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[Singapur / Varanasi (India) 18 de Reuters]- The Varanasi office, a short walk from the Ganges River in India, is unstaffed and padlocked. Outside the office, a wheelbarrow with the words “Renew Oceans” and a metal garbage net are randomly placed and left rusty.
It was the end of a landmark project to collect waste plastics funded by the world’s largest oil and chemical companies. The petrification giant explained that the project is capable of killing all marine life, from plankton to whales, and eliminating the crisis caused by marine plastic debris that fills the beaches and coral reefs in the eternal summer.
No interruption of the “Renew Oceans” project has been reported. The petrification industry, whose future performance is directly linked to the growth of plastic production, has set itself the objective of curbing the increase in plastic waste due to the expansion of production, but there are two examples of environmental protection that show that has not been achieved. explains the group.
The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW, an international alliance to eliminate plastic waste), an international non-profit organization established two years ago by a major petrochemical company, announced on its website in November 2019 with Renew Oceans . “It is possible. It will eventually stop the influx of plastic into the ocean,” he said, extending the alliance to the world’s most polluted rivers.
More than 50 companies, including ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Dow and Chevron Phillips Chemical, have pledged to contribute a total of $ 1.5 billion to AEPW and its projects over a five-year period. AEPW does not disclose the amount of funds actually raised from member companies or the total amount of expenses.
AEPW has confirmed to Reuters that Renew Oceans has ceased operations. The reason is that some of the work has been stopped due to the new coronavirus. Spokeswoman Jessica Lee cannot bear the prospect of resuming activities “for the time being, from the fact that there is a difficulty in getting the work done to others, the mutual agreement of AEPW and Renew Oceans of the activities discontinued in October 2020, I decided “.
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Ann Rosenthal, a legal counsel for the US law firm Fullwit and Associates and an agent for Renew Oceans, also said she expected the project to be suspended. “While this project has made significant progress in solving the problem of plastic waste, we have concluded that Renew Oceans simply does not have the capacity to address problems of this scale.”
AEPW is based in Singapore and has around 50 employees. There are other projects underway, but all are small community-level efforts or have not produced results yet. “It is important to realize that a project will achieve maximum results when activity is maximized,” Lee said.
According to materials posted on the Renew Oceans website, the target for Ganges plastic waste collection is 45 tons in 2019 and 450 tons in 20. Neither AEPW nor Renew Oceans have disclosed any information on achieving the goal. Four people involved in the project told Reuters that the project has been active for less than half a year and that less than a ton of waste plastic had been collected from the Ganges at the end of March last year.
AEPW and Renew Oceans declined to comment on the amount of plastic waste collected from the project. According to scientists, the amount of waste plastic that flows into the Ganges is estimated to be more than 500,000 tons per year. There are no government statistics on the amount recovered.
The AEPW launch event, which took place in January 2019, was broadcast live on National Geographic, and Dow CEO Jim Fitterling said: “This is one of the best projects ever. I commended it.
AEPW and Renew Oceans explained that they will introduce the latest technology to collect and reuse plastic waste. He explained that it would introduce a “reverse vending machine” that can receive sales that can be used to pay taxi fares and grocery items when plastic waste is placed, and a pyrolysis device that converts plastic waste into diesel oil.
However, prototypes of these devices in Varanasi were often damaged, according to four people involved in the project. AEPW and Renew Oceans declined to comment on the operational status of these devices.
AEPW told Reuters that Renew Oceans had just completed a test project in Varanasi and is not moving forward. Renew Oceans declined to comment.
According to AEPW, the group has invested $ 5 million in Renew Oceans for two years. Some of them have been returned to AEPW and more are expected to be returned if the project cancels its activities.
Exxon and Shell referred Reuters’s question to AEPW. Dow and Chevron Phillips did not respond to requests for comment.
AEPW has set itself the goal of “diverting millions of tons of plastic waste in more than 100 crisis cities around the world” in five years. So far, it has announced more than a dozen programs like Renew Oceans, but it is far from achieving this goal.
According to materials released by AEPW and its affiliates, of the AEPW-funded projects, only three projects, including Renew Oceans, have so far recovered some plastic waste, all of which are small. According to AEPW, the Ghana project has collected 300 tons of plastic waste. According to the website, the Philippine project has so far recycled 21 tons.
There are no comprehensive statistics on plastic waste pollution around the world. However, based on the available materials, the collection and reuse of these projects is only a small part of the world’s plastic waste, and the AEPW itself recovers millions of tons of plastic waste from the ocean, it is still far from the goal.
For example, according to data from the United Nations and other countries, Indonesia and India generate a total of more than 3 million tons of plastic waste each year, and it is neither collected nor recycled.
“The AEPW program is so small relative to the amount of waste plastic that it cannot be implemented anywhere else to really reduce the large amount of waste plastic in the world,” said chemical engineer Jean-Del. Said.
Reuters reported in October last year that the plastics industry has made efforts to reuse and dispose of waste plastics, but has invested far more money in expanding production than reusing. There are a lot of inexpensive new plastic products on the market, and reuse is not profitable.
Chevron Phillips continued in July of last year, using video of a project worker collecting plastic waste in the Ganges, even though Renew Oceans had already ceased operations in March. We have created a promotional video that promotes our commitment to possibilities.
“The richest and most powerful company on the planet has the opportunity to run a small plastic waste recovery project in a small community and take compelling photographs,” said John Hosieber, Director of the Ocean Campaign at Greenpeace USA. . “” There is no other way to reduce plastic waste than to reduce plastic production, “he said.
Chevron Phillips did not respond to a request for comment.
(Reporter Joe Brock, Reporter John Geddie, Reporter Saurabh Sharma)
