Plastic, Waste, & Me - Unpacked!
1 HDPE
2 LDPE
3 Paper/cardboard
4 PP
5 Dye
6 Aluminum combined with PE, PP, or PA film
Packaging is often comprised of several layers of material, which are almost impossible to separate. Recycling, which aims to produce an equivalent product, is only possible if each material can be separated.
Various gases, including water vapor and, in particular, carbon dioxide and methane, are known as greenhouse gases. They collect in the atmosphere, absorb the sun’s rays, and then release them as heat. That’s why it’s pleasantly warm, not cold, on the earth. Increasing amounts of these gases are causing temperatures to rise. Methane is a particularly strong greenhouse gas and much worse for the environment than carbon dioxide.
Slags are solids that remains following incineration. They are highly toxic and must be stored in salt domes or other disposal sites in a similar way to radioactive waste.
In addition to gases and liquids, tiny dust-like particles containing many different pollutants are also released during the incineration process. They are known as fly ash. These substances are so fine that, like dust, they can settle anywhere and even enter our food cycle.
Dioxins are created when some types of plastic, PVC and PUR, are incinerated. They are organic pollutants that occur in tiny quantities all over the world and accumulate in the food chain. They are persistent, which means they remain in the environment for a very long time. Beware – even in extremely small quantities, dioxins are very bad for your health. They can cause cancer, deformed embryos, and many other illnesses.
GlossaryCarbon dioxide Methane Greenhouse gas Carbon dioxide Salt domes Radioactive Pollutants Dioxins Organic Persistent Dioxins Embryos
Schools and colleges are not spared the impacts of plastic. Just think of the everyday items used there: backpacks, bags, plastic bottles, writing utensils, folders, pens. Then there’s all that food packaging – bags, cups, containers, and disposable bottles are all made of plastic and all end up in the trash.
At the same time, schools and colleges are really good places to find like-minded people and together do something to combat the plastic crisis. How can we reduce or avoid our use of plastic? What can be replaced by plastic-free items? Glass or stainless steel bottles are a good alternative to plastic bottles. Envelopes can be easily folded together from paper. Food can be packed in beeswax cloth wraps, screw-top jars, or plastic-free cans. Vending machines, which produce plastic waste with every purchase, can be avoided. There are many different things that we can change, as shown by Plastic Free Campus, an initiative that supports schools and colleges around the world in the fight against single-use plastic. Everything you need to know is taught in online course modules: general information about plastic, how to organize collections at school or college, choosing the right strategy for separating waste, and other organizations that support the campaign.
If a school or college does something to become plastic-free and more sustainable, everyone ultimately benefits. Inspire others – in your class, on your course, through the student council or representative – and get going!
Any school or college can register. Once a teacher has confirmed the project, the Plastic Free Campus team will begin mentoring the group on the modules. A course can be incorporated into a class or run outside of school hours. At the end, the school or college receives a Plastic Free Campus certificate. It’s a big step towards making the daily environment more sustainable and also healthier, but above all plastic-free.
GlossaryDisposable Campus
Fill up: Different ways to reuse a container: with the same product, with a different one, on an industrial scale or at home.
Transport: Weight is important during transportation. Short distances mean less energy consumption.
Rinse: Clean and reuse.
Ports of transshipment From here, the containers are shipped off to other destinations, sometimes to the same countries that waste is directly exported to.
Whether they’re rich or poor, work in an office or a factory, live in the city or country, are young or old – people are affected by plastic in very different ways. All around the world, plastic is threatening many people’s livelihoods – if they make a living from fishing, work in the tourism sector, or live next door to a plastics factory. People in low-paid jobs are more likely to be exposed to toxins or pollutants such as cleaning agents and other chemical substances. Gender also makes a difference: Many low-wage jobs are done by women.
The World Bank classifies countries into four income groups – high, upper-middle, lower-middle, and low. Low-income countries are not shown.
GlossaryWorld Bank
*North America includes Canada, the US, and Mexico.
*Europe includes 3% from the CIS countries.
*Asia includes Australia – China is responsible for 31%.
1 DISTILLATION Petroleum is heated in a flask. At 360 degrees Celsius, it becomes gaseous and rises. The gas escapes through a tube. When cooled, this petroleum liquefies and drips into a glass container. »Destillare« is Latin and means to trickle down. Petroleum or natural gas are the raw materials used in PET production.
2 CRACKING The long carbon chains are broken down or ‘cracked’ into shorter chains, which can be further processed to make gasolines, solvents, and plastics.
3 POLYMERIZATION During this chemical reaction, long molecular chains, known as polymers, are formed from many single molecules, the monomers. The monomers dimethyl terephthalate and ethylene glycol join together during polymerization of PET.
4 PELLETS PET is melted into spaghetti-like strands that can be cut when they have cooled down. This produces small cylindrical pieces called pellets. They trickle like sugar, can be conveniently packaged in bags, and are easy to transport. Plastic is sold and processed in the form of pellets.
5 STRETCH BLOW MOLDING At a beverage factory, blanks are cast from the pellets. One end of the blank already has the screw thread on the bottle neck. The heated blank is blow-molded into the specified bottle shape like a balloon. This produces a PET bottle, which is then filled with a beverage.
GlossaryPetroleum PET Polymerization Molecules Ethylene Pellets Cracking
Do you like things made of neoprene? You probably know them as computer bags, rubber boots, or swimming, surfing, and diving suits. Soft, warm, and with a smart modern look, neoprene clothing is often worn by water sports enthusiasts. Neoprene is also often used in medicine and industry. But the way it’s produced can also seriously put people’s health at risk.
One example is Robert Taylor, an eighty-year-old who lives with his family in Reserve, a small town in Louisiana, US. The landscape along the Mississippi is flat and fertile. The majority of residents here are Black families whose ancestors were slaves on Louisiana’s sugar plantations. When slavery was abolished, the families worked hard over many generations to make a modest living from the land. They used the little money they could save to build houses and provide their descendants with a better life. But today, Robert Taylor wouldn’t wish his town on anyone. The air has been poisoned by toxic pollutants emanating from the 140 plastic and chemical factories built locally in recent decades. For their owners, there are good reasons for being here: The land is cheap, fracking gas is cheap, and the proximity to the Gulf of Mexico makes it easy to ship their products. Besides, no one expects the disadvantaged population to fight back.
Reserve is located in St. John the Baptist Parish, an area along the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans some call »Cancer Alley.« Almost everyone in the small town has family members who died of cancer. Many suffer from malignant tumors or other illnesses such as immune system disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, headaches, nausea, dizziness, or palpitations. Residents have long suspected that they have a higher incidence of sickness, but they could never prove where it came from.
It was not until 2015 that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed that the cancer risk here was the highest in all of America. The chance of getting cancer in Reserve is 50 times above the US average. Forty-five different toxic industrial fumes have been identified in the air along Cancer Alley. This cloud of substances makes it impossible to attribute specific illnesses to specific chemicals, and thus to prove which plastic or chemical factory is responsible for them. No company can therefore be held accountable.
Only chloroprene can be clearly attributed to a specific factory, because it is only released during the production of neoprene. The Japanese company Denka, which was part of the plastic company DuPont until 2015, is the only one to produce neoprene in the US. The factory is situated just a stone’s throw from Reserve. When residents in the town found out that for 50 years they had been breathing in a toxic gas classified as »probably carcinogenic« by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, they were shocked and angry. At the same time, there was also a sense of relief: Now armed with real facts and figures, they were sure that something would change. The factory would close or severely limit its chloroprene emissions.
But they were wrong. No one is willing to take action against the neoprene factory, as the company provides jobs and is a source of tax dollars. In the face of public pressure, Denka did volunteer to reduce its chloroprene emissions in 2017, but they are still often 100 times higher than the maximum values recommended by the EPA. »All the company’s interested in is money,« says Robert Taylor. His mother, two siblings, his favorite cousin, and several of his neighbors have all died of cancer. His wife has breast cancer and multiple sclerosis and has had to move away. Robert Taylor’s daughter has a disease of the digestive system likely caused by chloroprene and cannot work. In his desperation, he co-founded the resistance group Concerned Citizens of St. John. At weekly meetings in the local church, he talks to residents and encourages them to fight back. Together, they pore over documents, laws, and research papers, and invite representatives from the press, government, and industry to come to their town. They have formed links with national and international environmental organizations, who support them and add weight to their protest.
In the early days, their struggle seemed hopeless, as the industry would stop at nothing to protect its interests. Plastic giants such as Denka can afford the best lawyers and pay for scientific studies to dispute the figures from the EPA and prove that their emissions are harmless. Reserve’s residents are also disappointed by the EPA, which prefers to support protests in wealthier areas mostly populated by white people. People are also fighting air pollution caused by plastic companies in other places, but in contrast to Reserve they usually have more money and the necessary connections to make sure their voices are heard. The problem of chloroprene exists only in the direct vicinity of the neoprene factory, says the EPA, which would rather focus on toxic gas emissions that affect more people.
Robert Taylor and his fellow protesters are not giving up. They want the chemical companies to know that they are being watched. The people here want to stay in the place where their families have always lived. It’s a long and arduous task, but they have now achieved something: The courts have upheld their lawsuit against Denka. It’s a huge success.
Annette Herzog interviewed Jane Patton
GlossaryNeoprene Industry Toxic Pollutants Fracking Chloroprene Emissions
The defining moment in the life of a young albatross is when it takes its run-up to soar into the air for the very first time. It only has this one chance. If all goes well, an albatross can live over 60 years and reproduce over a long period – one female from the family of Laysan albatrosses managed to hatch an egg at the age of 67. If the attempted flight fails, however, the young albatross will drown or be left behind and starve. As the bodies of the dead seabirds gradually decompose on the beach, the reason for their sad fate becomes apparent: Their stomachs are full of plastic.
Albatrosses are beautiful, legendary animals. They are among the largest flying birds in the world and can go the longest without landing. Their wingspan can be up to three and a half meters. Carried by the winds with barely a flap of their wings, they glide over the oceans of the southern hemisphere and cover thousands of kilometers every day. Many animals circle the entire globe. In times past, seafarers thought of the albatross as the soul of a drowned sailor because the seemingly mythical bird would often follow their ships for days or weeks without ever resting. Albatrosses even sleep in the air.
One of the largest albatross colonies is located on the Midway Islands between Japan and California in the Pacific Ocean, 3,000 kilometers from the nearest mainland. The islands are located on the edge of the Pacific Garbage Patch, a vast expanse of plastic waste. One of the islands is called Pihemánu in Hawaiian, meaning »the loud cries of birds.« Among the ruins of an abandoned American air base, more than a million black-footed and Laysan albatrosses meet there every year to mate and breed. They take a long time to do both. Young albatrosses congregate on the island during the breeding season for several years before hatching their first egg. Their fascinating mating dances are not just to select suitable partners. The dance, which is practiced for years, helps the birds get to know each other better and better. It begins with gaping mouths, clacking beaks, and bowing, and ends as a synchronous dance in which the two birds exactly mirror each other’s movements. It is important for the birds to find the right partner, because they stay together for life and need be able to rely on each other when raising their young. As the females lay an egg no more than once a year, nothing can go wrong. The division of labor begins at the time of hatching. While one of the two albatrosses guards the egg in cold, stormy, or hot weather, defying hunger and thirst, the other is often out over the sea for days searching for food. After two months, the chick hatches, a process that can take two days. Although the parents could help, they don’t, because it is important for the chick to build up its strength by freeing itself from the hard shell on its own. The parents are content to stroke the chick encouragingly and lovingly with their strong beaks. Over the next few months, all of their time will be taken up feeding their young. They fly thousands of kilometers for days on end before returning with filled stomachs and stuffing the pre-digested food into their chick’s beak.
This is how albatrosses have lived for millions of years, and the sea has always provided them with healthy, organic food. Their instinct tells them that they can trust the sea. They don’t know that the oceans have been filling up with plastic waste for decades. They also don’t know that they can get caught in miles of fishing lines whose bait they mistake for food. They have no idea that they are swallowing not only squid and crustaceans, but also toothbrushes, screw caps, and plastic forks, which damage their chicks’ delicate mucous membranes when they feed them.
After seven months, the parents’ work is done and they return to the sea. From now on, the young must fend for themselves, and the next meal may be very many kilometers away. Hundreds of thousands of young albatrosses now stand on the beach with their wings spread wide open. They are all waiting for the right wind to help them take off. If they succeed in getting into the air, they will spend the next three to five years at sea before returning to the island to mate. If, on the other hand, their attempted flight fails and they land in the waves, they will die. Will their wings be strong enough?
However, the young albatrosses still have one more important thing to do before their first flight: They need to empty their stomachs of everything they haven’t yet been able to digest. But what if the hard objects their parents have unknowingly fed them are too big or too sharp to be spat out? If sharp pieces of plastic, felt-tip pens, or cream bottles get stuck in their narrow throats? This is what happens to thousands of young birds, and it is their death sentence. They stay on land because they can’t take off, and die slow and agonizing deaths.
Photographer Chris Jordan made a series of images documenting the Laysan albatrosses on Pihemánu. He intended to travel to the island just once, but the sight of so many dead young birds with bellies full of plastic shook him so much that he returned several times to shoot a documentary. Because they know no natural enemies on these islands, the albatrosses trusted him and allowed him to shoot very close with his camera. Their true enemies are rising sea levels, increasingly violent storms, modern fishing – and plastic waste in the sea.
Annette Herzog, based on the film »Albatross« by Chris Jordan
New York, 1907. Leo Hendrik Baekeland is doing experiments in his lab. He is a true entrepreneur. As a young man, the talented chemist left his home town of Ghent in Belgium for America, where he developed a photographic paper that immediately made him rich. Now he wants to come up with a man-made substance to replace expensive natural materials.
It is a time of immense scientific and technological progress. Industrialization is in full swing. Medical insights and agricultural advances are resulting in unprecedented population growth. Growing numbers of people need food, clothing, and everyday necessities. But natural resources such as wool, silk, mother-of-pearl, horn, and ivory are often only available in limited quantities; many of them need to be shipped in from the far corners of the earth.
Industry, too, is on the lookout for new materials to build the first cars, new machines, and to electrify the rapidly growing cities. There is particular interest in finding a heat-resistant material to insulate electrical cables. Until this time, shellac, obtained from the secretions of the female lac bug, had been used for this purpose, but 15,000 of these little red bugs need six months to produce just half a kilo of shellac. On top of this, the material requires costly transportation from India and Thailand, where the lac bug lives.
Baekeland, of course, is neither the first nor the only person interested in producing man-made substances. Half a century earlier, in 1839, American Charles Goodyear discovered how to make rubber by combining the natural rubber from tropical trees with sulfur over a hot stove. This made it possible to produce items such as fountain pens, piano keys, tires, and even erasers – removing the need to use bread to rub away errant graphite marks. Rubber also proved to be a good material for the cushions on billiard tables. At that time, billiards was as popular as video games are today and was played all around the world. Billiard balls, however, were made of African ivory. An entire elephant tusk was needed to produce just three of these balls. The hunt was cruel and the prized ivory expensive. In response, an American billiard player offered a large prize in 1864 to anyone who could find a substitute material for billiard balls.
Taking up the challenge, five years later a New York printer by the name of John Wesley Hyatt developed celluloid, which was based on cellulose, plants’ cell walls. The new material was sadly not suitable for billiard balls, which knocked too loudly and did not bounce off each other properly. Hyatt therefore didn’t win the prize, but he had succeeded in inventing the world’s first thermoplastic. Together with his brother, he founded several companies producing items made of celluloid that were previously expensive luxuries, such as knife handles, combs, or costume jewelry. Celluloid did, however, have one major disadvantage. It was extremely flammable.
In 1907, at his private lab in New York, Baekeland senses an opportunity that promises to bring him fame and fortune. He becomes interested in phenol and formaldehyde. These chemicals are common waste products in the chemical industry and available in large quantities. Others before Baekeland had already realized that the two substances combine to form a tar or resin-like mass, but they believed it was simply an annoying by-product that stuck to the test tubes and was of no practical use.
Baekeland takes a systematic approach. He develops a pressure vessel and investigates the effects of temperature and pressure on the mixture. The result? For a long time, nothing happens. Nothing, that is, until he adds a few of the colorless phenol crystals to a pungent formaldehyde solution, heats it to just under 200 degrees Celsius, and pulls out a soft substance from the water that can be pressed into molds and quickly hardens under heat and pressure. The new material has outstanding properties: It does not catch fire, melt, or break, it is durable, and it conducts neither heat nor electricity. It is also inexpensive to produce. Baekeland applies for a patent for this material and calls it Bakelite, after himself. He has discovered the first plastic that does not contain any natural molecules. Bakelite is the first purely synthetic plastic and the predecessor of all modern plastics.
The electrical industry now has an insulating material and the automotive industry has a heat-resistant and durable material. Enriched with textile fibers, Bakelite is also used to make light bulb sockets, loudspeakers, office items, radio housings, light switches, telephones, and handles for pots and pans. As it turns out, it’s also an excellent material for billiard balls. Most objects made of Bakelite are typically brown or black, as this plastic darkens and is therefore dyed a dark color during production. In addition, As Bakelite can only be easily removed from rounded molds the objects tend not to have sharp corners or edges. These properties of the new material will strongly influence product design and the tastes of society up until the middle of the twentieth century.
These days, Bakelite is only used where a particularly heat-resistant material is required, for example in pan handles. Other developments have overtaken it, and colorful plastics with even better and more varied properties have largely replaced Bakelite. All of them, however, are based on Baekeland’s discovery. And many everyday objects made of Bakelite are now popular collector’s items.
GlossaryBakelite Photographic paper Industrialization Natural resources Shellac Phenol Formaldehyde Celluloid Graphite Molecules Synthetic Industry
Zekia Memedov has made a living from trash for as long as she can remember. Even as a little girl, she would rummage through trash cans instead of going to school, taking whatever she could then sell on. In later years, her children would do the same. Everyone in the family has to chip in, which leaves little time for school. And when they do go, the other kids turn up their noses at the scavenging children. »You smell! You have lice!«, they chant. But how are you supposed to wash if you don’t even have running water at home?
Zekia is 47 and lives in North Macedonia, right in the heart of Europe. Like her husband Rahim, she is Romani, a European minority, most of whom are poor and treated as inferior by society. Until recently, Zekia lived with 50 other Romani people in a camp of tents and improvised shelters by the Vardar River on the edge of the capital Skopje. Husband Rahim grew up in an orphanage and is the only person in their community to have finished school. That earns him respect, even though he never went on to complete his training as an excavator driver. Zekia was 16 and Rahim 17 when their first son was born, and they later had six more children. Their home is full of objects they found themselves. Everyone in the camp washes and cleans their clothes with river water, and they eat what can be bought with the little money they earn. It’s not enough, and it’s not healthy, either. But their work allows them to do something good for the environment: They collect 80% of the trash that can be recycled. In countries that don’t have proper municipal trash separation, it’s always the most deprived and marginalized in society who take on this thankless job and are despised all the more for it. But for many people, it’s the only way they can get by.
It’s early in the morning when the families leave, the men separately from the women, who take along their youngest children. Children aged 11 and above stick together in their own groups. They have bicycles with trailers and plenty of space for the sacks used to sort the trash. Zekia knows exactly when the people in Skopje’s residential areas go to work, throwing their bags of household waste away as they leave. There is hardly any trash separation in North Macedonia: Glass, paper, plastic, food, diapers, toxic detergents – it all ends up in one container, and it’s often children who clamber in to fish out the things that can be sold on. Where once it was cardboard, paper, glass, and metal cans, now it’s mostly PET bottles. Whether Zekia and Rahim will collect cardboard and paper depends on the prices they can get for them on any given day. Often, it’s not worth it. They discard plastic bags, which weigh almost nothing and don’t bring in any cash. Packaging made of different types of plastic is also worthless.
It’s dangerous, unhealthy work. Sometimes spray bottles explode. Other times they might turn up a dead dog in a plastic bag. If they cut themselves on some sharp glass or metal, they dress their wounds with a filthy rag. They are exposed to toxic substances, as well as the flies, rats, and cockroaches that transmit disease. Many people who earn a living by collecting trash suffer from skin rashes, gastrointestinal illnesses, typhoid, and cholera. In most cases, they have no health insurance and limited access to medical care.
Since the trash collectors do something useful for the environment, the authorities call them »green« workers, but this isn’t how they see themselves; for them, it’s just a question of survival. Often, they cover 40 kilometers a day before handing in their pickings to a private drop-off center in the evening. They earn an average of 0.16 euros for each kilogram of plastic, while the drop-off center sells on that same kilo for three euros. Others also earn good money from reselling and exporting waste that can be recycled and help to reduce the use of valuable raw materials. A man can earn between eight and nine euros a day. Women, who need to take care of their children while working, often collect less and usually earn only around half that amount. This income level is below the poverty line.
Nevertheless, 3,000 of North Macedonia’s two million people live on trash. There are also many waste collectors in South America, India, and the Philippines, but there they have now formed cooperatives that guarantee them a fixed wage, health insurance, and better working conditions. Cooperatives are also in a position to obtain loans from banks and buy vehicles and machines that sort, shred, and compress waste. This allows the trash collectors to sell on waste without intermediaries and therefore earn more money.
The North Macedonian trash collectors don’t have any schemes like this yet, but there are organizations helping them, for example by demanding that they be made permanent employees of recycling and disposal companies, which in turn would benefit from their knowledge of separating waste – after all, no one knows more about the waste produced in our consumer society. It would be good for the environment and also improve their quality of life.
With the help of an organization called Ajde Makedonijas, Zekia and her family were recently able to move out of the Romani camp and into a two-bedroom bungalow in a new estate. They have running water and medical insurance, and a social worker is available to answer questions they may have. Anyone who sends children to school receives a free meal every day, which is donated by grocery stores and restaurants. Zekia hasn’t stopped collecting trash, though. It’s her job, all she ever learned, and something she knows more about than almost anyone else.
Annette Herzog interviewed Blazhe Josifovski
GlossaryToxic PET Cooperatives Recycling
Have you ever thought about what tampons and disposable pads are made of? Like most people, Indian ecologist Shradha Shreejaya believed for a long time that they were simply made of cotton. It was only when she was 24 years old and involved in environmental protection campaigns that she realized how much plastic and toxic ingredients conventional tampons and pads contain. Suddenly she understood why she kept getting these red skin rashes. She had always thought it was because of her skin type, or maybe she wasn’t clean enough. She switched to a menstrual cup, which revolutionized her life. Not only was she suddenly rid of her rash, but for the first time the cup allowed her to touch herself in her most intimate places, giving her a more natural relationship with the areas of her body sexualized by society. Her perception changed and she asked herself: Why are girls and women ashamed of a completely natural, biological process that has its origin in something as essential as human reproduction? In India, monthly bleeding is such a taboo that many girls and women do not even talk about it among themselves.
Spurred by her own experience, the environmental scientist became interested in the impact menstrual products have not only on the environment but also on the health and wellbeing of girls and women. She understood that changes in this field are only possible if the taboos are broken. To solve problems, you have to be able to address them. But this is a big challenge in her home country, because in many parts of India, girls and women are considered unclean during their menstruation and are not allowed to enter a temple or the kitchen. Often, they also stay away from school during this time, either because they are afraid that stains will show on their clothes or because there is no way to change and dispose of sanitary pads in many schools. Often girls even drop out of school because of this.
At home, too, especially in rural areas and slums, women face the problem of not knowing where to dispose of used menstrual products. They are not allowed to put them in the household rubbish. They get soaked up in the toilet and clog up the sewage system. In rural areas, women often walk long distances to bury them in the ground outside the villages. Or they wedge them between their thighs when they bathe in the lake or river to get rid of them there. But regardless of whether they are in the water or in the ground, because of their high plastic content, each individual pad exists for hundreds of years. When women burn them, toxic gases are released.
Disposable products are, of course, very practical for most girls and women, and most consider them a great advance over the scraps of cloth women have traditionally used for this purpose. The Indian government wants to help more women use disposable pads, so it distributes them at a reduced price to girls aged between 10 and 19 in rural areas. It has also abolished the tax on sanitary pads and tampons, because the purchase is a financial problem for many. The state loses sight of the waste problem in the process.
Another important point is not addressed either, and this is not only a problem in India, but worldwide: How can it be, Shrada wonders, that we pay attention to healthy nutrition and low-pollutant cosmetics, but hardly anyone questions what chemicals are contained in menstrual products? There is no obligation to declare the ingredients, yet every woman should have the right to know which toxins and plastics regularly come into contact with her mucous membranes for about 40 years.
Shrada began researching what initiatives already existed to spread sustainable menstrual products. Fortunately for her, her home state of Kerala in southern India has a very progressive and environmentally conscious government and participates in the international Zero Waste Cities program. This means that there was already a dense network of NGOs working on waste issues. But Shrada found hardly any that dealt with the issue of menstruation. She used social media to connect with activists in this field and came across initiatives like »The Red Cycle« or »EcoFemme,« a cooperative that produces washable sanitary napkins from organic cotton, providing jobs for socially disadvantaged women.
At the same time, the women use the surplus from the sale of the cloth sanitary napkins to finance educational campaigns in schools. In order to network the existing projects, Shrada co-founded the »Sustainable Menstruation Kerala Collective« – an informal group of committed individuals, initiatives, and producers who have the same concern: to provide girls and women with access to healthy, affordable, and environmentally-friendly menstrual products. To this end, they exchange ideas with each other or organize festivals and campaigns. They educate and present environmentally-friendly and harmless alternatives at public events and in schools, such as washable cloth pads and menstrual cups made of medical silicone, which do not harm the environment or the body and are cheaper in the long run, despite the higher one-time purchase costs. They earn a lot of thanks for finally addressing a topic that is tainted with so much shame. Shrada is aware that not every woman has the opportunity to choose freely. Often it fails because of such basic things as clean toilets, which is why they also involve politicians in their work. Education, social situation, environment, and health – everything is connected. Shrada’s efforts have been instrumental in making Kerala a good example for the whole of India.
Annette Herzog interviewed Shradha Shreejaya
GlossaryToxic Menstrual cup Zero Waste Activists Cooperative Organic Disposable Taboo
My name’s Annette and I was born in East Germany in 1960. When I was young, plastic was still something new and very modern. We used it sparingly – like everything else, really, as East Germany was not a wealthy country. If something broke, we repaired it. Our village had a repair shop for broken household appliances like shavers, vacuum cleaners, TVs, and even sheer tights. It didn’t cost much and was always worth it.
Packaging was usually made of cardboard, paper, or glass. When we went shopping, we used fabric or string bags. Meat, fish, cheese, and even sauerkraut were bought fresh from the counter and wrapped in paper. Fruit and vegetables were packed in brown paper bags.
GlossaryOne time, a classmate of mine who’d been to Sweden told us they collected their trash there in plastic bags before throwing them into the waste container. We could hardly believe it. Waste appetizingly presented for the trash?! At our house, waste went straight into the garbage can. After we emptied it, we rinsed it out and lined it with newspaper. Organic waste landed on the garden compost heap. There were special bins in the town where they used to collect feed for the pigs. We took metal, glass, and waste paper to the scrap dealer. This was something children did – with our handcarts and bicycles, we regularly went door to door, rang the bell, and asked for empty bottles, glasses, and old newspapers and magazines. We took it all to the collection point as a way of topping up our allowance.
Plastic packaging was always reused or repurposed. It was very useful and fairly rare, so it would have been a shame to simply throw it away. We would rinse out the one-liter plastic milk bags and use them to carry our school lunches. My parents used empty margarine tubs as flowerpots.
On an outing, we’d take food from home or buy a sausage on a small paper plate. At events, we had drinks in bottles or returnable glasses. If the adults wanted a coffee, they’d go to a café – takeaway cups were unknown. As a young woman, I was invited to an event at the French Cultural Center in Berlin, where they served water from transparent plastic bottles in see-through plastic cups. My jaw dropped when I saw them being thrown away into the waste basket, so I sneaked one of these lovely bottles and a number of cups into my bag and took them home with me. My family was amazed and used them for a long time.
Today my parents still rinse out almost all their plastic containers and use them for things like storing food in the freezer. They also reuse all their plastic bags. I used to think it was embarrassing, but now this pair of almost ninety-year-olds have shown themselves to be fully in tune with the times. I try to follow their example, but I simply have more empty plastic containers than I could ever need.
GlossaryMy name is Kofo and I was born in London in 1959. When I was ten, we returned to my parents’ homeland, Nigeria. There was not so much plastic in England at that time either, but much less in African countries. In the 1970s there were some supermarkets, but most people in Nigeria bought their food in markets and carried it home in baskets. In the market, foodstuffs such as rice, cassava, and grains were packed in bags made of jute, a natural fiber, and food sold was often wrapped in newspaper or large leaves. Similar leaves were used to cook food in. When the sacks or baskets were worn out, they could simply be thrown away, because they were made of plant fibers that rotted quickly in a natural organic way.
In the old days water was carried in containers found in nature, such as hollowed-out bottle gourds. The calabash trees where bottle gourds grow are not as common today. I have one planted in my garden, and when I have guests, they are surprised and happy to see it. I encourage them to take the gourds and use them as water containers, but it is a lot of work to hollow them out. Some household items are still made from natural materials, such as brooms made from the fibers of palm leaves. In the old days clothing was woven from cotton, and sometimes made from tree bark. Toys were made usually made from wood, and sometimes from recycled tin cans. People had more time to make things and cook their food.
When I was young Coca Cola was always in glass bottles. We used to collect empty bottles at home and save them for people who would come by the house, and we would also give them bundles of old newspapers. The newspapers were reused at the market to wrap fish, meat or other food. Collecting was fun for us kids because we always received a few pennies for it.
Since the 1980s, life in Nigeria has become faster. Many young people are moving to the city, wanting to earn money and live a modern life. They eat fast food and buy water in plastic bottles or in plastic sachets, which are small, square bags. In the countryside, where food and plants to make utensils were once grown, houses are now built or products are grown for export abroad and to make money. As a result, the cultivation of traditional plants is declining. Items made from natural products such as baskets and brooms are becoming more expensive, rare, or are forgotten altogether. We have copied the western lifestyle. Now it is time for us to remember our traditions, because we know how life can work well with less plastic.
Annette Herzog and Kofo Adeleke
GlossaryOrganic
