February 2023 Newsletter.pdf (1.5 MB)
Greetings, everyone!
Sharing with the community our newsletter for the month of February! Let us know your views.
Thank you,
Vishal
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Thanks @warrior_vishal for sharing.
I was just reading this article and wanted to know what you think about it. Are plastic roads the magic bullet when it comes to plastic waste? 
When it comes to plastic waste management, unfortunately, there are no magic bullets.
- Plastic to Road
- Plastic to Fuel
- Plastic to bricks or boards
- Plastic incineration etc
Toxicity in plastics - endocrine-disrupting chemicals, heavy metals, phthalates, and brominated and chlorinated compounds end up creating a cocktail of chemicals when mixed in the process of a road formation. Some evidence shows the toxins leaching into groundwater and plastics breaking down into microplastics when exposed to the environment.
In general, any plastic exposed to harsh sun releases harmful chemicals to its surroundings.
At best, it might hide some problems from the visible eye while the issue is not resolved.
From land pollution to ground water and air pollution, which are more difficult to see.
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We are working with https://www.zerocircle.in/ on alternates to plastic. Do you know of other orgs who are working in this space who maybe we can support?
Not just in the alternate to plastic space, but also those working in recycling?
As naive as I might sound, 
I still can’t believe that we are sending rovers to mass, but we haven’t found a way to solve for the plastic problem.
haha it’s probably a more complicated problem to solve! There are various factors like material design, product design, toxicity, transparency in labeling, gray markets, illegal global trade, lack of policy/enforcement, subsidy for fossil fuels, plastic penetration into every industry, the vested interest of certain stakeholders, greenwashing etc. Post-consumer tech solutions can do very little to solve this problem.
When single-use carry bags (polyethylene bags or PE)) were banned, the govt. gave special industry status (under textiles) to non-woven carry bags (polypropylene or PP) with subsidies. It doesn’t reduce the amount of plastic in our surroundings. Very little is known or understood about the toxicity involved in plastic manufacturing and recycling.
Any single-use, disposable alternative to plastics is unlikely to be sustainable in the long run.
Check out https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/ as they might have interesting orgs in their network.
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