The recently established Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) has joined Borealis initiative Project STOP to help further scale up the development of more sustainable and circular waste management systems in Indonesia.
The three-year collaboration with STOP will focus on the regency of Jembrana, located on the northwest coast of Bali and will include:
• Conducting diagnostic studies to understand how and why plastic waste enters the environment and designing a new, tailored system to combat it.
• Building and supplying equipment to scale up waste collection and sorting efforts.
• Hiring local workers at living wages and responsible working conditions to manage and staff the new waste management system.
• Partnering with local organizations to encourage behavior change at the community level through
• Cleaning up beaches and rivers in consultation with the local government.
Launched in 2017, Project STOP is a joint initiative of Borealis and SYSTEMIQ, which was later joined by Nestle, Nova Chemicals, Borouge and Veolia.
The program works with city governments to eliminate leakage of plastics into the ocean, increase plastics recycling and support the wider system changes required for a plastics circular economy.
According to Borealis, a recent study has shown that the Island of Bali leaks 33,000 metric tons of plastic — 13,200 metric tons from Jembrana alone — into the ocean every year, due in part to the lack of appropriate waste management services.
“The Alliance is focusing on areas where the need to improve the management of plastic waste is urgent and where our member companies across the plastic value chain can offer technical and business expertise,” said David Taylor, chairman of the board, president and CEO of Procter & Gamble, and chairman of the AEPW.
Project STOP, he went on to say, “fits perfectly” into the Alliance’s strategy that focuses on the four pillars of infrastructure, innovation, education and clean up.
“In Jembrana, we have an opportunity to work with the local community to build new waste and recycling infrastructure to prevent plastic from leaking into the environment,” Taylor continued.
The Alliance-funded city partnership in Jembrana is Project STOP’s first city partnership on the island of Bali.
Borealis is currently carrying out another STOP city partnership in the East Java major fishing port of Muncar to address the issue of marine litter there.
“We are proud to welcome the Alliance to End Plastics Waste as a strategic partner of Project STOP as we share a strong commitment to addressing this major global challenge: stopping the leakage of plastics into the environment,” said Alfred Stern, CEO of Borealis, the co-founder of Project STOP.
The AEPW was formed early this year in the face of mounting pressure regarding plastic pollution in the environment, particularly in the oceans.
About 40 companies have come together to join the alliance and provide funding to create programs to tackle the problem. There was an initial pledge of $1 billion with a goal of raising $1.5 billion.
The alliance initially has focused on a few areas to begin its efforts, including the collection of plastic waste along rivers that lead to oceans, municipal and city partnerships, idea incubation and information technology infrastructure, the group said.