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Showing 9 of 98 news items in Circular Economy

Circular EconomyDecember 5, 2023

From waste to product: the legacy of the Plastic Waste Free Islands (PWFI) Project in addressing plastic waste leakage

Photo: Joao Sousa/IUCN. Retrieved from iucn.org The Caribbean region is an important biodiversity hotspot due to the high endemism on each island[[1]](https://www.iucn.org/story/202311/waste-product-legacy-plastic-waste-free-islands-pwfi-project-addressing-plastic-waste#_ftn1). Plastics and plastic pollutants are dangerous for the region, which hosts 10% of the world’s coral reefs, 1,400 species of fish and marine mammals, and extensive coastal mangroves. Pollution from solid waste, and in particular waste from plastics, has emerged as one of the greatest global challenges. In major Caribbean cities, the amount of solid waste collected can be as low as 50%. For a region whose prosperity depends on healthy marine and coastal ecosystems, there is a need for immediate action. The PWFI Project was implemented by IUCN, together with the governments and key stakeholders of Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, and Saint Lucia. The Project generated important results at both regional and national level, especially in terms of improving knowledge of waste generation, repurposing waste into commercially viable products, making the economic and business case for taking action, and determining policy and regulatory support for the adoption of measures identified. The Project measured the amount and type of plastic waste in the tourism, fisheries, and waste management sectors, and classified it per recyclable and non-recyclable plastics. Regional estimations for plastic leakage per sector indicated that 3,087 tonnes of plastic were leaked in 2020. The largest contributors to plastic leakage were the household and commercial sectors, with 1,984 and 794 tonnes per year respectively. Plastic leakage for the tourism and fisheries sectors is significantly smaller, with 287 and 22.7 tonnes per year respectively. The top 4 types of plastics leaked into the environment were Other (7), PET (1), HDPE (2), and PP (5).

Circular EconomyNovember 27, 2023

The remote African island where a fish festival marks the year’s biggest celebration

Photo: Inside Africa (CNN). Retrieved from edition.cnn.com. The Fête du Poisson on Rodrigues Island is an annual event that celebrates a rich fishing heritage and a deep appreciation for the sea. This is an intimate look at the people who have embraced a sustainable system to conserve their way of life.

Circular EconomyNovember 21, 2023

Jamaica Tackles Kingston Harbor Pollution With New Technology

Image Credit: Courtesy of Clean Kingston Harbor. Retrieved from cleantechnica.com Jamaica is much celebrated in songs and literature, from Harry Belafonte’s hauntingly beautiful [Jamaica Farewell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aajSxr8nghE&t=36s) to Jimmy Buffett’s satirical [Jamaica Mistaica](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsKZewdhDtk). The island is one of the most beautiful in all the Caribbean, and home through the ages to pirates, poets, and potentates of all stripes. It is populated by a pastiche of people from all over the world who ventured there during the golden age of sailing ships, intermarried, intertwined, and created perhaps the most diverse gumbo of humanity to found anywhere on Earth. And yet, Jamaica suffers from the same curse as every other enclave of human civilization — pollution, much of it from plastics. The stuff sluices down the many valleys and gullies that surround Kingston harbor, the seventh largest in the world at 10 miles long and 2 miles wide. From there, it gets carried out to sea by the tide. Up until the 1980s, there was an annual cross harbor swimming contest, but the water became too full of trash for it to continue. Now the [Kingston Harbor Cleanup Project](https://www.cleankingstonharbour.org/) is using technology developed in the Netherlands to return the harbor to its former glory. The group has installed floating barriers at the mouth of several gullies, which are part of the area’s stormwater management system. As the water drains down from above, it brings trash with it. Anything that floats is trapped by the booms. A solar-powered boat collects the captured trash and brings it ashore to be sorted. “Things that can be recycled are picked up by the Recycling Partners of Jamaica, and the Carib company [Caribbean Cement Company] re-uses those that cannot be recycled,” operations manager Alecia Rose-Beaufort told [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/oct/20/we-want-to-see-it-back-in-its-glory-can-the-kingston-harbour-cleanup-be-a-model-for-the-world). “So far, we have two types of solutions — barriers meant for deep waters with larger surface area and those meant for more shallow waters such as this gully beside our headquarters.”

Circular EconomyNovember 13, 2023

Protecting Kalayaan, saving the reefs

Image retrieved from businessmirror.com.ph Environment Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga recently conducted a site visit to Pag-asa Island in the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) in the disputed West Philippine Sea (WPS). A fifth-class municipality, Pag-asa is the biggest in the Philippines in terms of area with 290 sq. km, but the least populated with a population of 193 people, according to the 2020 Census. Part of the Spratly Islands—which is composed of islands, islets, cays and more than 100 reefs, sometimes grouped in submerged old atolls that lie off the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia and southern Vietnam—KIG is a remote island municipality in the province of Palawan. Yulo-Loyzaga recently bared plans of putting up a research station on Pag-asa Island, the biggest island in the KIG and the seat of government of the municipality of Kalayaan. The plan is part of the move to start accounting the country’s natural wealth and to rev up the so-called blue economy. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is closely working with the University of the Philippines Diliman-College of Science through the Marine Science Institute (UP-CS-MSI) on the project.

Circular EconomyNovember 13, 2023

Russell Ruderman: This New Program Could Help Cut Food Costs In Hawaii

Image retrieved from civilbeat.org Exceprt from civilbeat.org An exciting new project is being launched in Hilo to reduce solid waste and empower the local food industry, thanks to local nonprofit Zero Waste Hawaii Island and its partners. Zero Waste and another nonprofit, Perpetual, have been working to establish a reusable food container program in Hilo. Pilot programs have been underway for a year or so to allow glass bottles to be collected, washed and reused. The whole state can benefit from such a program, reducing our food costs, while reducing waste and our carbon footprint. These efforts will greatly reduce the cost of food. Local food vendors and producers can lower their packaging costs, which are a barrier for many food ventures. In Hawaii we pay more than most places for glass bottles, for example, due to very high shipping costs. Then we ship the used glass back to the mainland at great cost, where some of it is remade into new bottles, a huge energy cost. As it is now, a glass bottle adds about a dollar to the price of every glass-bottled beverage, and then costs more to send back as recycled glass. Deposit or not, we pay a lot more than it’s even worth to ship the bottles back. The deposit is small but your hidden costs in shipping and taxes for recycling are large and ongoing.

Circular EconomyNovember 7, 2023

Seaweed Siege: Unravelling Sargassum’s Effect on Coastal Livelihoods in the Dominican Republic

Image © Combine Harvester | Coastal communities collect and remove sargassum from the beaches in Punta Cana. Retrieved: only.one Sargassum overblooms have threatened fishing and tourism industries, with cascading effects on local communities. But these communities are resilient, and many are coming together to explore technological solutions to the crisis. Andrés Bisonó León, executive president of Sargassum Ocean Sequestration of Carbon (SOS Carbon), believes that the excessive influx of sargassum can be an opportunity to create new jobs and markets for the use of sargassum as raw material. The company’s namesake product is the SOS system — a boat-mounted device that pumps the surface seaweed to 200 meters below the surface, a depth beyond which the ocean pressure is expected to continue sinking it to a depth of 1 km or more. As Andrés describes, the benefits are twofold: first, this method precludes the high-cost current necessity of bringing the sargassum inland to manage, and second, it allows Dominicans to sequester carbon deep in the ocean. “We can use the oceans as a carbon storage and carbon removal place.” Patent pending, this innovation could partly counter the environmental impact of sargassum overgrowth. But financing remains an issue. As Andrés notes, “We’re still working on launching this technology at an operational level — that’s an area where funding would be very handy because we can propel […] or advance the scientific knowledge around it, to really just launch it or implement it at that operational scale.” SOS aims to prioritize sustainable, community-centered practices in their approach. Andrés emphasizes that whether they are designing or deploying systems and technologies, their goal is to maximize efficiency and uptake, and minimize the use of new equipment, incorporating local materials that communities already have on hand. “We try to do the opposite of just saying hey, you cannot go fish. We instead offer them a platform of employment and help in this transition.” Using artisanal vessels to harvest sargassum with retrofitted hardware, SOS turns local boats into high-capacity harvesters. In doing so, they not only take advantage of existing infrastructure, but also incorporate the local expertise of already established industries and communities into their designs and planning. Beyond the Dominican Republic, a bevy of other solutions to the sargassum crisis are under development with potential for widespread application. In Puerto Morelos, Mexico, Omar Vázquez Sánchez stirs sargassum into bricks to build houses for those in need. Traditional building materials like concrete and clay bricks pose a significant environmental footprint due to their high-pollution production processes — sargassum, renewable and biodegradable, may well prove a more sustainable construction material. With its natural insulating properties, sargassum-brick buildings could be more energy-efficient and cost-effective than those built with conventional materials, able to be quickly scaled in regions like the Dominican Republic where the seaweed is abundant. In Jamaica, entrepreneur Daveian Morrison is constructing a processing facility to convert seaweed into charcoal as a substitute for firewood. His recipe for animal feed made from the protein-rich algae proved a hit at a local goat farm, but needs more testing to further evaluate its scalability. And in Barbados, a team from the University of the West Indies integrates sargassum with waste from a rum distillery to produce methane to power transportation across the island. Subject to additional research and funding, this biofuel holds the promising potential to replace fossil fuels that currently power the majority of Caribbean vehicles.

Circular EconomyOctober 23, 2023

Zanzibar: From tourist paradise to economic powerhouse

Image retrieved from thecitizen.co.tz In the two years to the end of August 2023, the island has attracted nearly $3.73 billion (Sh9.4 trillion) in investments through projects registered by the Zanzibar Investment Promotion Authority (ZIPA). From sports to entertainment, the blue economy, agriculture, energy, tourism, and technology to international collaborations, Zanzibar is setting an impressive example of what visionary leadership and robust investment can accomplish. Zanzibar’s Investment Boom Speaking during the commemoration of the Kizimkazi Day in Zanzibar on August 29, 2023, ZIPA’s executive director Mr. Shariff Ali Shariff stated that the country has overseen a monumental leap in investment and development within just three years. He said Zanzibar, under President Hussein Mwinyi’s leadership and the dedicated efforts of ZIPA, has attracted investments that promise a presperous future for the island.

Circular EconomyOctober 16, 2023

Keeping Paradise a Paradise: Community-led total sanitation in Kiritimati

Image credit: Nick Rice Chudeau. Excerpt from unicef.org Kiritimati is a pristine tropical island with turquoise blue lagoons and white sandy beaches with lush coconut groves. Located in the Central Pacific, Kiritimati is part of Kiribati – an island country of Micronesia comprised of 32 atolls scattered across 3.5 million km2. Kiritimati truly is a paradise island today, but how can we protect it so that it can remain so for future generations? Kiritimati only had 38 inhabitants in 1931, but as of 2020 has more than 7,400 – 44 per cent of whom are under 19 years old. With this growing population comes the challenges of balancing the growing pressures of sustainable urbanization with protecting a sensitive ecosystem, all while safeguarding the health of I-Kiribati children. Kiritimati doesn’t receive much rainwater, and weather patterns have become increasingly unpredictable, so the majority of the population relies on groundwater. Since most of the land in Kiritimati is just a few metres above sea-level, communities like Poland where Beeta lives, are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. UNICEF is working with the Kiribati Ministry of Line and Phoenix Island Development (MLPID) and the Pacific Community (SPC) to improve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene, as well as strengthen community, household and institutional resilience for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH).

Circular EconomySeptember 25, 2023

Circular economy, waste management: Mayors of Indian Ocean countries meet in Seychelles

Photo: Retrieved from the Seychelles News Agency. Photo License: [CC-BY](http://www.seychellesnewsagency.com/buy_prints#attribution) Mayors of Indian Ocean countries convened in Seychelles to discuss region-specific issues, including the circular economy and waste management, and elected a new committee. During the two-day workshop that took place at the Berjaya Beau Vallon Bay Hotel, organized by the Association of Cities and Communities of the Indian Ocean (AVCOI) and the International Association of Francophone Mayors (IAFM), a new committee was elected. The representatives also attended round table discussions about the role of local authorities in the development of the Blue Economy. The AVCOI is an association that groups the local authorities of the Indian Ocean, founded in 1990 and made up of towns and local authorities from the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, Reunion, and Seychelles. The Association’s main role is to drive concrete projects for local development and regional integration in the Indian Ocean region. “We meet annually to discuss issues that we have in common, and find ways to share ideas and experiences of dealing with these issues,” the Mayor of Victoria, Lydia Charlie, told reporters.