Asia Pacific

Turning the Zero Waste vision into reality

Interview with Ahmed Afrah Ismail by Sonia G. AstudillThe vision started when as a kid, he wanted to plant trees and study Environmental Science to help save the environment. “As I grew a bit older, I realized that the impacts from those are not the same as what you can do with policy actions,” and so years later, with his wife Maryam Hamsha Hussain, Ahmed Afrah Ismail co-founded the Zero Waste Maldives that introduces local solutions and making these changes sustainable through participating in policy development for environmental reforms.

After graduating from the university with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, Afrah worked at the waste pollution section of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Maldives. During that time, he saw what the government was not doing and what they should be doing. “As a regulatory office, EPA was simply following the take-make-waste system and there was no work being done around circular economy. So I started reaching out and working on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), but funding was an issue at that time,” said Afrah. So together with his colleagues, they participated in a competition funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and piloted a container deposit scheme as part of an EPR scheme. “It was successful, and the new government has incorporated EPR into their Strategic Action Plan as well as the Single-Use Plastic Phaseout Plans.”

He stayed a few more months in EPA, co-founded Zero Waste Maldives, and is now working for a different government agency while staying true to his vision for the environment. Looking back, Afrah shared that he first heard of GAIA when he was tasked in EPA to attend stakeholder meetings on incinerators and he did his research and “then I came across the GAIA publication, Questions to Ask When Evaluating a “Waste-to-Energy” Incinerator Project or Proposal.  After reading it, it did not make sense anymore not to do the right thing.”

GAIA sat down with Afrah to talk about Zero Waste Maldives, their beginnings, their work, and the vision.

What are Zero Waste Maldives’ top priorities?

First, we want Maldives  to get on the Circular Economy track. The country is very much a linear economy. We want to realign the government towards CE.

Second,  eliminating single-use plastics (SUPs) should be a priority as much as possible. We have managed to get the ball rolling on this. The Maldives now has a phaseout plan in place and there are import and production bans coming into place. By June 1, there will be a single-use plastic importation ban.  We work closely with the government’s environment ministry and the President’s office who are spearheading SUPs and EPR policies.  

Third is creating wealth opportunities through a waste wealth entrepreneurial ecosystem. We want to champion upcycling of fabric waste, promote reuse, and try to see if there is something else that we can do before we recycle an item. We cannot rely on recycling in Maldives, as we do not have any formal recycling infrastructure so we have to take other steps first before recycling.

What are your main ongoing campaigns?

We have a program with UNFPA to promote sustainable menstrual products and increase awareness on menstrual hygiene. So, we introduce people to available alternatives, we conduct webinar sessions, and distribute menstrual cups and cloth pads.   

We are also active on the anti-incineration campaign. There are plans to build a 500-ton capacity Waste-to-Energy incinerator very close to the capital city of Male’ in Thilafushi. This project is funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and a replication of a failed incinerator project funded by the World Bank. The failed project was supposed to manage 40 tons of waste but is still not operational. The paperwork for the project began in 2008 and implementation was supposed to happen in 2015 but until now the Environment Ministry is trying to cover up and whitewash its failure.

The failed incineration project in R.Vandhoo was a bad project even from the initial concept stage. There was no real plan and it was haphazardly put together and executed. If proper data was collected and independent studies carried out by experts that were also not proliferators of incineration projects; I believe we would not have gone ahead with this project. Yet, ADB is replicating this WTE project. 

The ADB incinerator project has been approved where they are going to design, operate, and transfer to the government. There was no national legal mechanism framework to monitor the project risks and the Environment Ministry used that to their advantage. Lack of regulations is obviously more favorable to incinerator operators as regulations add more operational costs.

Apart from that, we are also working on reducing SUPs and waste via presentations and webinars that are catered to the public. A lot of people are open to SUPs bans and regulations but when we give them the idea of Zero Waste, it becomes difficult for them to comprehend. But there are of course niche markets and people are slowly embracing the concept.

Another new project is the Fenveshi funded by the CFLI. The project aims to help everyone in Male to stop drinking from plastic bottled water and start drinking in the city’s tap water in their homes and via public water fountains. We encourage the building of water fountains while educating the people and building trust in the municipal water supply systems. 

Another ongoing project is the FehiFathi, dhivehi words which translates to Green Stitch. Under this project, we reduce the amount of fabric that ends up in landfill by rescuing clothes that can be used secondhand and upcycling clothes into other reusable items. This project is focused on empowering women and works exclusively with local seamstress and other women’s development committees within the islands.  

What challenges are you currently facing and how was the work impacted by the COVID crisis?

COVID-19 slowed things down for us, but it has also opened a lot of opportunities because people are more open to discussions and meetings around the waste management issues. If you manage your time well, you can have more meetings but of course that is also limited by the internet capacity of other countries.

Apart from the pandemic, another challenge we have is having to deal with old fashioned people who have an old-fashioned way of thinking, those who are not as open to innovation. I would say we need the older people to listen to the younger people, or perhaps even better, have the younger people lead.

How do you see Zero Waste Maldives’ work evolving in the next years?

We will try to implement more social entrepreneurship businesses which will support the focus on Zero Waste management and will reduce the waste from top down. We will implement projects that will reduce waste and eliminate existing waste. In the midst of it, we will have CE projects that will create waste wealth, upcycling, and reuse.  

We would like to position ourselves as the leading NGO that drives a sustainablewaste policy in Maldives.

What are your thoughts on the waste crisis that many countries in your region and in the world are living in right now?

In some countries, the waste crisis can be addressed if there is a strong push from the people. Government always talks about individual action but if you look closely, it is the government who is not doing its job such as reducing waste top down and then they shift the blame to the people.

The waste crisis is not a segregated problem. It is not just my problem, or the government’s problem, it is our problem, and we need to see the big picture and work towards our goal of solving it. Even the big corporations who have been tagged as the biggest plastics polluters will have to be willing to change.

Do you collaborate with partners in other regions?

Yes, there is GAIA, Wildlife and Nature Protection Society in Sri Lanka, several NGOs in UK, Adelphi in Germany and Common Seas.

How does your work on waste relate to social justice?

The work on menstrual hygiene aims to help alleviate period poverty. We also try to provide alternatives to SUPs at the most affordable prices. We also advocate for environmental sustainability in all government development projects.

Interview with Mageswari Sangaralingam by Sonia G. Astudillo

“High powered advertising and the aggressive campaign by transnational companies to ensure that the imported consumer culture penetrates and permeates through every social strata and every corner of the land…  the subtler but more deadly form of exploitation by dumping dangerous and substandard products which have been banned or withdrawn from the markets in industrialized country, the exportation of factories for production to evade stricter occupational safety and environmental laws, and the environmental destruction to make way for development,” according to the article Value for the People: The potential role of a consumer movement in the third world by Khor Kok Peng are the things that prompted the creation of Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) way back in 1969.  Anwar Fazal, a leading civil society activist founded the organization in a library in Penang as a response to the growing number of “development” projects in the 60s. 

Over 50 years later, CAP has grown its work and reach as a grassroots non-profit, civil society organization based in Malaysia that aims to promote critical awareness and action among people to uphold consumer rights and interests.  The group is focused on education, community mobilization, research, advocacy, training, and publication.  “Unlike other consumer organizations, CAP’s motivation is value for the people,” says Mageswari Sangaralingam, CAP research officer.  “CAP looks at the types of development being pushed, who is it for, and if it is genuine development or development to satisfy the needs of a few.” Of late, CAP’s value for the people has evolved into “to the people, for the people, with the people”.  The number of staff has decreased from 120 to 30 and in 1977 the Environment Section transitioned into another organization, Friends of the Earth (FOE) Malaysia, but that has not stopped the team from safeguarding consumers and ensuring environmental justice. GAIA sat down with Mages, who has been with CAP since October 1992 after completing her BSc in Human Development course.  “I went for several job interviews, but I got interested in CAP because it was laid back, staff not required to dress up as in the corporate world, open office environment, and I was interested in the work that they were doing.”  Working in the rural and community section, Mages is now more engaged on waste trade issues and plastics pollution as the problem has escalated in the country and region.     

What are CAP’s top priorities? Our priorities include:

1. In the area of health — control of antibiotic resistance, affordable prices for medicines, food and product safety, and control of sugar, tobacco and dangerous food items.
2. Promotion of natural organic farming and urban farming at the family, community, school, and farmers level.
3. Environmental protection.  We help conserve forest and hill-lands, conserve water resources, combat climate change, promote public transport, reduce wastes, tackle pollution, and integrate sustainable development into national and local plans.
4. On economics and finance.  We promote financial literacy including for the young, management of debts, and promotion of sound economic, trade, and financial policies, in the context of global uncertainties and instability.
5. On tackling social problems.  We look into the cost of living, housing, poverty, inequality, workers’ wages, farmers’ produce prices, and migrant workers’ rights.
6. We help consumers and young people question wasteful and unsustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns, materialistic consumer culture, and the social effects of digital economy and 4th industrial revolution.
   

Besides the priority issues, CAP is also focused on attracting younger people to be staff or volunteers and developing the use of social media to reach a wider and younger audience.  We want to help develop communities and community leaders to take up their issues and establish a training and awareness building module, and educate individual consumers, communities, organizations on CAP’s issues and thereby create multipliers. We want to build up the future sustainability of CAP through the mobilization of funds and in strengthening the organization through the participation of local communities, young people, women and intellectuals.

What are CAP’s main ongoing campaigns? Currently we have campaigns on agroecology, farming, plastics waste issues, and Zero Waste.  We continue to look at “development” projects and policies that are harmful to the communities.  We are also working on sustainable consumption and financial management.     What are CAP’s biggest accomplishments and achievements? CAP’s pioneering work led to the establishment of the Environment Ministry and the enlargement of the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs.  We have worked with the Education Ministry and set up consumer clubs in 600 schools. Our sustainable agriculture project has trained families, schools, and communities in natural farming and our work on trade agreements provided valuable inputs to several Ministries and government leaders in formulating trade negotiating policies.

CAP has a record of being “ahead of the curve”, for example on changing the nature of the consumer movement, raising environmental issues, embarking on anti-tobacco and anti-sugar campaigns, and policy changes in the Housing Ministry. We promoted access to medicines by advising the government to introduce compulsory licenses that drastically reduced the prices of medicines for AIDS and Hepatitis C (from RM400,000 to RM1,000 per patient). CAP has also had an impressive record of expanding its boundaries, for example setting up Sahabat Alam Malaysia to take up environmental issues, establishing Third World Network which has had a major impact globally on policies regarding climate change, trade, biodiversity, and access to medicines.  CAP also helped in transforming the global consumer movement, including its new offshoots in the areas of health, food, and consumer rights. Many consumer associations in the developing countries were formed because of our regional training programmes.

CAP has also helped many poor communities stand up for their rights: the Kuala Juru fishermen and the Kuala Kedah farmers fight against pollution, the Papan folks in the Asian Rare Earth case, the TheanTeik farmers against eviction, and the Penan and Sarawak natives against logging and for their native customary land rights.  Many other poor communities have benefited from CAP’s help.   Apart from government and policy interventions, CAP helped strengthen community-based organizations making them self-reliant.  What challenges are you facing, especially now with the COVID-19 crisis? We are still on lockdown with travel restriction thus only 30% of the staff can go to the office.  Projects have been delayed and we cannot go to the community to conduct programs and meetings.  We are trying to strengthen our social media but there are programs that have to wait until face-to-face meetings are allowed.     What are the biggest environmental issues faced by Malaysia and other countries in Southeast Asia? There is plastic and waste dumping and then electronic waste.  The COVID-19 pandemic has also brought in more waste from online shopping and food delivery, besides the single-use and disposables.   How do you see CAP’s work evolving in the next years? We need to have younger generation in the organization to continue the work.  I see that we will still be working on similar, if not the same, issues.  We also must look into digital finance, digital economy, and online purchasing.  There is so much happening that we need to keep up.   How do you envision a just and equitable recovery from COVID-19?  How can your organization’s work be part of the solution? We do that by giving our input in policies and working with the communities.  We look at new development projects and the concept of development being pushed by the government.   How does your work on waste relate to social justice?

We make sure environmental and social justice is always observed.  We work on genuine development for the people, ensuring that the development being offered is equitable and fair.   We have been fighting incinerators all these years.  One mega-incinerator proposal in Puchong, Kuala Lumpur was moved to a more remote, rural area in Broga thinking people there will not speak up and fight.  But we work with communities and we bring in experts to help us fight incinerators like the case of the Broga incinerator. We have stopped several incinerator projects, but the government keeps promoting it.