The Plastic Problem -- and Plastic Pollution Solutions

Plastic Clean-up Champion

Model of What Can Be Done with a Strategy and Purpose: Afroz Shah in Mumbai

http://www.unep.org/championsofearth/laureates/2016/afroz-shah

2016 Champion of the Earth -- Inspiration and Action

I am an ocean lover and feel that we owe a duty to our ocean to make it free of plastic. I just hope this is the beginning for coastal communities across India and the world.

Afroz Shah, a young Indian lawyer from Mumbai, is synonymous with the world’s largest beach clean-up project.

In October 2015, Shah and his neighbor Harbansh Mathur, an 84-year-old who has since passed away, were frustrated with the piles of decomposing waste that had washed up and completely overwhelmed the city’s Versova beach. Determined to do something about it, the pair started cleaning up the beach themselves, one piece of rubbish at a time.

Every weekend since, Shah has inspired volunteers to join him – from slum-dwellers to Bollywood stars, from schoolchildren to politicians. They have been turning up at Versova for what Shah calls "a date with the ocean", but what in reality means labouring shin-deep in rotting garbage under the scorching Indian sun.

So far, the volunteers have collected over 4,000 tons of trash from the 2.5 kilometre beach.

Shah, who rallied residents and fisherfolk by knocking on doors and explaining the damage marine litter causes, now plans to expand his group’s operation to prevent litter from washing down the local creek and onto the beach. He also wants to clean-up the coastline’s rubbish-choked mangrove forests, which act as a natural defense against storm surges, and to inspire similar groups across India and beyond to launch their own clean-up movements.

Shah is deservedly proud of the Versova residents' accomplishments. Not only has the movement brought marine little to the attention of decision-makers, it is also starting to win back the beach, with decreasing amounts of new litter appearing each month.

He vows to continue his beach clean-up crusade until people and their governments around the world change their approach to producing, using and discarding plastic and other products that wash up onto beaches all over the world.

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San Francisco Just Passed the Nation's Toughest Ban on Polystyrene Products

Model Legislation / Green Best Practices

June 2016 / San Francisco - "Foam Product Banned

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously voted to outlaw a host of commonly used foam products, in a move hailed as the nation’s most extensive such ban.

The ban applies to polystyrene food packaging, packing peanuts, to-go containers, coffee cups and pool toys, among other things. For most products, the ban will take effect Jan. 1, 2017. For meat and fish trays, it becomes effective July 1, 2017. The bill’s sponsors argued that such foam products, which are not biodegradable, pollute waterways and can harm animal life. They touted the ban as an example of the city’s leadership on environmental issues.

https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=4400880&GUID=01FD9FA2-C693-4B54-AF95-5DAB6679FC83

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/san-francisco-ban-styrofoam-polystyrene

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http://www.savesfbay.org/sites/default/files/Ban%20status_6-25-12.pdf (2012)

http://www.ci.milpitas.ca.gov/_pdfs/eng_EPS_Study_Appendices.pdf (Calif cities w/ bans 2011)

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Read More:

http://www.surfrider.org/pages/polystyrene-ordinances

http://www.surfrider.org/programs/plastic-pollution

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Plastic Pollution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution

http://www.trueactivist.com/longest-floating-structure-in-history-sets-out-to-clean-the-ocean-in-2016

http://www.theoceancleanup.com/blog/show/item/worlds-first-ocean-cleaning-system-to-be-deployed-in-2016.html

http://www.nrdc.org/oceans/plastic-ocean/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150212-ocean-debris-plastic-garbage-patches-science/

Eight Million Tons of Plastic Dumped in Ocean Every Year

It's equal to five grocery bags per every foot of coastline around the globe...

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http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21635982-amount-plastic-sea-huge-and-widely-spread-charting-plastic

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/02/daily-chart-14

Plastic clean-up of oceans, a big idea from Holland -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCR2V1HAq78

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