 I'd like to welcome you to the second seminar of the year and to welcome Mr. General Hossam from the time first. It so happens for those of you who may have come too big to go to the second seminar and second presentation from someone at time first. I guess that actually that is just easily how important the organisation is in terms of the practice of environmental law and development of environmental law was within the country and internationally. So, Tatania comes from the Columbia regionally. The practice was a practicing environmental lawyer there as well as NSE before joining us where she was working on various environmental issues but including clearly plastic. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you very much for inviting me and let's get on with this. So, we're going to talk about the European policy developments around plastic pollution. This is an area that has been moving really, really fast lately. From my experience and the experience of my colleagues, which are more than 80 lawyers in an organisation, they all say they have never experienced a policy issue moving as fast as what's going on with plastic pollution at European level. So, why should we care about plastic pollution? I'm sure you're aware but just let's go quickly through the effects of plastic pollution. So first, we know that plastic pollution has very dangerous and adverse effects on wildlife. So, plastic pollution, all the plastic waste is not necessarily collected. It escapes collection systems. Collection systems are not created in a way that actually protects from leakage. So, a lot of the plastic pollution that is generated on land ends up in the sea. And once it reaches the ocean, it has these effects on animals. So, when they eat the plastic waste, they can either get internal abrasion or they can start because their stomachs are so filled with plastic that they cannot eat other types of food. When they get entangled in plastic pollution, they can suffer from wounds. They can die. They have inferred mobility. So, if a shark comes, they can't escape. They have trouble reproducing. They asphyxiate. Plastics are not just the big plastics, the bottles, the bags. But once they go into the ocean and they receive sunlight, they break down into tiny particles called microplastics. These microplastics have in them all the toxic chemicals that are present in plastic. And they also absorb the toxic chemicals in the environment. So, many animals eat these microplastics thinking they are phytoplankton. And by eating them, they introduce these toxic chemicals in the food chain where they bioaccumulate. So, animals that eat plastic are going to have higher levels of toxic chemicals in their blood and their organs. Plastic waste also creates like rafts in the ocean. And these rafts transport invasive species from one ecosystem to the other at higher rates that they would do if there weren't these rafts of plastic in the ocean. And this water contaminated by plastic has also been shown to spread antibiotic-resistant genes. It's created all sorts of problems globally. So, human health also suffers from plastic pollution. These are effects that have not been studied in depth. But we have some studies that show scary things that we should be careful about and study further. So, we are exposed to plastic injection through many ways and not just by eating seafood. So, we have found microplastics in bottled water, tap water, table salt, honey, beer, seafood, and in the air we breathe. And the effects of plastic pollution mainly are related to the toxic chemicals that are in plastic. And the main effect is endocrine disruption. And many scientists believe that the increase in the use of plastic is tied to the increasing diseases we have seen in modern society like obesity or reproduction problems or cancer or gene mutation. And the microplastic fibers that are in the atmosphere when you breathe them, they stain your lungs and they create a longer, long-term exposure to these chemicals. So, they increase the possibilities of not only inflammation of the lungs, but this inflammation when it becomes chronic can lead to other diseases that lead then again to cancer and gene mutation. Also, this is a link that many people do not make, but plastic has a big impact on climate change. So, plastic production and the incineration of waste give rise to approximately 400 million tons of CO2 per year. And in Europe, right now, there are 49 million tons per year of CO2 that are related to plastic. If things continue being as they are at the moment, in 2050, the CO2 emissions that come from the production of recycling and incineration of plastic are going to be more than those of aluminum and cement combined. So, not only the ecosystem suffers, wildlife suffers, our health suffers, climate gets warmer, but there are some costs to society, costs in money from plastic pollution. One is ecosystem services, for example, soil that has been polluted with microplastic is less fertile so crops have more trouble growing, so we need to spend more money on fertilizer, etc. Fisheries have big issues with microplastics, my organization works with fisheries very closely and they complain that their nets are full of plastic litter, that the fish are fishing are full of plastic, that the mussels they want to sell are full of microplastic, people aren't buying them anymore. Their ships need to take different routes because they collide with plastic and their motors get damaged. Also, authorities spend lots of money cleaning up beaches, tourism suffers, Bali was closed for five days this year twice because 50 million tons of plastic appeared in their beaches carried by the sea. So, can you imagine the impact of that on the tourism industry in Bali? And that is something that's going to continue happening everywhere in coastal areas. And there are also changes in routes for commercial shipping. So, this is the projection of what's going to happen to plastic and where we are at the moment, we're here. This is how it's going to be, the plastic waste generated. The plastic waste comes mainly from single-use plastic applications like packaging. In Europe, 59% of the waste comes from packaging. So, even if we improve recycling, even if we've worn all the plastic, we still have a huge gap of plastic that isn't damaged. So, we know that just by increasing recycling and incineration, we're not going to be able to solve the problem. So, what we need is to close the top of the unnecessary applications of plastic that we're using today. Like, plastic is designed to last hundreds of years. So, we shouldn't be using it for applications that are meant to last for half an hour while you drink a bottle of water. This is, again, the plastics that are used in Europe and the source of plastic waste. So, then we come to what happened this year, and we are not completely sure of what were the elements that made the European Union move so quickly to make these changes in policy around plastic pollution, but something triggered them. It may have been Blue Planet 2. It may have been the efforts of NGOs for years and years and years that they reached the tipping point. We don't know what it was, but it happened. So, in January 2018, the European Commission published a document called the European Plastic Strategy. And in this document they had several aims. Many related to increasing recyclability of products. They also wanted to promote innovative business systems and delivery systems for products that increased reuse instead of disposable plastic. They wanted to decouple plastic waste from growth because what we have seen so far is that as a country becomes more developed or its economy grows, they use more and more disposable plastic. They wanted to reduce marine litter, especially not just that one coming from land-based sources, but also coming from ships. And they wanted to phase out the substances that make recycling plastic so difficult because if you have toxic chemicals in a plastic item and you recycle it, you're keeping the toxic chemicals in the economy and keeping the exposure to those toxic chemicals. So, to achieve these aims, they have a list of tools in the plastic strategy. Some of these things they have already done, some of them are pending. So, the first one is the revision of the essential requirements for placing packaging on the market under the packaging, packaging waste directive. Any of you familiar with the packaging and packaging waste directive? Okay. So, this is a directive that tries to harmonize access to the single market and protection to the environment. By saying that any packaging that complies with the requirements in the directive can be used all over the European Union. The problem is that the requirements that they set in this directive were so low that this directive isn't achieving in any way the protection of the environment that it tried to achieve. So, also, they say that one of the tools is better extended producer responsibility. So, if I am a producer of plastic items or I am, for example, Marx and Spencer's, selling things packaging plastic, I should be responsible to pay for the costs of dealing with the plastic waste that I'm making money from. And the EPR or extended producer responsibility that was in the waste framework directive, the packaging and packaging waste directive, had very low requirements. So, producers weren't actually paying for the costs of dealing with that and taxpayers were paying. So, local authorities didn't have money to do the recycling, and recycling goes wrong. Now, I don't know if you've read in the news that taxpayers pay 90% of the costs of recycling plastic in the UK, and producers pay only 10%. And the recycled plastics are not even being recycled, but are being shipped abroad to countries where they receive the waste. But many of those shipments are not being received, they're just dumping the waste on the ocean. So, this is the effect of a badly designed system and badly designed directives that now the European Commission said we need to correct. They said we need new recycling targets for plastic, we need traceability tools to know which chemicals are inside the plastic, we need to expand the product requirements under the eco design directive. Do you know what the eco design directive is? Okay, so it's a directive that says how you should design products to make them environmentally friendly, but so far it has focused mainly on saving energy. And the Commission said we can make this directive cover also requirements for making products reusable and recyclable. They also said we need to work with the European Committee for Standardization and develop standards for recycled plastic. Many other solutions they propose, finance research projects for new products, new materials. They also asked the industry to make voluntary pledges. What are you committing to do without need for me creating a law that makes you do so? They have received very few pledges and the pledges are really insufficient, so they needed to move forward with legislation. They said they were going to have a legislative initiative on single use plastics. They were going to harmonize the rules for what's considered biodegradable plastics, ban intentionally added microplastics, and some things called oxodegradable plastics that are plastics that don't really degrade but break into very small particles, and they were going to revise the urban waste water treatment directive for capturing microplastics. And they started moving forward. They published this in January and boom, they moved. They had already prepared four directives to modify the waste laws in the European Union. So one directive amending the waste framework directive, another amending the land filling directive, another amending the packaging and packaging waste directive, but this is a less ambitious reform than what they think is needed, so there is going to be a further amendment of the packaging and packaging waste directive, and one about end-of-life vehicles and waste of electronic equipment. In the directive reforming, the land filling directive, they set two separate targets that are very important. So by 2030, the waste that is suitable for recycling or recovery cannot go to landfill. So this imposes very, very strict sorting obligations on member states. So you cannot just dump everything on landfill. You have a real duty to look for recyclable material in waste. And by 2035, the amount of municipal waste that goes to landfill should be less than 10% of the municipal waste generated. This is a very hard target to comply with if you don't borne your waste. Now the directive amending the waste framework directive says this is super important because in previous case law, the European Court of Justice, now the Court of Justice of the European Union, had said that many schemes that incentivize reuse of packaging are an obstacle for member states accessing the single market. So there was a very famous case about Danish bottles and some cases in Germany about targets they had for reuse of packaging, and they didn't let those systems operate because they said these harms the single market. But when you harmonize measures using a directive and you tell specifically to member states that you can set targets for reuse, that argument goes away. So it's 55% by weight by 2025, 60% by 2030, and 65% by 2035. And there are minimum operating requirements for the extended producer responsibility systems. So requirements on what it should cover. It should cover the costs of separate collection, treatment, and transport of the plastic waste. And the costs are going to be covered in a way more fair manner than what has been now. So for the extended producer responsibilities that were established before July 2018, the producers will need to cover at least 50% of the costs. And for extended producer responsibility systems that are created after July, they will need to pay at least 80%. In the reform of the packaging waste directive, this directive is telling member states which instruments they can use to incentivize reuse of packaging. So this is huge and I have not heard anything on the press praising this. There were some scars like press notes here and there, but this is going to be huge from 2020 onwards. So member states are going to be allowed to set deposit return scheme, qualitative or quantitative targets. I don't know what a qualitative target is for reuse. Economic incentives like paying for your plastic carrier bags or a latte levy that says you need to pay if you want to use a disposable cup. And a minimum percent of reusable packaging placed on the market. So the member states can tell Coca-Cola 5% of soft drink bottles are going to be reusable. That will change the game absolutely because making these the law levels a playing field in such a way that companies that want to use reusable systems are actually able to compete. And it raises the recycling target for plastic to 50% by 2025 and 55% by 2030. There was a new proposal from the commission. It supports reception facilities directive. This is being discussed at parliament at the moment. We don't have a date for a plenary vote, but it has already gone through committee vote. And many ships when they have waste in their ship and like damaged fishing gear and all the things they ate and the packaging they have. When they go to a port they need to pay a fee for them to receive that waste. And up to this moment many times the fee they pay depends on the amount of waste. So people in those boats instead of paying a high fee just dump the waste before they go to port. And what this directive does is says okay you know what the fee is going to be the same for every boat that has this size. So you don't have an incentive to throw your waste off board before coming to the port because you're paying for the managing anyway. So this change is going to be very important in removing that incentive. It also requires fishermen to take all reasonable precautions to avoid losing gear. Are you aware of the problem of ghost fishing? So when you lose a fishing gear at sea it continues fishing and killing fish. It's just that you cannot recover the fish because who knows where that gear is. So the commission is going to set a framework of conditions that are going to be considered the reasonable precautions. Like putting fingers and things with GPS so that you can track where your fishing gear is so that you don't lose it. There is going to be extended producer responsibility with eco-modulated fees for fishing gear. Eco-modulated means that the gear that harms the environment the less is going to have cheaper producer responsibility fees. And the more harmful gear is going to pay more. There are going to be reporting requirements for lost fishing gear and increasing inspections of boats to see how they're handling their waste. Now we come to the single use plastics directive. I was in Brussels last week doing loving for this, talking to members of the parliament. We proposed my organization and a coalition of organizations working on this issue. We proposed some amendments to the commission's proposal and they passed and we're thrilled. And this directive is going very, very well. So what we need is the governments of the member states in the council to approve what has been done so far in the parliament. So the single use plastic directive is focused on the 10 items most commonly found on European beaches. And for it creates different categories of items because they say we cannot have blanket measures that apply the same way to every item. Every item is different. People use them in different ways. So they said some measures that apply for separate categories. So the first one is they want member states to have targets of reduction of consumption of food containers, cups, cigarette filters. In the parliament, they passed a target of 25%, which we think is very ambitious. But who knows what the council will do and if it's going to stay there or not. There are some bands, things that are going to be banned in the European Union, which are plastic cotton bots, cutlery plates, straws, beverage steers, balloon sticks, and extended polystyrene, like the white foam food containers. There are going to be some product requirements. Perverge bottles are going to have 35% of recycled content by 2025. And the cap of the bottle is going to be attached to the bottle so that the cap doesn't get lost. Some labeling requirements on sanitary pads, tampons, wet wipes, telling people not to flush them and that they have plastic and harm wildlife. The extended producer responsibility for the items covered by this directive is great. It makes producers pay for the costs, not only of collection, transport and treatment, which are the ones usually covered, but also for the cleanup of litter and awareness raising measures. There are some additional awareness raising measures for food containers, packages of crisps, wrap of flexible material, etc. For fishing gear, there is 50% collection target and 15% of recycling target. And there is separate collection of beverage bottles. So these items create great pollution. We know this is not the most systemic directive that could be there. This is not the reform to the packaging or packaging waste directive. But in combination, we believe these measures are going to create great change. Also, the commission proposed a plastic tax, a tax on non-recycle plastic. It's not a tax that goes, the money that is raised by this tax doesn't go to the European Union, but it's an authorization for member states to use that tax to raise revenue for themselves. It's being discussed for the 2021-2027 multi-annual financial framework, but we don't know if it's going to pass or not. We will know in May 2019. And we're still waiting for the inclusion of intentionally added microplastics. It's expected in January. The reform of the eco-design directive, it's really hard to establish these requirements and to know how to make them effective. We are expecting some product requirements like, for example, that plastic for packaging should be clear so that it's easier to recycle or a list of chemicals that cannot be used in packaging. And we're also waiting for the revision of the essential requirements for placing packaging on the market under the packaging and packaging waste directive. So thank you very much. These are all the policy developments that are going on at the moment with the change of commission. We don't know who is going to continue pushing for this at European level. So the more pressure that comes from the citizens, the better, because we need to keep this on the agenda. The citizen pressure has achieved so much that the commission has moved quicker than ever and so has the parliament. And I wanted to tell you that right now there's an open consultation at UK level on the proposal to ban plastic cotton bots, straws, and the stirrers used for drinks. And you can go to the consultation and answer it via this link. It's a bit long, but it's really, really easy in case you want to participate. And I'm open for your questions. Yes? Well, the thing is that personal consumption is influenced by the options you give to people. So if you make it more hard for people to buy things without plastic, if you make it more expensive, if you put plastic on things people don't really need, people don't really need plastic on teabags, but it's there. So an investigation by another NGO called Ciel has shown that the plastic industry has pushed demand for plastic on things where the public wasn't asking for it. So what we need to change is the structure of society and how things are pushed in our faces as consumers so that we can make responsible choices. Because it's really, really hard. There was a campaign during Lent called Plastic Free Lent. And lots of people on the internet set up blogs or were tweeting about it trying to live a life without disposable plastic just for Lent. And many people weren't able to. And people in my NGO who are very environmentally conscious and not necessarily the poorest of the poorest because they're employed, they couldn't do it. They had to travel for more than one hour to buy their groceries because there wasn't anywhere near their house where they could buy things without plastic or they had to pay more. So we as citizens can make simple changes like carrying a plastic bottle, carrying a reusable cup, carrying reusable cutlery, not using things that we can choose not to use. But for people who are pressed for time, who have children at home, who go from their office to their house at night and just need to buy something, whatever is closest to them, do you think it's fair? Or lots of microplastics come from when you do your washing, synthetic fibers go from your clothes to the wastewater that comes from your house. The problem is that the cheaper clothes are usually made from synthetic fibers. So how can people not contribute to this? It's very hard. And we shouldn't be putting the responsibility on people who have very reduced choices. Let's just make the system fair for everyone. And they will pay impute. Yes? How will the EU regulations affect the UK government? We don't know. We're trying to find out. And we don't know, and the UK government doesn't know either. We have been asking and they don't know. Apparently there's going to be a transition period in which all these things apply. But from then onwards, that's why it's very important that you participate in the consultation and every consultation that comes out. There was a consultation on plastic taxes in the UK in May. It's closed. It was a consultation with more responses in the history of the Treasury. So let's hope that in the annual budget that's going to be announced on Monday, they announce taxes on plastic. What Kleinert was asking was taxes on virgin plastic pellets to make a fairer market for recycled plastic and some charges on individual products that make consumers think twice before buying something in disposable packaging. It depends on how they're designed. The tax on virgin plastic will go to the producer, but who knows if they're going to introduce the costs in the price of the things that you buy, like for sure. But at least it's going to make them think twice about using recyclable plastic. Recycled plastic. Any more questions? Yes? Yes. I read online that you also know a bit about China, is that correct? Yeah, a bit. I was just wondering if you can make a comparison with Colombia or China on how maybe the EU is better or worse plastic, maybe the environment, the regulations in general, and the health impact that it's the EU versus one country. Well, what I'm seeing from China at the moment is a lot of momentum and political will, the same as the EU, but without believing they're better than everyone else as the EU. So they actually recognize they have a problem. Client Earth is training the judges in China. They have an agreement with the government and they're training the judges in China in environmental law. And we believe it's because of that training. We have trained more than 2,000... Client Earth, my organization. We have trained more than 2,000 judges. And some cases at the beginning of this year resulted in the declaration of the existence of the polluter-paste principle, which you all, I'm sure, are familiar with, but that wasn't really used so much in China. There have been some litigation in China, some cases about consumers filing lawsuits against fast food companies that were not giving customers the option of not having disposable plastic with their order. We're waiting for the results of that litigation, but even if it doesn't go right, it's going to set an alarm on producers and it's going to make them think about how they use plastic. In China, lots of Western companies do their production there and push products there that are really environmentally harmful, like lots of sachets and unnecessary packaging. So I don't think the problem comes from the culture in China, but from the way in which Western companies operate in China. And that's something that the EU should take responsibility for. And there is a memorandum of understanding between the EU and China to promote the circular economy. It came in June. It's in the EU website, you can look it up. And I think it's going to be a great instrument to make companies, especially companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola, be responsible for their production and delivery systems. Yes? Well, how does the EU strategy tackle incinerations? It doesn't. They're trying, well, one thing they say is we want to create better recycling systems at EU level and we want to invest in that. So by promoting the market to recycled plastic and investing in recycling facilities, it diffuses some of the incentives for incineration, but it doesn't tackle it straight away. Yes? What about these cleaning the sea ideas that came up sometimes? Yeah. Yeah, there's still a thing. I don't like them. I think they're a drop in the ocean. Also, they cause a lot of by-catch, which is like non-intended killing of animals in the ocean. And you're never going to clean it all up. So what we aim for is prevent. Sometimes when people say, oh, we're investing money on this machine that will clean the ocean gyres or something, companies are trying to say that that's their corporate social responsibility while continuing to put lots of plastic waste in the market. So, yeah, like, sure, why not, but I don't think there are solutions. Maybe for some islands that don't want to see their tourism industry like damaged by plastic pollution, they can have one of those machines nearby, but it's not a solution to the pollution problem. Okay, maybe could you tell us a little bit more about incineration is one thing, the next steps as a client is going to work on, or that you think should be that it... Yes. You've only presented one aspect of the broader picture. So we're going to continue working on the single-use plastic directive because it's far from over. What we need to do now is lobby the member states, their governments, so that they actually support what's there. And after that, we're moving to the essential requirements in the packaging, packaging waste directive, because that's where the problem is. Like, 59% of the plastic waste in Europe comes from packaging. So we need to change packaging, so that companies cannot use disposable packaging unless it's really impossible for them to use reusable systems. We also want to lobby cities so that they implement reuse systems that work in a similar way than the standard cycles. So wouldn't it be great if you had a system of reusable launch boxes in central London and that you could use that launch box to buy your food in bread and in Costa and in McDonald's and in Leon. And they all use the same launch boxes and you just went with your oyster, took your launch box, returned it in another establishment. It would be fantastic and it would reduce a lot of the plastic waste that cannot be recycled because plastic used in food packaging is usually too dirty and too flimsy to be recycled. So we want to find new options, new initiatives that we can push at city level and we want to go for the packaging, packaging waste are active and I am currently working on a project trying to explain to companies that plastic pollution is a business risk. Are you familiar with the concept of climate risk? So because of climate change, companies are exposed to losing money part of transition risks and physical risks to get stranded assets and resenting to companies the concept that plastic pollution creates the same exposure for them so they need to manage that risk, change the way they operate and disclose the risk to their shareholders. There are some pension funds and investor groups and activist investors that are saying to companies if you don't change I'm going to divest in your company so that's going to be another way to lobby for change in the way we use plastic. There should be other consultations coming this year in the UK and one of them is a reform to the packaging regulations to reform the extended producer responsibility system in the UK because it is a disaster. The national audit organization found that there was no transparency that the plastic waste that is claimed to be recycled in the UK isn't actually recycled and that the distribution of costs is completely unfair and has not allowed local authorities to invest in recycling facilities so we're going to be working in that too. There is going to be an environment bill in the UK so we're going to make sure that our concerns about plastic and our key asks about plastic are there too and we're working with the commission to draft some sort of certification so that companies can improve their practices on how they handle plastic pre-production pellets so when you create products from plastic what you buy is like a bag of very small bowls made of plastic and you melt them and that's how you make your products but those bowls they escape they escape in the production plants they escape from trucks they escape when you transfer them from one place to the other and they end up in the ocean and fish eat them and the whole thing happens again so we want companies to handle those pre-production pellets in a better way and it's a very easy way to reduce micro plastic pollution and we're also working with governments at the UK level to reduce the use of cars because micro plastics from tires are the second largest source of micro plastic at EU level so the tires roll and the friction with the roads generates lots of micro plastic and with the rain they go to the rivers and from the rivers they go to the oceans we're also working with agricultures on the use of plastic mulch they put plastic on top of the crops to avoid like herbs how do you call that like bad herbs yes growing so it would be great if instead of plastic they use another type of crop cover to avoid the weeds because the plastic when they move the air to plant more things it makes the soil degrade and lose its properties so it's going to lead sometime to food scarcity too and that's what we have planned if you have any ideas anything you can think of that could reduce plastic pollution please send me an email I welcome any initiative I'm really interested in engaging with people there is an app you can check to what's the name of the app if you want to use a reusable water bottle and you just carry your bottle and you check the app you can refill it in many points many shops around London and many other cities if you're interested in me sending you the name of the app because I forgot you can write me an email great so yeah any other question thanks for that I'm just wondering the long term cost effectiveness argument is clear it's kind of like what should we need to get another kind of change long term costs are very high but clearing for businesses to buy into more than a low amount of food because they buy into a low amount of food straws, potential they might buy into that but in the short term to get their buy in so the science is getting clearer what about the economics of it so when you do your logging or when you're drafting what kind of economics where is the data coming from where are the numbers coming from is there an organization that you collaborate with? the new economics foundation has been doing research on this and UNOMIA is also doing research on this and the European Commission did their impact assessments of all these measures before they published the plastic strategy and for each one of the directives they also do an impact assessment numbers what I have on top of my head is that the investments on new recycling facilities was going to create more than 20,000 jobs and that was in the UK so each one of the member states has an incentive to invest in these new systems because it will create jobs the same way that renewable energy creates jobs yes it's expensive but it works because if you put more money in the economy the economy gets better but actually I love cars because you know McDonald's they are big players but I actually can't remember the volume language but potentially not as big as some of the biggest car manufacturers so I'm just wondering in terms of the counter-effect because right now you're lobbying and the big guns haven't really come into play a counter-allowing effect because the commission, the EU is taking a proactive stance on this rapidly but people so potentially there's a conflict with trade and competition in the near future so I'm wondering whether that kind of lobbying has also started already in terms of the rationale for why we cannot move to that new generation yeah nor neither I went to speak with the more right-wing parliamentarians in the parliament and they didn't seem to be really listening to what the industry was saying like some of the things that were proposing the directives the industry cared about and the parliamentarians were like okay okay we cannot push this so far so for example for the extended producer responsibility they were saying okay let's keep the directive covering the cost of cleanup in the future but not infinite costs like the costs of what volunteers do regularly and what municipalities spend cleaning beaches but those were like one of those parliamentarians told me that I was an immigrant and I was dirty and I threw trash on the street so it's people that say those things and they were saying oh yeah but we need to find a balance they really need to pay for cleaning the beaches so I don't know why but they're not really listening to the industry and the industry is loving hard plastics Europe the British plastic federation they're putting all their money in there they have met with every head of state they're meeting with the parliament constantly they're meeting with the commission but I don't know why they're just not being effective yeah yes well if you make it more one reason why plastic is used so much for everything is not just that plastic is very flexible and adaptable but it's that it's cheap it's really cheap so many times for companies for example restaurants it's cheaper to just pack a lot of sushi boxes ready instead of having someone putting dishes in a dishwasher if you raise the costs of producing plastic they're dealing with the waste companies are going to make a different calculation and maybe they'll think it's easier to buy a dishwasher and pay someone to fill it so all these legislative changes the plastic bags the EPR the product requirements the waste packaging reform that makes member states to create deposit return schemes those are not cheap to run to have minimum content of recycled plastic recycled plastic many times can be more expensive than virgin plastic we have reuse systems and the targets are high so these reuse systems are going to be mandatory and we have the EPR it all goes to taxes and EPR mandatory reuse and vans but vans are the least effective thing and they just cover the low hanging fruit but they're a great symbol and they change the vans of consumers and they make you think if I'm not using a plastic straw maybe I shouldn't use a plastic bottle but mainly making plastic more expensive so that companies don't use it as a disposable application yes would there be any kind of like subsidies program for using alternatives you know this kind of algae type plastics or any kind of thing like that would there be support for companies but maybe you don't have the structure or the money to finance it well the good thing is that for many of the applications where plastic is used there are alternatives so like they can switch to paper they can like for many many applications they can switch to something else but you mentioned algae made plastics yeah those aren't as good for the environment as you might think because well for many biobase or biodegradable plastic you're not only using lots of land water fertilizers like lots of natural resources into the production of that thing that you're just going to use and throw away many times the standards of biodegradability of those things are so that they only degrade under certain conditions and those conditions many times aren't the conditions in which the product ends up so if the product is designed to biodegrade at a certain temperature on soil and it escapes into the ocean where it's a lot colder it's just not going to biodegrade so it's not like a magic wand you can use to solve the problem and we should be very cautious to substitute regular plastic for biodegradable or biobase plastic yes how these plastics and set up byproducts of the petroleum industry yes they are so effective to go to the source and reduce that industry with alternative renewable energies of which there are about a dozen technologies it's just a question of cost when it becomes comparable with petroleum wouldn't it be better to go that way or alternative? yes that would be great especially like oil companies already in their projections they know that oil is not going to be easy to use for burning as a fuel so they are projected that by 2050 their oil is going to be used mainly in plastics and the petrochemical industry by producing chemicals so they are really against these reforms coming from the EU because they want as many opportunities to use their oil in plastic because they are not going to be able to burn it so by blocking oil companies from burning the plastic and from burning the fuel we don't necessarily solve the plastic issue but we should tackle both things together but don't burn the fuel and don't make the plastics we don't need make the plastics we need with moderation like plastic for construction it's great for creating isolation for temperature for example I mean when you create a building plastic is great for making buildings safer more isolated from temperature outside making cars lighter it's great for making syringe in medical applications safer but just don't put lots of wrappers and things we don't really need out in the market how can they be doing that especially as I said how can they be compelled to invest in alternative renewable energy and forgive the amount of oil there is one product for oil as a fuel I wish it was possible I don't know who can make them that was the end of that process discussion yeah the oil companies are making our life very hard to everyone can you ask a question about one of the possible solutions you were mentioning some for example all established humans had these portable lunchboxes is that something that's actually being in Switzerland there is a scheme called recycles re-circle and it's an association of business that are using the same lunchbox and you can just take it from one place and deposit it in the other ones you've eaten your food but they wash it yeah like plates but wouldn't that create a problem then imagine that a lot of people buy and get them from one place and they all take it to the same place and then the cost follows that particular one to clean it and wouldn't they just put the cost of that into the products yeah but it's contemplated that it's contemplated that if difficulties arise they'll just deal with it internally it's not something like super super hard to move containers from one place to the other and if it becomes more difficult more money from the scheme goes to the place where you have more lunchboxes that need to be washed yes so policy-wise in hygienic terms it lies on the consumer's responsibility to bring my own box and then for example to a restaurant or to a takeout it's my responsibility as a consumer if there's anything if my lunchbox is not proper or like yeah the good thing is these restaurants offer like a washing facility so if you're not sure that your lunchbox is super clean you can like rinse it with a bit of soap before they put the food in it so that it's safer right now in morrisons I don't know if you've ever been to morrisons I've never been but I've read about this you can buy your fish and your meat by taking your own containers and I hope other supermarkets in the UK move in that direction too are there financial incentives for consumers so they get for example one pound off if they bring their own in morrisons I don't know here well here in prep that happens yeah was it part of the EU policy? no it's not part of the EU policy because the EU policy just came out this year and many of the things that are in the policy are only going to come into force around 2020 so when that happens Member States can take measures like the measures they took around like with carrier bags that now when you go to the supermarket if you want a plastic bag you need to pay for it that came from a 2015 directive from the European Union so all of those things work to make a system where businesses and people all work together to use but what about compostable again the same problem compostable, biodegradable many plastics that are labeled as compostable they only compost under industrial composting conditions and that's not the same composting as your composting being in your kitchen compostable plastics are a lie at this moment in time you were going to ask a question no? okay if we've exhausted questions then thank you very much no you're very welcome and before you go next week we have another seminar next week we're moving to something completely different but also very necessary climate change, loss and damage by Lisa von Halla from UCL to the flyer climate change I just remembered another thing like very recent research this was published in August 2018 shows that plastic litter continues to release greenhouse gases once it has been exposed to sunlight so all the plastic waste that's in the ocean is released into greenhouse gases so one other configuration of plastic waste