Proposal for "Respected African Elders" PSA Campaign to Reduce Ocean Litter in African Coastal Cities

Proposal for "Respected African Elders" PSA Campaign to Reduce Ocean Litter in African Coastal Cities

See text below the photos. Photos were provided by Dr. Asi Quiggle Atud, professor of Urban Wastewater Management, at the University of Yaounde. His plan and project were funded by a measely $1500 grant from World Reuse Repair and Recycling Association Go Fund Me campaign - which honestly had not expected it to fund even the initial 40+ page plan report.

This will be a two or three part blog... this weekend, Dr Asi's ENPROSA Action Team did a third exercise at the beach in Buea, Cameroon, to compare the labor hours to collect plastic already washed to sea and washed back onto beaches - to the Kg per hour they collected in cities in the EARLY rainy season, when stormwater monsoon rains consolidated it in canals but not yet to the ocean.

While we began doing this to promote it as an alternative to other plastic litter offset measures, we are also reflecting on greenwashing, and possible perverse consequences to making litter a "commodity". We also have yet to fully investigate the plastic brick manufacturing plants which buy or accept the litter this, and other teams like WasteAid doing similar work.

In a social media post on Facebook, another Returned Cameroon Peace Corp Volunteer, remarked that education of African children - future citizens - is also vital.

Gail Spence

True. Teaching young people as part of school curriculum not to litter or pollute also creates new and future generations new behavior and how pollution and littering hurts them and their communities. America did it in the 70’s in many cities and it made a big differences along with putting out more public garbage cans.

So the rest of this post, below the photos and "see more", outlines a proposal for a PSA loosely based upon the flawed but effective "Crying Indian" PSA by Keep America Beautiful in the 1970s.  Send your thoughts. 

Below is the proposal we'll be making based on the "Keep America Beautiful" anti-litter campaign of the 1970s.  We are aware that the funding of the KAB was in part to promote an alternative to more successful container deposit laws, but the promotion of doing the right thing out of conscience is not at all inconsistent with promotion of doing the right thing for a nickel deposit compensation.

How might "Keep Atlantic Beautiful" work in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana and other nations with large cities on the coast?

“You can be for the environment, or against plastics, but not both”

Getting to know Megan Fontes, the new Executive Director of the Northeast Recycling Council this week. Lynn Rubenstein is retiring - Lynn and I worked together in several capacities over the decades (she came with me on my first visit to China in 2002).

Via LinkedIn, Megan just shared this article to ask my thoughts.   Plastic – Fact over Fiction

Chris DeArmitt - PhD, FRSC, FIMMM

Written by Chris DeArmitt.  He's a paid "expert witness" who's got industry connections, but I guess I do too, and have seen my articles dismissed based on my "recycling business".  The article makes several of the same points made in the Oregon study from a couple of years ago.

Remember: “you can be for the environment, or against plastics, but not both”.

Well, I'm not as sure about microplastics as Chris DeArmitt (his argument that the number of alarmed scientific reports is 24% but number of press reports 90%+ does point to journalistic alarmism, but if he's an expert on plastics, that's a really weak response to concerns on microplastic pollution).  But his LCA lifecycle analysis is spot on.

He also takes some cheap shots against other materials, like "ceramic takes longer to degrade than a plastic bag". It's an apples to oranges comparison. Same with carcinogens in dust industries like cement. I'm sure if a study was done on inhaling plastic particles, they'd be just as carcinogenic (abrasion is the cause with cement, not toxicity). But he's defending his team, and it is true Team Plastic is getting ganged up upon.