Mumbai dumpsite fire can be seen from space!

Few months ago, in the report “Wasted Health” published by ISWA, it was clearly mentioned that dumpsites are becoming a global health emergency.  Both the authors (me and David Newman) couldn’t imagine that the fire that started recently in Deonar, Mumbai’s 132 hectares oldest dumpsite, that receives 4,000 tons of waste per day, will be so emblematic for our argument. Actually, the smoke emitted is so thick that it blotted out the sun and obviously, the health risk for the neighboring residents are more than high. The fire is so big and intense that it is also visible from space, according NASA’s released satellite images. You can see the relevant CNN video here.  

NASA’s estimation is that the garbage pile is roughly 30 meters big. While the authorities are still looking for the cause of the fire, something practically useless since in such a dumpsite spontaneous fires are the rule and not the exception, we can certainly remind the obvious.

The scale of the health and environmental risks posed by dumpsites is visible from space, so it can’t be invisible and underestimated by decision makers, governments and international stakeholders. This is a global alarm, if we don't have a global coordinated response to the health emergency posed by dumpsites, such incidents will become more ann more frequent. We need a roadmap to close at least all the 50 biggest dumpsites of the world right here, right now and ISWA has already started to work on the first phase of such a project.. Anyone who would be interested to cooperate for such a project, please contact me directly

COP 21: No deal on Climate Change without Climate Justice

As the European Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete announced that EU is ready to work day and night for a right climate deal in Paris, it was really out of my control to combine and compare this statement with the EU’s statements and the actions taken for the refugees. "The EU will fight for a very ambitious deal. When you have 196 parties, the easy way out is to agree a minimalistic agreement," Miguel Arias Canete told reporters and he continued "We will work day and night to have an ambitious agreement that is fit for purpose". Clearly the 28 EU member states will be unified and supportive for a new climate deal.

Well, that’s fine but compare this statement with the delayed, completely uncoordinated, sometimes racist and finally ridiculous discussion about the EU refugees’ crisis. As The Guardian recently wrote “Months of European efforts to come up with common policies on mass immigration unraveled on Sunday when Germany led a “coalition of the willing” of nine EU countries taking in most refugees from the Middle East, splitting the union formally on the issues of mandatory refugee-sharing and funding. An unprecedented full EU summit with Turkey agreed a fragile pact aimed at stemming the flow of migrants to Europe via Turkey. But the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, frustrated by the resistance in Europe to her policies, also convened a separate mini-summit with seven other leaders to push a fast-track deal with the Turks and to press ahead with a new policy of taking in and sharing hundreds of thousands of refugees a year directly from Turkey”. So, we are ready for an ambitious climate deal but we are 100% unprepared and (many) unwilling to deal with the stream of refugees that are coming mainly from Syria – so how are we going to deal with the roughly 200 million climate refugees that are expected for the next 20-30 years?

The question is not theoretical at all. Between 2008 and 2013, some 140 million people were displaced by weather-related disasters; meanwhile, gradual displacements, such as those caused by droughts or sea-level rise, affected the lives of countless others. Today’s policies on climate change cast migration as an impending humanitarian catastrophe and as a failure to adapt to changing environments back home. As a result, policies focus on reducing migration, commonly assuming that overwhelming flows of migrants from poor countries will be flooding industrialized countries. But many believe that climate migration is one of the most important ways for climate adaptation.

In the recent report State of the World 2015, it is clear that there are two policy options for climate refugees. The first is to provide migration opportunities for the most vulnerable populations, including improving access to resources, information, and networks to allow them to relocate. The second opportunity lies in adapting destinations, such as urban areas in developing countries, to host and integrate communities of migrants. One of the report’s contributors, Francois Gemenne commented that “The paramount goal of policy responses should be to enable people’s right to choose which adaptation strategy is best suited for their needs. This implies that people should be entitled with both the right to stay and the right to choose.” He also noted “Current adaptation policies tend to focus on the right to stay. Today, governments are aiming to reduce the number of people who are forced to migrate, ignoring those who might in fact prefer to leave but are forced to stay against their will or ability. Extending the migration options of populations…would require a broader development agenda.” Clearly this is a key – issue of the emerging movement for Climate Justice. There are many different definitions of Climate Justice but I prefer this one, as the Global JusticeEcology Project proposed it.

Climate Justice is “The historical responsibility for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions lies with the industrialized countries of the Global North. Even though the primary responsibility of the North to reduce emissions has been recognized in the UN Climate Convention, the production and consumption habits of industrialized countries like the United States continue to threaten the survival of humanity and biodiversity globally. It is imperative that the North urgently shifts to a low carbon economy. At the same time, in order to avoid the damaging carbon intensive model of industrialization, countries of the Global South are entitled to resources and technology to make a transition to a low-carbon economy that does not continue to subject them to crushing poverty. Indigenous Peoples, peasant communities, fisherfolk, and especially women in these communities, have been able to live harmoniously and sustainably with the Earth for millennia. They are now not only the most affected by climate change, but also the most affected by its false solutions, such as agrofuels, mega-dams, genetic modification, tree plantations and carbon-offset schemes”.

As India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed during the 2015 UN General Assembly 

"When we think of climate change, somewhere we try to safeguard our personal interests. But if we talk of climate justice, we spontaneously resolve to keep the poor safe during natural disasters".

 So let me finalize putting one more question. How is it possible to have a fair climate deal without Climate Justice? Is it possible, at all, to have a successful fight against climate change without a global, coordinated and fair response to the climate refugees? And how about considering climate migration as one of the key-ways for adaptation?

I will come back to those questions very soon, but until then think that we have to change our attitude: mass migration and massive refugees’ streams should not be considered as crisis anymore – they are the new normal reality in the planet we made!

Future Trend #5: Marine litter science is the equivalent of Mars exploration for the recycling & waste management industry

Many people were surprised by the recent NASA announcement that evidence was found for summertime water flows on Mars. Well, this is something that could change completely our perception regarding other planets. “Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past,” said Nasa’s Jim Green. 

I believe that marine litter science is a similar case - the findings that are already here and much more the ones that will come will change our perception for the plastics and they will create innovation waves that will reshape recycling and waste management. Well, maybe not so drastically as billionaire Elon Musk has spelled out that he wants to change Mars (he plans to create temporary suns over Mars in order to heat the Red Planet) but probably with a more concrete way.  

Marine litter will be a key-issue for waste management for the next 2-3 decades. The facts are shocking. According the recent study "Threat of plastic pollution toseabirds is global, pervasive, and increasing", 80 of 135 (59%) species with studies reported in the literature between 1962 and 2012 had ingested plastic, and, within those studies, on average 29% of individuals had plastic in their gut. Currently, the annual losses of sea birds, turtles and fishes related to the plastic pollution are estimated to be more than 1.5 million deaths per year and according to Laurence Maurice from the French Institute of Research for Development, the problem is likely to worsen.

Just imagine that we are speaking for concentrations that reach 580,000 pieces per km2 and the plastic production is increasing exponentially. So it is not a surprise at all, when it is forecasted that the increasing plastics ingestion in seabirds will reach 99% of all species by 2050!   

Together with climate change, marine litter and ocean garbage gyres prove that no matter if we understand it or no, local waste management practices create global impacts and that there is a need for global coordination in order to manage such global impacts.

Marine litter is also a certain signal for the limits of our societies, the technological, social and ecological ones. Marine litter is straight forward associated with ecosystem’s damages by plastic pollution and demonstrates the tangible and measurable impacts of our collective inertia to face the global waste management challenge.

I have gone through two recent research papers that demonstrate the long-term impacts related to plastic pollution and marine litter.

The first one (Global warming releasesmicroplastic legacy frozen in Arctic Sea ice) indicates that microplastics have accumulated far from population centers and that polar sea ice represents a major historic global sink of man-made particulates. The study suggests “the potential for substantial quantities of legacy microplastic contamination to be released to the ocean as the ice melts therefore needs to be evaluated, as do the physical and toxicological effects of plastics on marine life”.

In the second one (An anthropogenic markerhorizon in the future rock record),  researchers from Hawai have reported “…the appearance of a new “stone” formed through inter- mingling of melted plastic, beach sediment, basaltic lava fragments, and organic debris from Kamilo Beach on the island of Hawaii. The material, herein referred to as “plastiglomerate,” is divided into in situ and clastic types that were distributed over all areas of the beach. Agglutination of natural sediments to melted plastic during campfire burning has increased the overall density of plastiglomerate, which inhibits transport by wind or water, thereby increasing the potential for burial and subsequent preservation. Our results indicate that this anthropogenically-influenced material has great potential to form a marker horizon of human pollution, signaling the occurrence of the informal Anthropocene epoch.”

Well, obviously the case of marine litter represents a huge global and local challenge for the international stakeholders, the governments and the industry. The solutions required have just started to be discussed publicly and some pilots have started to be tested. For sure, the solutions required will need changes in the whole life cycle of plastic products and not just in the way they are managed when they are considered as “waste”.

But let’s focus on the other side of the moon. The case of marine litter highlights some new opportunities, as much as it reveals global long-term threats. I am not hoping for a megatsunami, like the one that 73,000 years ago was created by a large flank from the volcanic island Fogo in the Cape Verde islands, off the coast of Africa, that fell into the ocean and triggered a tsunami that moved mountains.

Let’s start with the obvious. Marine litter impacts (much more than climate change) are relatively easily understood and visualized, so I bet that there will be many communication campaigns, especially the ones related to plastic recycling, that will use the case of marine litter as a powerful communication “bridge” too, for broad audiences.  So, yes, what I mean is that marine litter opens the opportunity to influence much broader audiences and create global awareness about the waste management and the recycling challenge.

The huge impacts of plastic pollution, which have just started to be understood through the case of marine litter, create the dynamics to discuss about the necessity to reduce plastics from the waste streams and to identify appropriate final treatment techniques when they can’t be recycled, for one or another reason.  Even better, we have to use the case of marine litter to promote the discussion for a plastic waste – free society, where many products should be redesigned in order to reduce or eliminate plastics and substitute them with more ecologically friendly materials. 

Obviously, the big challenge is to create an appropriate systemic integration between supply chains - consumption and post consumption management of plastics and the emerging Internet of Everything with the possibility to develop digital passports is certainly a hope. 

I do hope that we will also have a lot of technical innovation related to the management of post-consumer plastics – some new patents have already attracted my attention like production of ethanol from single stream plastic recycling or preparation of high calorific value fuel from end of life plastics. But this is just the beginning, because the global magnitude of the problem has attracted the attention of the big donors that are pulling gradually a lot of money to the relevant research. Many local social innovation programs have also started and if they become mainstream, sooner or later the problem will become much more manageable than it is today.

Thus, I am waiting a lot of innovation in several sectors, like:

Plastic recycling

End of pipe solutions

Material innovation and substitutes

Manufacturing innovation

Design Innovation

Will this wave of innovation be enough to resolve the problem of marine litter? No one knows, but it is worthy to try…