministers in Geneva for the final day of negotiations, environmental NGOs following the talks urged them to grasp the moment.

The World Wide Fund for Nature said the remaining hours would be “critical in turning this around”.

“The implications of a watered-down, compromised text on people and nature around the world is immense,” and failure on Thursday “means more damage, more harm, more suffering”, it said.

Greenpeace delegation chief Graham Forbes called on ministers to “uphold the ambition they have promised” and address “the root cause: the relentless expansion of plastic production”.

The Center for International Environmental Law’s delegation chief David Azoulay said the draft was a “mockery”, and as for eventually getting to a deal, he said: “It will be very difficult to come back from this.”

More than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year, half of which is for single-use items.

Nearly half, or 46 percent, ends up in landfills, while 17 percent is incinerated and 22 percent is mismanaged and becomes rubbish.

Each year, the world produces about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste – more than the combined weight of all the people on Earth.

Just 9 percent of it is recycled, and one study predicts that global emissions from plastic production could triple by 2050.

Since 2022, the United Nations has been trying to broker a global treaty to deal with plastic waste. But talks keep collapsing, particularly on the issue of introducing a cap on plastic production.

Campaigners blame petrostates whose economies depend on oil – the raw ingredient for plastics – for blocking the treaty negotiations.

This week, the UN is meeting in Switzerland in the latest attempt to reach an agreement. But, even if the delegates find a way to cut the amount of plastic the world makes, it could take years to have a meaningful effect.

In the meantime, institutions like the World Bank are turning to the markets for alternative solutions. One of these is plastic offsetting.

So what is plastic offsetting? Does it work? And what do programmes like this mean for vulnerable communities who depend on plastic waste to make a living?

What is plastic offsetting, and how do credits work?

Plastic credits are based on a similar idea to carbon credits.

With carbon credits, companies that emit greenhouse gases can pay a carbon credit company to have their emissions “cancelled out” by funding reforestation programmes or other projects to help “sink” their carbon output.

For each tonne of CO2 they cancel out, the company gets a carbon credit. This is how an airline can tell customers that their flight is “carbon neutral”.

Plastic credits work on a similar model. The world’s biggest plastic polluters can pay a plastic credit company to collect and re-purpose plastic.

If a polluter pays for one tonne of plastic to be collected, it gets one plastic credit.

If the polluter buys the number of plastic credits equivalent to its annual plastic output, it might be awarded “plastic neutral” or “plastic net zero” status.

Does plastic offsetting work?

Like carbon credits, plastic credits are controversial.

Carbon markets are already worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, with their value set to grow to billions.

But in 2023, SourceMaterial, a nonprofit newsroom, revealed that only a fraction of nearly 100 million carbon credits result in real emissions reductions.

“Companies are making false claims and then they’re convincing customers that they can fly guilt-free or buy carbon-neutral products when they aren’t in any way carbon-neutral,” Barbara Haya, a US carbon trading expert, said at the time.

The same thing could happen with plastics. Analysis by SourceMaterial of the world’s first plastic credit registry, Plastic Credit Exchange (PCX) in the Philippines, found that only 14 percent of PCX credits went towards recycling.

While companies that had bought credits with PCX were getting “plastic neutral” status, most of the plastic was burned as fuel in cement factories, in a method known as “co-processing” that releases thousands of tonnes of CO2 and toxins linked to cancer.

A spokesperson for PCX said at the time that co-processing “reduces reliance on fossil fuels, and is conducted under controlled conditions to minimise emissions”.

Now, the World Bank is also pointing to plastic credits as a solution.

In January last year, the World Bank launched a $100m bond that “provides investors with a financial return” linked to the plastic credits projects backed by the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, an industry initiative that supports plastic credit projects, in Ghana and Indonesia.

At the UN talks in December last year, a senior environmental specialist from the World Bank said plastic credits were an “emerging result-based financing tool” which can fund projects that “reduce plastic pollution”.

What do companies think of plastic credits?

Manufacturers, petrostates and the operators of credit projects have all lobbied for market solutions, including plastic credits, at the UN.

Oil giant ExxonMobil and petrochemicals companies LyondellBasell and Dow Chemical are all members of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste in Ghana and Indonesia – both epicentres of plastic pollution that produce plastic domestically and import waste from overseas.

But those companies are also members of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a lobby group that has warned the UN it does “not support production caps or bans”, given the “benefits of plastics”.

What do critics and affected local communities say?

Critics like Anil Verma, a professor of human resource management at the University of Toronto who has studied waste pickers in Brazil, call plastic offsetting a “game of greenwashing”.

Verma argues that offsetting lets polluters claim they are tackling the waste problem without having to cut production – or profit.

Patrick O’Hare, an academic at St Andrews University in Scotland, who has attended all rounds of the UN plastic treaty negotiations, said he has “noticed with concern the increasing prominence given to plastics credits”.

Plastic credits are being promoted in some quarters “despite the lack of proven success stories to date” and “the evident problems with the carbon credit model on which it is based”, he added.

Even some of the world’s biggest companies have distanced themselves from plastic credits.

Nestle, which had previously bought plastic credits, said last year that it does not believe in their effectiveness in their current form.

Coca-Cola and Unilever are also “not convinced”, according to reports, and like Nestle, they back government-mandated “extended producer responsibility” schemes.

Yet the World Bank has plans to expand its support for plastic offsetting, calling it a “win-win with the local communities and ecosystems that benefit from less pollution”.

Some of the poorest people in Ghana eke out a living by collecting plastic waste for recycling.

Johnson Doe, head of a refuse collectors’ group in the capital, Accra, says funds for offsetting would be better spent supporting local waste pickers.

Doe wants his association to be officially recognised and funded, instead of watching investment flow into plastic credits. They’re a “false solution”, he says.

This story was produced in partnership with SourceMaterial 

READ MORE: Ghana’s waste pickers brave mountains of plastic – and big industry

‘It’s important work’

Back at the waste yard, business has died down for the day.

Bamfo and her youngest children, Nkunim, 10, and Josephine, 6, are emptying the last few bottles. She will be in bed by 8pm, rising at midnight for her Bible studies before starting work again at dawn.

Bamfo never thought she would become a waste picker.

She was 19 when she finally gained her school certificate, and by selling oranges, she scraped together enough money for a secretarial course. But she couldn’t afford a typewriter.

While the other girls tapped away at their machines, she drew the keyboard on her exercise book and practiced on that, pressing her fingers into the paper.

Soon, the money ran out. Instead of the office job she dreamed of, she found work breaking stones on a building site.

“At that moment, I see myself – I’m a big loser, and there’s nothing,” says Bamfo, leaning forward on her office chair to keep a watch for any final delivery tricycles. “I see the world is against me.”

Then one morning she woke to find the building site had disappeared overnight, replaced by a dump: Truckloads of water sachets, drinks bottles and nylon wigs.

Her five children lay sleeping. Her husband, as usual, had not come home. To buy cassava to make banku – dumpling stew – she needed money urgently.

A friend had told her that factories in the city would buy plastic waste for a few cedis a kilogramme. It was one of the lowliest jobs there were, involving not only backbreaking labour but stigma and shame.

“If you are a woman doing this waste picking, people think you have no family to care for you,” she says. “They think you are bad. They think you are a witch.”

She came home one day to find her husband had abandoned her. But not before he had called her father to tell him his daughter had become a “vulture”.

Estrangement from her father only compounded the shame. To escape her neighbours’ taunts, Bamfo moved with her children to the other side of the city.

There, she took over her small yard, buying waste from pickers and selling it on to factories and recycling plants. Bit by bit, she built a wooden house. Eventually, she plucked up the courage to phone her father.

“I said, ‘Come and see the work I do. See that it is not something to feel bad about.’”

When he saw the yard and the tricycle teams that had become Bamfo’s business, Nkosoo Waste Management (“nkosoo” is Twi for “progress”), he couldn’t help but be impressed.

“You are not a woman, you are a man,” she recalls him telling her once, half admiring and half accusing. “The heart that you have – even your brother doesn’t have that heart.”

Now she hopes to pass on some of her resilience. King, her supervisor at the yard, slept on a nearby dumpsite as a small child and says Bamfo and her waste business saved him. “I cannot say a bad thing about her. She is my mother.”

As night settles on Accra, the polluting plastic tide has crept a little higher. But Bamfo has, she says, found dignity in the fight to keep it at bay.

“It is important work we do,” she says. “Sometimes I feel very sad and bad about not getting the education I wanted. But we clean the city. I think of that.”

This story was produced in partnership with SourceMaterial