UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared war on trash. During the first-ever International Day of Zero Waste, Guterres warned that the planet is literally drowning in garbage, and that it is high time to clean up.
The high-level meeting was intended to raise awareness of the urgent need to transition to a ‘green’ and circular economy that promotes sustainable production and consumption.
Experts promise that winning the war against billions of tons of rubbish could save billions and create thousands of jobs.
According to UN data, humanity currently generates more 2 billion tons of solid waste annually, which includes plastics, textiles, rotting food, discarded electronic devices, and debris from mining and construction sites.
Guterres warned against treating the planet “like a garbage dump”, adding that by 2050 we will have disposed of 4 billion tonnes of refuse.
The UN chief’s “a war on waste” will be waged on three fronts by the principal polluters.
Those who produce waste should design products and services that use fewer resources and materials, he said, adding that smart waste management systems throughout the product’s lifecycle should be devised and creative ways should be found to extend the lives of the products they sell.
He also urged them to invest in waste management, recovery, and recycling systems in the communities in which they operate.
“Second, we need to massively invest in the ability of countries, cities, and local governments to develop and scale-up modern waste management systems, and policies that encourage people to re-use and recycle everything from plastic bottles to aging electronics,” Guterres said, urging governments to strengthen their municipal waste management systems by recycling 50 to 80 per cent of their waste.
“We need to find opportunities to reuse, recycle, repurpose, repair, and recover the products we use. And we need to think twice before throwing these items in the garbage.”
Winning the war against the growing heaps of garbage in cities and villages seems a huge challenge to many governments. However, it’s a challenge that can easily be turned into an opportunity by applying modern technologies and spreading awareness to create waste-wise societies that take into consideration that everything we use and discard must go somewhere.
For many experts, the world’s war against waste is a decisive one and a human survival challenge as the global population is on track to reach 10 billion by 2050, and demand for food and non-food agricultural products is also expected to rise by up to 56 per cent. In this case, we can’t afford to stand by and watch when 13 per cent of food produced globally is lost between production and wholesale stages of the supply chain.
According to World Food Programme, approximately $1 trillion worth of food is lost or wasted every year, and reversing this trend would preserve enough food to feed 2 billion people, which’s more than twice the number of the world’s undernourished.
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