RENEW GANGA
FLOWING 1,560
MILES from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges River, locally known
as Ganga, is one of the world’s greatest, longest, and most polluted waterways
in the world.
On its journey from the mountains to the sea, the sacred
river—considered by Hindus to be the personification of the goddess
Ganga—collects untreated sewage, trash, and an estimated 1.2 billion pounds of
discarded soft and hard plastic each year. The staggering pollution earns the
Ganges the dubious honour of being among ten rivers in Asia and Africa that
transport 93 percent of the river-based plastics deposited into Earth’s ocean.
RENEW GANGA
Stemming the Ganges’s Himalaya-sized tide of plastic waste
to prevent it from reaching the ocean may seem impossible, but that’s precisely
the goal of Renew Ganga, launched in April, 2019. Focused on
helping river-adjacent communities build waste infrastructure to keep plastic
out of the water, Renew Ganga is the inaugural project of Renew Oceans
and is sponsored by the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. The Alliance is
contributing funding, materials, logistics capabilities, and technical
expertise to the project, which aims to divert 100,000 pounds of plastic waste
from the Ganges in 2019 and one million pounds in 2020.
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Renew Ganga is one of the many programs being
developed and funded by the Alliance, a non-profit established in January,
2019, by a group of nearly 40 global companies that make, use, and recycle
plastics.
·
Over the next five years, the Alliance intends
to invest $1.5 billion to develop, accelerate, and deploy solutions; catalyze
investment; and engage communities to create long-term solutions to the world’s
plastic waste problem.
·
Initial grants are being awarded to
organizations, such as Renew Oceans, whose work focuses on places that are home
to some of the most significant sources of unmanaged plastic waste.
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The Renew Ganga project is based in
Varanasi, one of the seven sacred cities of Hinduism and one of the
oldest continually inhabited places in the world.
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A lack of adequate infrastructure for waste
management can mean that locals are not offered strategically placed
opportunities for waste disposal. In urban areas, this problem is compounded,
as plastic waste builds on both the land and in water.
In order to help reduce ocean plastics, Renew Oceans aims to
collect and convert plastics, while empowering and engaging the community along
the Ganges River.
·
Renew Ganga is concentrating on plastic waste
transported by the Assi Nala, which is so thick with trash that it is almost
impossible to see water.
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The Renew Ganga model is dubbed “The 3
C’s”—collection, conversion, and community:
- The approach involves manual clean-up efforts and the installation of physical barriers (Renew Oceans’ prototype Re-Fence) to collect and divert soft and hard plastic waste on land and in the water.
- Converting that waste into marketable and revenue-generating recycled materials.
- Motivating the community to keep their rivers clean by educating, engaging, and empowering local residents.
All of the lessons learned through Renew Ganga will be used
to mold a high-impact, economically viable, and scalable model that can be
replicated in other sections of the Ganges and in the other top-polluting
rivers, meaning that this partnership between the Alliance to End Plastic
Waste and Renew Oceans ultimately could stop the flow of plastic into
the planet’s ocean.
RENEW OCEANS
Renew Oceans, founded by Priyanka Bakaya, aims to divert
100,000 pounds of ocean-bound plastics in India in 2019. Empowering women
waste pickers is part of the Renew Oceans solution.
Bio-fence technology will be used to divert
plastic waste as currents flow through rivers.
Collected plastic can then
be brought to a Plastic Muncher or collection centre to receive payment. The
Renew Oceans plan will help increase the economic returns of waste picking and
improve the working conditions for these women.
