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Hi Ubuntoo community, My name is Hanna Dijkstra, I’m a PhD researcher in Amsterdam studying sustainable plastic initiatives by the private sector; what sorts of business models are out there, how they emerge, the challenges they face and potentially, what the future could look like. For my research, I will interview a large and diverse number of entrepreneurs and company representatives to learn about drivers and barriers for sustainable transitions. I will develop not only case-specific insights, but also map larger trends and obstacles that can be useful for policy makers or businesses themselves. To do this, I need case studies! Many of the solutions and initiatives on Ubuntoo would make perfect examples for my work, and I’m searching for people to participate in a 30-45 minute Skype interview I work at the Vrije Universitiet in Amsterdam within the Institute for Environmental Studies, where my goal is to publish academic articles and policy briefs to improve sustainable plastic. I have developed a semi-structured interview guide that covers sustainable business models, drivers and motivations, and delves into the relationships that companies have with different groups of actors (such as governments, other businesses, NGOs etc). I hope to understand which sorts of relationships and motivations are most critical, and communicate this to the research and policy community. So if someone on Ubuntoo has time to spare, and wants to contribute to my research, please get in touch at hanna.dijkstra@vu.nl Looking forward to many productive conversations! showless

Does anyone know of a better alternative to Foamex board that is sustainable, waterproof and can be printed on? The standard product is typically PVC and widely used in the signage industry for temporary displays. Or does anyone know how it can be recycled? This is a huge single-use plastic problem waiting to be solved. showless

Hi there, we are a household brand from germany, and we’d like to substitude the plastic parts of our products with recycled ocean plastics, bit-by-bit (HDPE or PP). Our main suppliers are located in China, but it is very hard to actually find a proper partner in China, because from our experience, a lot of them don’t understand the need of providing environmental friendly solutions. We know, that there are proper companies in Ociania, like Malaysia, but we haven’t been able to reach out to them so far, because it’s really hard to spot them. Is anybody here, who could recommend us some ressources, companies, agents or platforms, that can help us finding what we need? It could either be a ocean plastics recycler or even a plastics producer, that uses recycled ocean plastic waste - preferably from Asia / Ociania. Big thanks in advance and best regards, Marko showless

Hi there, I’m looking for bio alternatives to silicone or TPE and not coming up with much! I need something with the equivalent shore hardness of between Shore00 40-70 or Shore A 0-40 which can be injection moulded. Does anyone have a suggestion? Many thanks, Anthony showless

Hi! I am Xenia and live on the Greek island of Corfu. Like most Greek islands a lot of waste ends up in landfills. How could we go from a linear and broken waste system to one of reducing, reusing and recycling? Some important details: Most zero waste islands I know are small and have very little tourism. Corfu has 100.000 people living on the island all year Between April to October 2017 there came 1.200.000 tourists showless

According to this professor, the stat of 10 rivers being responsible for 90% of plastic pollution was cited incorrectly. Instead, the studies that were cited in the media said that OF THE PLASTICS coming from RIVERS (which account for 15-20% of plastic pollution), 90% comes from 10 rivers. . . very different! Article and link below. Facts and Myths on the Origins of Plastics Entering the Oceans - Dispersing the ‘10 Rivers Myth’ https://www.iswa.org/media/publications/presidents-blog/prezsezmore/article/facts-and-myths-on-the-origins-of-plastics-entering-the-oceans-dyspersing-the-10-rivers-myth/1383/ 2 Category: ISWA BLOG This article was jointly written by Professor David C Wilson, Visiting Professor in Resource and Waste Management at Imperial College London and Immediate Past President of CIWM, the UK professional body for resources and waste; and Antonis Mavropoulos, President of ISWA. Plastics only enter the ocean when they are not being actively managed; if they are not being managed, they are not being measured. So, by definition, we cannot know exactly how much plastics are entering the oceans or where they come from, and therefore must rely on estimates that are provided by modelling studies. The problem starts when those estimates are misinterpreted or misunderstood generating false headlines and creating serious confusion and, potentially, misleading policy responses. This is exactly what happened with the recent headlines like “10 rivers deliver the bulk of ocean plastics” or “more than 90% of plastics in oceans comes from just 10 rivers”. What are the outcomes of the modelling studies? At present, the best information we have on quantities of plastics entering the oceans comes largely from three modelling studies. Many scientists are currently working on improving our estimates, both by refining the assumptions made in the models, by improved modelling and by actual measurements of the weight and type of plastics entering rivers and the sea under specific local conditions; so, the available data should improve over the next few years. However, in the short term we need to rely on the early modelling studies, so it is important that their results are reported and used correctly. The Jambeck et al. paper estimates that some 4.8-12.7 million tonnes per annum (generally simplified to ‘8 million tonnes’) comes from mismanaged solid wastes generated within 50 km of the coast, of which more than 50% comes from just five east Asia countries. Then two 2017 papers looked at the additional contribution coming from further inland via rivers. Lebreton et al. came up with an estimate in the range of 0.79-1.52 million tonnes, of which 67% came from the top 20 polluting rivers, mostly in Asia; while Schmidt et al³ first estimated 0.41 – 4 million tonnes, with more than 90% of that coming from 10 major rivers in Asia and Africa; they later corrected their paper⁴, revising their estimate down to 0.47-2.75 million tonnes. These two studies ultimately agreed moderately well, with a mean incremental contribution from rivers around 1.2-1.6 million tonnes. Combining all the complementary modelling studies, the best estimate of the total weight of plastics entering the oceans is around 9-10 million tonnes per annum. How the outcomes were transformed to misleading headlines? Unfortunately, some journalists isolated the phrase ‘The 10 top-ranked rivers transport 88−95% of the global load into the sea’ from the abstract of the Schmidt et al. paper, although reading just the title and the whole abstract it is clear that it refers to the global plastic debris inputs from rivers, only, into the sea. Apparently, these journalists could not be bothered to access the full paper, which to be fair does sit behind the journal’s paywall; and did not use the earlier Lebreton et al. open access paper. As a result, they misinterpreted the quoted sentence to mean that ‘more than 90% of all plastics entering the ocean comes from just 10 rivers’, rather than as 90% of the incremental 15-20% contribution from rivers. Anyone could easily understand that this is not true just comparing the percentages of the three complementary studies: even the original the 0.41 – 4 million tonnes estimated by Schmidt et al. can’t be 90 or 95%, neither of the 8 million tonnes estimated by Jambeck et al. nor of the 9-10 million tonnes total weight of plastics entering the oceans annually. This misinterpretation, what we refer to as ‘the 10 rivers myth’, has now been picked up and repeated so many times that it has become an alternative fact, when it is clearly ‘fake news’. This is important, because it affects how resources are deployed to reduce plastics entering the ocean. In the age of social media, it is near impossible to ‘put the genie back in the bottle’. Nevertheless, all professionals working in the field need to be aware of both the real data and the myth; assist journalists to get their facts correct; and counter specific instances of fake news. Climate change deniers challenge the data, even though the threshold for evidence used in IPCC reports is set very high. For ocean plastics, our data are always likely to be rather ‘flaky’. So, it is important that we all report and use correctly our current three best data sources, rather than turning one into fake news. References: 1 Jambeck J.R. et al., 2015. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science 347, 768-771 ² Lebreton L.C.M. et al., 2017. River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans. Nat. Commun. 8, 15611 doi: 10.1038/ncomms15611 ³ Schmidt C., Krauth T. and Wagner S., 2017. Export of plastic debris by rivers into the sea. Environ. Sci. Technol., 51 12246–12253 ⁴ Schmidt C., Krauth T. and Wagner S., 2018. Environ. Sci. Technol., 52, 927−927 showless