By David Dodge
Every year we dump 12 million tonnes of plastics into the oceans and plastic waste in total has accumulated to a whopping 10 billion tonnes. It’s perhaps one of the most reported on and least acted on environmental problems on the planet.
David Katz grew up in Victoria, Canada along the beautiful shores of Vancouver Island. He bemoaned the growing problem of plastics pollution, so the entrepreneur started a rather amazing social enterprise called Plastic Bank.
“Plastic Bank is the world’s largest chain of stores for the ultra-poor, for those who make less than a dollar a day, where everything in the store is available to be purchased using what was considered plastic garbage.”
That’s right the Plastic Bank accepts deposits of discarded plastics and compensates collectors with tokens that can be used to “pay for school tuition, medical insurance, and medical care and WiFi and cell phone minutes and cooking fuel and clean water and everything the poor need but struggled to afford using garbage as money.”
Since starting in 2013 the Plastic Bank has recovered 22 million kilograms of plastic waste at 558 collection points in half a dozen countries involving almost 27,000 collectors.
“We operate currently in Haiti, Philippines, Indonesia. Brazil, Egypt and this year we’re adding Thailand, and Cameroon with our relationship with SC Johnson, we’ll be going to Tanzania and Kenya,” says Katz.
The plastics problem is global, but in countries where many people have an average income of $1 per day there are no recycling programs, few social programs, and limited schooling.
Save the people, save the oceans
“We recognize that the United Nations, sustainable development goals, which are broadly agreed-upon set of initiatives to help end suffering and climate,” says Katz.
Katz realized early on that that the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals are in a particular order for a reason.
“The goals are in order from one to 17. If we get to 14, which is ‘life below water,’ we can’t effectively do that unless we end poverty,” says Katz adding that “Poverty is the root of gender inequality, hunger, malnutrition – all of those things come as a result of poverty,” says Katz.
Katz sees value in the 10 trillion kilograms of plastic already on Earth. “All the plastic we’ve ever produced is still here. And if we can unlock that just once, at roughly a dollar a kilo, it’s a $10 trillion value.”
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one of several areas of massive accumulations of plastic waste. There’re an estimated 80,000 tonnes consisting of 1.8 trillion plastic pieces in the patch located between California and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
Poorer countries are plagued by plastic waste as it piles up on shore, clogs streams, and fills streets. People in many of these countries make $1 or $2 per day, have no health care, can’t afford education, and often can’t afford the basics.
Plastic Bank – 558 locations, 26,733 collectors
Plastic Bank has set up 558 locations in numerous countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Haiti, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand, and Cameroon.
At the locations, local collectors drop off plastic and are compensated using Plastic Bank’s proprietary blockchain-based banking application. As a result, collectors don’t carry cash around and are free from robbery, and can spend the funds as needed.
Plastic is the input and tokens can be used to purchase the things people need ranging from supplies and medical treatment to tuition and cooking fuel. Plastic Bank has 26,733 members working as collectors.
The collection centers are also social enterprises that add value to the plastic waste by sorting, washing and pelletizing the material for sale to manufacturers.
Social Plastic
This value chain creates what Katz calls Social Plastic. “Social plastic is a material with societal benefit, socioeconomic opportunity, and environmental opportunity. It’s a material whose values transfer through lives.”
SC Johnson “takes our material from the Philippines and puts it into Windex bottles. So if you go to a store and buy a Windex bottle anywhere in the world…you would be in fact, participating in removing material from ocean-bound sources and helping end a little bit of suffering in someone simultaneously.”
“We powerfully put purpose into the brands we work with while helping end poverty while keeping plastic out of the ocean. There’s lots going on.”
Plastic Bank does not employ children and is working with supportive companies to create bursaries for children to attend school and help adults learn to read.
End virgin plastic pollution – make producers responsible
Katz says there is already an overabundant supply of waste plastics with 10 trillion kilograms already in the environment. “We are at a precipice,” says Katz. “We have to end virgin plastic production,” he says bluntly.
After decades of failures to stem the tide of waste packaging and plastics many in the recycling world say it’s time to make producers financially responsible for the materials they produce.
This is called extended producer responsibility.
Producers create these materials to maximize profits with little or no liability for the impacts. Katz calls this “The benefit of the few at the expense of the masses that has to change to extended producer responsibility.”
Extended producer responsibility makes producers financially responsible for collecting, recycling, reusing, or dealing with their own waste. This creates a powerful incentive to ensure they use materials that can be recycled and possess high value as waste instead of producing impossible to recycle multilayered materials that impact the planet.
“There’s a perversion in business. And we at the plastic bank are aiming to change that. We’re conscious capitalism. We’re a for-profit business, but everybody wins with us. It doesn’t have to be the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. It’s the other way around,” says Katz.
Plastic Bank is not all we need to do to end plastic pollution, but it is an innovative, engaging, and successful part of creating awareness of the problem, collecting waste in places where no recycling exists, and helping those in need by creating “Social Plastic.”
Also see our stories on extended producer responsibility, food rescue organization spud.ca, Goodwill’s reuse centers, LOOP reusable packaging, and Recycling Energy the link between recycling and energy.