Pollution vs Collaboration

The Plastic Pollution Coalition visited the UAE last month and have posted about their trip and the groups and people they met here.  I’m hoping for a longer report on their findings and hopefully some further collaboration. Plastic pollution in the UAE is diabolical. It’s everywhere and as much as street cleaners are deployed to pick up litter – people as a whole still don’t really care enough to do anything about their own waste.  On paper and in polls yes, of course, plastic is bad ect. But really few mentalities are changing. Society here revolves around getting someone else to come and do it all for them sadly.

I’m a full supporter of initiatives going on in the UAE but sometimes international groups should just tell a country to pull up its socks. There is just one thing that is misleading in PPC’s trip report:

‘If more people had stainless steel and glass bottles to refill with filtered water, fewer disposable plastic bottles would be used and discarded.’

There are many, many options of steel bottles, multi-use plastic bottles and even glass bottles readily available in supermarkets and sports stores here, however convenient bottled-water wins hands down. We just need to motivate people to take more responsibility for how they consume and waste.