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Leaders inspired by collaboration against plastic waste

World leaders, heads of global corporations and representatives from the civil society are gathered in Kenya this week for the UN Environment Assembly to focus on the role of innovation in changing global consumption and production towards a sustainable transition.

Among the events providing the opportunity for dialogue between public-private stakeholders and civil society, a P4G (Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030) award winner proved how collaboration could effectively tackle concrete global issues. NextWave Plastics, an international group of technology and consumer-focused companies, displayed how creating a global network of ocean-bound plastics supply chains is a fruitful method for tackling the growing plastic waste issue.

-Related solution: Treatment and recycling of plastic waste

Dialogue on sustainable transition

The Danish Minister for Environment and Food, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, was among the global delegates and business leaders, who engaged in a discussion on how the concept behind NextWave Plastics can help generate similar networks to create an impact on the most pressing social and environmental issues.

“Many large companies have begun to work much more seriously in taking substantial steps towards a sustainable transition. That is unambiguously positive,” says Jakob Ellemann-Jensen following the discussion.

The discussion revolved around the example of NextWave Plastics, and how partnerships between governments, entrepreneurs, business leaders and civil society organisations foster potent solutions to global issues.

-Related solution: Full circle industrial symbiosis recycling household plastics

Partnership for sustainability

The goal for NextWave Plastics is to keep plastic in the economy and out of the ocean through developing the first global network of ocean-bound plastic suppliers and permanently locking up this material into products that will never make their way back into the ocean.

”NextWave Plastics is a good example of the fact that if we are to solve major global challenges such as plastic pollution of the ocean, it requires broad commitment and involvement - especially from large corporations that have the potential to make a notable difference”, said Minister for Food and Environment, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen.

At the P4G Copenhagen Summit in 2018, NextWave Plastics won the state-of-the-art award for the most innovative partnership in the Circular Economy category.

The NextWave Plastics consortium is a partnership between Dell, Interface, Herman Miller, Humanscale, General Motors, Bureo, Van de Sant, Trek Bicycles, New Materials Institute, The 5 Gyres Institute, The Story of Stuff, GAIA and the governments of Denmark, Indonesia, Chile, Cameroon and Malaysia. More information: https://www.nextwaveplastics.org/

Source

Danish Ministry for Environment and Food (in Danish)

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