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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
China Environment Forum

The China Environment Forum is the Wilson Center’s platform for convening policy, business, research, and NGO practitioners on the most pressing environment and energy issues facing China.

Our posts on New Security Beat examine the environmental footprint of China’s rapid urbanization and industrialization with a particular eye on the country’s interlinked water, energy, and food insecurity.

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  • Building an On-ramp for Catalytic Capital to Reduce Plastic Leakage: Q&A with Circulate Capital’s April Crow

    ›
    China Environment Forum  //  Q&A  //  April 1, 2021  //  By Ruyi Li
    Waste plastic bottles from automobile oils and beverages

    Back in 2005, as a part of the Coca-Cola Company Environmental Team, April Crow was a pioneer working on the concept of sustainable packaging. In the mid-2000s, despite stories on the great pacific garbage patch, ocean plastic waste was not high on policy or corporate agendas. April believed this was due to a lack of scientific data on the scale and threat of plastic waste. To fill this gap, April’s team partnered with Ocean Conservancy to convene leading scientists to help fill these knowledge gaps. Their research found the majority of marine plastic pollution stemmed from five Asian countries that lacked waste management infrastructure, which if fully in place, could reduce leakage by 45 percent. This insight raised a challenging question—how can companies and aid agencies bring funding to these markets to facilitate better infrastructure and prevent plastic leakage?

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  • Championing Ecological Health and Environmental Justice in Plastic Action: Q&A with Judith Enck, Founder of Beyond Plastics

    ›
    China Environment Forum  //  Q&A  //  March 25, 2021  //  By Clare Auld-Brokish & Tongxin Zhu
    New York Plastic Waste

    “There is one thing I think about a lot: how do you get people active on plastic waste? How do you structure having impact?”

    Judith Enck discovered her interest in environmental activism when she interned in college for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and was asked to lobby for the Returnable Container Act (commonly referred to as the Bottle Bill), which had stalled for 10 years. The difficulty she faced in lobbying for this relatively simple bill motivated her to return for a second internship. After graduation, she abandoned plans for social work or law school to return to environmental advocacy and quickly became the executive director of Environmental Advocates NY. The bill eventually became a New York State law in 1982 and has since prevented the unnecessary export or landfilling of billions of plastic bottles. Judith learned important lessons from that victory and has been making her mark on America’s waste policy ever since. 

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  • The Unfinished Battle for Drinking Water Security in Post-poverty Rural China

    ›
    China Environment Forum  //  Guest Contributor  //  March 18, 2021  //  By Jiayuan Wang

    13255252258147021

    The Huangzhong district in Xining city, the capital of Qinghai Province, is home to 8,980 families, all of whom received assistance under China’s national policy to eradicate extreme poverty (below 2,300 yuan per person per year). Through social assistance and private sector financing, Huangzhong district succeeded in lifting all 28,706 residents out of extreme poverty after a four-year battle. In April 2019 the district proudly celebrated its official removal of the “poverty alleviation county” label. 

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  • Building Local Capacity for Zero-Waste in the Philippines: Q&A with Break Free From Plastic’s Former Asia-Pacific Coordinator Beau Baconguis

    ›
    China Environment Forum  //  Q&A  //  March 11, 2021  //  By Ruyi Li & Clare Auld-Brokish

    ANGONO, RIZAL, PHILIPPINES - JULY 4 2018: Workers of a materials recovery facility sort through plastic waste and segregate them for proper recycling.

    Large pollution can come in small packages. This is the case with the small plastic pouches, called sachets, that constitute a major source of the plastic waste crisis plaguing the Philippines, a country ranked third in the world for ocean plastic leakage. Filipino consumers throw away a staggering 163 million of these difficult-to-recycle plastic packets each day, which adds up to about 60 billion a year, enough to carpet 130,000 soccer fields.

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  • The Circular Business Models Behind Indonesia’s Reuse Revolution

    ›
    China Environment Forum  //  Guest Contributor  //  March 4, 2021  //  By Dieuwertje Nelissen & Tauhid Pandji
    Koinpack header

    Waste banks are a cornerstone of Indonesia’s waste reduction efforts. Seeking to prevent plastic waste from getting burned or choking waterways, communities establish these places for people to bring plastic waste to be recycled.

    It only took a few months to see tangible results at the Bumi Daya Bersih waste bank in West Jakarta. In addition to collecting and sorting waste, the waste bank community is also contributing to waste prevention. A number of regular waste bank customers have started bringing empty plastic packaging that’s not intended to be recycled (yet) but instead refilled with high-quality home and body care products.

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  • Returning to our Roots for Elegance and Sustainability in Fashion: Q&A with MycoWorks Co-founder Sophia Wang

    ›
    China Environment Forum  //  Q&A  //  February 25, 2021  //  By Clare Auld-Brokish & Tongxin Zhu
    Co-founder Sophia Wang_Photo by Carla Tramullas

    Fashion is the second most polluting industry behind oil and is responsible for 10 percent of annual global carbon emissions. The carbon-intensive production of animal hide and plastic for leather and synthetic clothing further compound the impact of this industry, while waste from every stage of the fashion pipeline contributes to rampant air, water, and soil pollution. As experts have known for years, the rise of fast fashion has overextended the world’s resources and demonstrated the fragility of our current methods of production and consumption. If we desire a future in which high quality textiles play a part, we must act to change our habits on a system-wide scale.

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  • The Over-whale-ming Plastic Problem

    ›
    China Environment Forum  //  Guest Contributor  //  February 18, 2021  //  By Greg Merrill
    IMG_3772l

    Plastic pollution has infiltrated every ecosystem in every ocean on the planet, but perhaps the most iconic organisms impacted are the whales. The problem is monumental. For example, consider the blue whale. Our most optimistic estimates put the global blue whale population size at about 25,000 individuals (down 89 percent since before commercial whaling began in 1911). Based on recent estimates, an amount of plastic waste equivalent to about 3.5 times the weight of the entire blue whale population is put into the ocean every year. That staggering figure alone is enough to make one feel, well, blue, but the devastating impact is underscored by the now-familiar images of deceased whales—their guts bursting with plastic bags or completely entangled in derelict or discarded plastic fishing gear.

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  • Waste Not Want Not: Malaysia Moves to Become a Leader in Tackling Plastic Waste

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    China Environment Forum  //  Guest Contributor  //  January 28, 2021  //  By Jazlyn Lee
    Waste collecting in Malaysia, WWF:Yunaidi Joepoet

    After China issued its plastic waste import ban in January 2018, global plastic waste shipments were quickly rerouted to Southeast Asia, with Malaysia as a top recipient. Like bamboo sprouts after the rain, illegal plastic recycling facilities quickly popped up in Malaysia. To stay under the radar, some operators set up recycling plants and waste dumpsites in oil palm plantations. 

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