Surviving a month (and beyond) without plastic
How Zero Waste Lviv inspiring all of Ukraine to change
Each year on 3 July the world celebrates the International Plastic Bags Free Day, and July is proclaimed the month without plastic for the ninth year in a row. In 2019, Zero Waste Lviv with the support of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) conducted a grand-scale advocacy campaign “Without polyethylene” for the first time. Initially, it was designed for Lviv only, but was quickly upscaled because of how quickly it was adopted. The campaign’s two goals were to reduce the circulation of single-use plastics in retail stores and to encourage Ukrainians to opt for reusable bags.
Iryna Myronova, Head of the Zero Waste Lviv non-governmental organization, and the deputy head of the Ukrainian Zero Waste Alliance community service organization, knows firsthand that cooperation does really work and the small changes collectively can lead to transformational change. “Being plastic-free is everyone’s business,” she said. “And it’s up to each of us to take an eco-bag whenever we go to the supermarket or to buy just another single-use bag at the point of sale.”
For example, Myronova says we can put a single lemon or a bunch of bananas in a plastic bag, or we can use a container that is more eco-friendly. “These are our decisions,” she emphasizes. “But retailers can make an enormous contribution to the solution by providing alternatives, and for encouraging the customers to do the right thing. For instance, by offering serving tongs for pastries instead of disposable plastic gloves.”
Myronova’s organization, Zero Waste Lviv and its business partners are doing just that: encouraging business owners to shift from unsustainable to sustainable ways of doing business. She notes that at this time doing so is the right thing to do but that soon it will be against the law not to. A new regulation (in the form of bill №2051–1) is currently making its way through the legislative process and will soon become law. It is in line with legislation approved by the European Parliament last year banning single-use plastic items such as plates, cutlery, straws, and cotton buds sticks by 2021.
“Our joint efforts have contributed to the agreement between the factions on this issue,” said Myronova. “Ukrainian society, members of parliament and the private sector have developed a holistic vision on reducing the use of plastic for the good of the country.”
Coronavirus and plastic
Normally July is “July without plastic” month in Ukraine but due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic the campaign was not as widespread as in 2019. Furthermore, the pandemic has increased the use of polyethylene plastic in retail networks. Many retailers believed that they could decrease the risk of infection by packing fruit and vegetables in plastic to reduce. However, more recent studies have determined that the virus probably lasts longer on plastic than most other surfaces. According to Myronova, such environmentally unfriendly decisions were often made because of overcautiousness and were not necessarily effective. “We support those science-informed solutions that help fight the pandemic. Yet we try not to support those that have no evidence of effectiveness and harm the environment,” she adds.
2020 Month Without Plastic campaign
This year, the month without plastic campaign is encouraging the use of deposit-paid containers (where the consumer leaves a deposit for use of a container, and then get that deposit back when it is returned). Zero Waste Lviv is conducting this campaign together with the Ukrainian Zero Waste Alliance CSO and the UNDP Accelerator Lab.
As part of the campaign, five cafes in Lviv are offering their customers take-away coffee in a refillable cup instead of a plastic one. The deposit fee will be refunded to the customer when the cup is returned to the coffee shop. “Of course, in a world where the coronavirus is still rampant, there are many precautions to be taken about reusable containers. Therefore, we focus on ensuring the cleanliness of the cups. The customer must trust them no less than single-use ones,” says Iryna Myronova. She adds that, in her opinion,
“the pandemic has created the feeling as if everything disposable is surely sterile and safe. But this is not necessarily the case. And we need to dispel this myth.”
In turn, coffee shops are ready to experiment with deposit-paid containers, because they recognize their responsibility for waste. One of the street surveys by Zero Waste Lviv involving seven coffee shops showed that 20% of the trash cans contents are plastic coffee cups.
“In fact, removal of this plastic accounts for a fifth of the cost of keeping the streets clean,” said Myronova. “When we tell this to coffee shops, they listen. Nobody wants to be a mess-maker. Especially if the landfills are overflowing with plastic with your brand on it, this can entail reputational risks. So we resonated with businesses and found partners for experiments with deposit-paid containers.”
Common tips
This summer, you can drink coffee from a refillable deposit-paid cup in Lviv. But this is by far not the only way to join the month without plastic and adopt new eco-friendly habits. Iryna Myronova offers a few more:
1. Go shopping with your bags, either large eco-bags or small string bags for vegetables or fruit
2. Use your own water bottle so that you do not have to constantly buy water in single-use containers
3. Use your own coffee cup. Moreover, many networks offer such customers a discount
4. Pack your lunch in a reusable container
5. Ask not to pack plastic cutlery or napkins when you order food delivery and know for sure that you will not need them
Myronova also recommends being more conscious about consumption:
“Try to think about the origin and disposition of things,” she cautions. “When looking at the waste around us try to understand how little we actually use something, and for how long it then remains somewhere in the landfill.
“I convinced that such ‘trifle’ things as using an eco-bag or avoiding excessive packaging can have a significant impact on the environment. However, there is one important modality: such habits should be adopted by as many people as possible.”
A Ukraine-wide campaign called “A Day Without Polyethylene” was held in June-July 2019 to mark International Plastic Bag-Free Day. The campaign was organized by the United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine, jointly with the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, the Green Energy of Changes Inter-factional MP Association, and Zero Waste Alliance Ukraine. More than 100 stores, supermarkets, cafes, pharmacies, educational institutions, fast food restaurants and other companies have joined the initiative to abandon the use of plastic per day by replacing it with more environmentally friendly alternatives.
The United Nations Development Program is implementing the Smart Plastic Waste Management project at the local level with the financial support of a joint New World Program of the Coca-Cola Foundation and the Global Water Challenge. The project aims to minimize the negative impact and risks to the environment and human health through promoting sustainable consumption, disposal and plastic waste management practices at the local level.
By Yulia Hudoshnyk for UNDP Ukraine
