Alliance to End Plastic Waste Contributing to a Cleaner and More Sustainable Future

Eileen Cai is Chief Advisor, APAC Regional Projects Director at Alliance to End Plastic Waste. Here, we are in conversation with her for TerraGreen.

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What are some of the key highlights of the Alliance's progress over the past year in the plastic waste management ecosystem?

The Alliance's mission is to help end the leakage of plastic waste in the environment. Our focus is to develop solutions that are economically viable, socially responsible, and environmentally beneficial.

This year's Progress Report includes multiple examples of how we are implementing projects that address unique local challenges to end leakage and advance to greater circularity. We encourage participation from both public and private sectors as we develop, deploy and de-risk models which can be scaled up, implemented in various regions globally, and ultimately help build a collaborative ecosystem to move towards a circular economy.

In fact, efforts are underway to improve solid waste management in India through the Swachh Bharat Mission, which is in alignment with the Alliance's goal to end plastic waste pollution. Thus, India has been a very important country in our efforts to create a cohesive and inclusive ecosystem. By the end of 2022, we had 53 active projects spanning eight different regions-9 of these projects are in India. For instance, a 2-year pilot programme called Changemakers was developed by the German non-profit consulting agency SOCEO and supported by the Alliance. More than 45,000 students across 69 schools from Kolkata and the Sundarbans participated in this initiative. It has been a successful project which now can be replicated in other parts of the country as well.

You say that Alliance's work is based on a Solution-based approach. What are these solution-based models, and how do they help?