Bank of America – INSIGHT-Massive Oil’s flagship plastic waste venture sinks on the Ganges

By Joe Brock, John Geddie and Saurabh Sharma

SINGAPORE/VARANASI, India, Jan 18 (Reuters) – A wheelbarrow and a handful of metallic grids for capturing litter, emblazoned with the phrases “Renew Oceans,” sit rusting outdoors an empty, padlocked workplace within the Indian metropolis of Varanasi, a brief stroll from the Ganges.

It’s all that’s left of a programme, funded by a number of the world’s greatest oil and chemical firms, that they mentioned might remedy a runaway ocean plastic waste disaster which is killing marine life – from plankton to whales – and clogging tropical seashores and coral reefs.

The closure of Renew Oceans, which has not beforehand been reported, is an indication that an trade whose monetary future is tied to the expansion of plastic manufacturing is falling wanting its targets to curb the ensuing enhance in waste, in keeping with two environmental teams.

The Alliance to Finish Plastic Waste, a Singapore-based nonprofit group arrange two years in the past by massive oil and chemical firms, mentioned on its web site in November 2019 that its partnership with Renew Oceans can be expanded to the world’s most-polluted rivers and “ultimately could stop the flow of plastic into the planet’s ocean.”

Exxon Mobil Corp XOM.N, Royal Dutch Shell Plc RDSa.L, Dow Inc DOW.N, Chevron Phillips Chemical Co and about 50 different firms dedicated to spend $1.5 billion over 5 years on the Alliance and its initiatives. The Alliance has not mentioned publicly how a lot cash it has raised from its members or what it has spent total.

The Alliance confirmed to Reuters that Renew Oceans had stopped working, partly because of the new coronavirus, which had halted some work.

“Without any foreseeable time frame for restarting, combined with other implementation challenges, the Alliance and Renew Oceans jointly decided to a mutual termination agreement in October 2020,” Alliance spokeswoman Jessica Lee informed Reuters.

Anne Rosenthal, counsel at U.S. regulation agency Hurwit & Associates, representing Renew Oceans, additionally mentioned it expects the venture to fold. “While it has made important progress in tackling the problem of plastic waste, the organization has come to the conclusion that it simply does not have the capacity to work at the scale this problem deserves,” she mentioned.

The Alliance, with a employees of about 50, principally primarily based in Singapore, has different initiatives within the pipeline, however they’re small, community-based endeavours or haven’t but come to fruition. “It is important to note that the full impact of projects will be realised when their operations are at full scale,” mentioned Lee.

Renew Oceans revealed targets on its web site to gather 45 tonnes of plastic trash from the Ganges in 2019 and 450 tonnes in 2020. Neither the Alliance nor Renew Oceans has revealed any info on their progress in reaching these targets. 4 folks concerned within the venture informed Reuters it collected lower than one tonne of waste from the Ganges earlier than it closed in March final 12 months after lower than six months in operation.

The Alliance and Renew Oceans declined touch upon the quantity of waste the venture collected. Scientists estimate greater than half 1,000,000 tonnes of plastic trash enters the Ganges yearly. There is no such thing as a authorities information on how a lot of that’s collected.

‘ONE OF THE BEST PROJECTS’

On the launch occasion for the Alliance in January 2019, live-streamed by Nationwide Geographic, Dow Chief Govt Jim Fitterling mentioned Renew Oceans was “one of the best projects we’ve got.”

The Alliance and Renew Oceans mentioned they might deploy state-of-the-art expertise to gather and recycle plastic waste, together with “reverse vending machines” that absorb plastic litter and provides out vouchers for cash off taxi rides and groceries, and pyrolysis gadgets to show plastic trash into diesel.

Prototypes of these gadgets have been deployed in Varanasi however usually malfunctioned, the 4 folks concerned within the venture informed Reuters. The Alliance and Renew Oceans declined touch upon the efficiency of the expertise.

Renew Oceans has not expanded operations past the pilot venture in Varanasi, the Alliance mentioned, in response to Reuters’ questions. Renew Oceans declined remark.

The Alliance mentioned it invested $5 million in Renew Oceans over a two-year interval. It mentioned a few of that had been returned to the Alliance and extra was anticipated to be returned as soon as Renew Oceans wound down its operations.

Exxon and Shell directed Reuters’ inquiries to the Alliance. Dow and Chevron Phillips didn’t reply to requests for remark.

The Alliance set a objective “to divert millions of tons of plastic waste in more than 100 at-risk cities across the globe” over 5 years. To date the group has introduced greater than a dozen programmes, together with Renew Oceans, however is way wanting that objective.

In two years, solely three small-scale initiatives funded by the Alliance, together with Renew Oceans, have collected any waste, in keeping with info revealed by the Alliance and its companions. A clean-up effort in Ghana has collected 300 tonnes of plastic waste, the Alliance mentioned. One other Alliance venture within the Philippines mentioned on its web site it had recycled 21 tonnes of plastic waste.

There is no such thing as a centralized supply for information on plastic waste air pollution throughout the globe. However the information that’s out there means that even at full scale, these initiatives would solely handle a fraction of the issue and nonetheless fall effectively wanting the Alliance’s personal targets of preserving thousands and thousands of tonnes of plastic rubbish out of the ocean.

As an illustration, Indonesia and India each produce greater than three million tonnes of plastic waste a 12 months that’s not collected or recycled, in keeping with United Nations and nationwide figures.

“AEPW’s programs are trivial in scale and not replicable to make a real reduction in the massive amount of global plastic pollution,” mentioned Jan Dell, an unbiased chemical engineer, utilizing the Alliance’s acronym.

The plastics trade has been publicising its efforts to recycle and handle plastic waste, however it’s spending vastly extra on increasing manufacturing than recycling, which has been rendered uneconomic by the proliferation of low-cost new plastic, Reuters reported in October.

Chevron Phillips used footage of Renew Oceans’ employees amassing plastic on the Ganges in a video selling its sustainability efforts in July, regardless that the venture had stopped operations in March.

“These are some of the richest and most powerful companies on the planet, and what they’ve come up with are some small, community litter picking projects that make for nice photo opportunities,” mentioned John Hocevar, Ocean Campaigns Director, Greenpeace USA. “There is no way to reduce plastic waste without reducing plastic production.”

Chevron Phillips didn’t reply to a request for remark.

(Reporting by Joe Brock and John Geddie in Singapore, Saurabh Sharma in Varanasi Extra reporting by Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore Modifying by Invoice Rigby)

((joe.brock@thomsonreuters.com))

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