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Become Familiar With Plastic Credit: The New Kind of Pollution Offset

One main factor of our climate crisis is: we are producing too much single-use plastic more than can be recycled. And this excess has reached dangerous levels as according to fastcompany.com, about 8 million tons of plastic are entering our ocean each year.

Beside simply trying to produce less of the plastic, supporting a waste offset or a waste credit initiative can be a great option for the company in order to reduce this pollutant. While the idea of buying and selling carbon credit is gaining attraction, nowadays, the concept of credit is also moving beyond emissions to one of the most crucial factors of pollution: plastic. This is what’s popularly known as Plastic Credit. 

Plastic waste entering the ocean. Source: k9f7a9j9.rocketcdn.me

What is Plastic Credit? 

WWF defines a plastic credit as a transferable unit representing a specific quantity of plastic collected and possibly recycled from the environment.  A company who wishes to take responsibility for the plastic they emit  into the environment by removing a similar amount of plastic from the environment might use the plastic credit. 

This emergence of this scheme was inspired by The 1997 Kyoto Protocol who developed the carbon credit to reduce worldwide carbon emissions. Similar to Carbon Credit, Plastic Credit is sold to companies that’s unable to totally reduce their plastic emission to zero or aim to reach a plastic neutral condition. 

The plastic neutral condition is achieved when a company buys a volume Plastic Credit in kilograms equal to the kilograms of their plastic footprint and funds a project that recycles a volume waste plastic equivalent to the companies plastic footprint.

How Does Plastic Credit Work?

As mentioned in plasticcollective.co, there are two key participants in plastic credit; Companies who use plastic in their products and packaging and projects that collect plastic from the environment and or recycle plastic that is collected. 

These two parties work together as follows: 

1. As the first step, the company should calculate their plastic footprint or how much plastic they put into the environment each year. 

2. The company then purchases a volume of plastic credit that matches their plastic footprint, for example, as 1 plastic credit equals 1 kg of plastic footprint so if a company emits 10,000 kg plastic footprint, they will purchase 10,000 plastic credit. 

3. The money that the company pays for the plastic credit is given to a project.  In return for being given this money, the project is obliged to collect and or recycle a volume in kilograms of plastic equivalent to the company’s plastic footprint.

The collected plastic from the environment. Source: assets.bwbx.io

From this process, the benefits are created for both parties. For the company they can claim themselves as Plastic Neutral as they’ve taken responsibility for the plastic pollution they emit. While for the projects, they’re able to get funding in order to support the plastic collecting and recycling project. 

The Implementation of Plastic Credit

  1. Plastic Credit by The Plastic Waste Reduction Program

The Plastic Waste Reduction Program is a program made by Verra, a global environmental organization headquartered in Washington, DC. The plastic credit under this program enables plastic to be collected from the environment, recycled and issued the Waste Recycling Credits (WRCs).

Each plastic credit represents one tonne of plastic waste collected. Verra characterized plastic credit by a number of assurance principles that have been confirmed through the project validation and verification process. All the plastic credit processes are publicly available in what’s called as Verra Registry. 

  1. The Plastic Collective

Aims to significantly reduce plastic waste, the Plastic Collective enables plastic credit service. Working together with remote, small, indigenous communities across the world, establishing plastic recycling projects is one of the Plastic Collective’s goals. 

Plastic Credit by Plastic Collective. Source: plasticcollective.co

Plastic Collective also empower communities to address the plastic problems by cleaning the environment and oceans, stopping plastic for going into landfill or being burned, improving health and education as well. Thus, these things make the Plastic Collective project hold a wide-ranging benefit by purchasing their plastic credit. 

Since plastic is a versatile material and still widely used until now, what needs to happen is reducing the single-use plastic as well as ensuring that all plastic products are actually recycled.

As a responsible waste management service in Indonesia who also supports the goals of carbon credit, Waste4Change proudly introduces the newest service, Waste Credit

Through this service, clients are able to help producers collect more waste to be recycled and to reduce the waste that ends up in the landfill. Get the proposal now

Reference:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90613763/plastic-credits-are-the-newest-kind-of-pollution-offset-but-do-they-make-a-difference
https://www.plasticcollective.co/when-plastic-credits-really-work/
https://www.plasticcollective.co/how-do-plastic-credits-work/

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