Volvo Ocean Race Ocean Summit in Hong Kong
A full day of sharing, networking and success story telling from Asia took place on Monday January 22nd at the Volvo Pavilion, at the Race Village, Kai Tak Runway Park, during the Volvo Ocean Race on their stop over in Hong Kong.
This years edition of the Volvo Ocean Race has a clear sustainability angle. The race and race village and its partners itself is operating under a strict eco policy and on the big stopovers around the world Volvo Ocean Race is organising these "Ocean Summits" to bring together a wide range of individuals with innovative projects and approaches to help address the plastic crisis affecting our seas. The hope is to wake up governments, shine light on new developments and inventions in the field, share success stories, and get more people and organisations involved in trying to preserve our oceans.
These Ocean Summits have already had effect, with the Spanish government making the United Nations 'Clean Seas' pledge, and the mayor of Alicante promised that there would be no more plastic bottles at any event he attends in an official capacity. He also announced an education campaign on plastic in all schools in the city. In Cape Town, theV&A Waterfront shopping centre, which welcomes 24 million shoppers each year, announced their pledge to be free of single use plastic bags and bottles.
Recent data has revealed that in Hong Kong, 136 tonnes of plastic bottles are thrown away each day. Globally, eight million tonnes of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year and if no action is taken, our seas will contain more plastic than fish by 2050.
UN's global campaign "Clean Seas" now boasts 32 member states and aims to 'turn the tide on plastic' by inspiring action from governments, businesses and individuals.
UN's global campaign "Clean Seas" aims to 'turn the tide on plastic' by inspiring action from governments, businesses and individuals
At the Ocean Summit in Hong Kong, Daisy Lo, assistant director of environmental protection, pledged to explore ways to reduce plastic at source, revealed plans for a $HK20 million fund for upgrading plastic recycling facilities and talked of Government efforts to clean up the marine environment. We are very excited to see this materialise, especially since China this year introduced a ban on imports of plastic bottles and other "foreign garbage", leaving the rest of the world wondering what the h*ll to do with their plastic waste now..
HKSAR assistant director of environmental protection Daisy Lo speaks at Volvo Ocean Race Ocean Summit in Hong Kong. Image courtesy Pedro Martinez / Volvo Ocean Race.
Other speakers at the event included Sam Barratt: Chief of Public Advocacy & Communications, United Nations Environment, Christopher Wahlborg, Business Manager Automotive, Stena Recycling AB, Safia Qureshi, The Cup Club and Patrick Yeung, Project Manager Oceans Conservation, WWF. From the younger generation, Ellie Cottrell, a 12th Grade student from the Canadian International School of Hong Kong, gave an impassioned presentation on the impacts plastics are having on waters around the territory.
But not all work is done on land, as two of the race boats, namely 'Turn the Tide on Plastic' and Race Team AkzoNobel use on-board data gathering equipment to measure water quality and composition, as well as microplastics in some of the world’s remotest oceans while racing for the finish line. New data came from analysis of water samples collected at points during Leg 2 of the Race, between Lisbon and Cape Town and during Leg 3 from Cape Town to Melbourne.
Race Team Turn The Tide On Plastic in action. The boat measures water quality and composition, as well as microplastics in some of the world’s remotest oceans while racing. Image courtesy of Volvo Ocean Race.
Dr. Sören Gutekunst of GEOMAR, an ocean research institute in Kiel, Germany presented these results to the audience at the Ocean Summit:
“This new information confirms the results we had previously collected from European waters. It shows there is consistently high levels of micro plastics in the oceans close to where the majority of the worlds population live. However, we are also seeing low levels of micro plastics [in the remote] waters close to the Antarctic.”
Micro plastics have the potential to enter the food chain and can cause harm to humans, too. It consists of small particles of plastic, often invisible to the naked eye and less than 5mm. It has shown up in common food fish such as mackerel and tuna and causes a serious threat to our health and wellbeing.
From the corporate side, Volvo Cars is funding the Volvo Ocean Race Science Programme by donating €100 each from the first 3,000 sales of the new V90 Cross Country Volvo Ocean Race edition vehicles sold. In addition, Volvo was the first big car manufacturer saying it will stop making vehicles solely powered by internal combustion engine – from 2019 onwards all new cars launched by Volvo will be partially or completely battery-powered.
All new cars launched by Volvo from 2019 onwards will be partially or completely battery-powered.
In the second part of the summit, we heard comforting news from South East Asia, where somehow the countries and their governments there seem to be more on top of the issue with plastic pollution than we are here up north, perhaps because they are even more populated and already suffer greatly from their plastic pollution.
Two of the great initiatives we heard about in the afternoon were:
In the Philippines, Froilan Grate and his NGO Mother Earth Foundation works with whole cities, implementing Zero Waste Programs. These successful programmes have proven to local governments that they are actually saving money by separating and collecting waste instead of leaving it in the streets, or gathering everything up at one collection point and sending it to landfill. Another great outcome is that these cities have become cleaner and greener, with residents having established community gardens in former refuse dumps.
For the past 12 years, MEF have been instrumental in the establishment of over 1,000 Materials Recovery Facilities (MRF) in the country. Learn more about their work here.
In Indonesia, former lawyer Tiza Mafira Pandoyo is the co-founder and executive director of the Indonesia Plastic Bag Diet Movement, a national movement to invite people to be wise in using plastic bags, asking "do you really need a plastic bag?". They are actively working with policy, trying to influence the government as well as local councils to move away from plastic bags, either by levy, or with a total ban.
In 2012, they got the city of Bandung – a famous shopping haven which can produce up to 150 tons of plastic waste a day – to issue a bylaw to reduce the use of plastic bags. The bylaw didn't control the use of plastic bags, but it promised to give land and building tax incentives to retailers or building owners that can demonstrate reduced plastic bag use.
The grassroots movement later pushed the government to impose a non-free plastic bag trial in 2016, which resulted in a 55% reduction of plastic bag consumption. The city of Banjarmasin then took advantage of the country-wide non-free plastic bag trial momentum in 2016 as a time to issue a regulation that completely bans plastic bags in modern retails. To date there has been no major problems, and the movement is working on getting other cities to follow suit. Read more about the organisation and its work here.
After the main summit, and to engage a range of local stakeholders on the collaboration and development of solutions to the plastic crisis affecting the world’s oceans, the Volvo Ocean Race convened a Sustainable Event Management workshop in collaboration with The Hong Kong Jockey Club and The Purpose Business for a smaller group of attendants.
The event, also held in the Volvo Pavilion, at the Race Village, Kai Tak Runway Park, brought together experts from a range of sectors including events, venues, suppliers, solutions providers, consultants and specialists.
Some of the topics discussed at the afternoon event, which took place directly after the Volvo Ocean Race Ocean Summit, included how to eliminate single-use plastics in Hong Kong, restrictions from China on accepting recyclables, reusable materials and how to engage with people attending events. It was identified that there is some "low hanging fruit" to be picked in the sustainability area for events planners and organisers, and that at least initially, you can do quite a lot with very little effort. One idea mentioned is working with sponsors to fund sustainability efforts like reusable drinking mugs and jugs, enabling the sponsor to get their logo on the item.
The workshop, attended by over 100 people, aimed to continue the conversation over how Hong Kong can accelerate the rates of plastic reduction with a view to contributing to a positive legacy that will ultimately lead to the eradication of single-use plastics.
Contributors to the workshop included among others, Ironmonger Events, Hong Kong Rugby Union, China Scrap Plastics Association, Magnetic Asia (Clockenflap), Smiley Planet and The Last Straw Movement. Style by Asia was of course also there 🙂
Watch some of the behind the scenes footage of the day here below:
DIY OPPORTUNITY!
Last but not least, instead of throwing them away, as part of their sustainability profile Volvo Ocean Race will give away all of its signboards etc that don't have corporate logos on them, so if you are a maker and need some material and you see something in the Race Village that you could use, get in touch with the team here, maybe you're lucky!
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During the stop over in Hong Kong, Volvo Ocean Race is holding a sustainable education programme for schools. If you are interested in it, which features great resources on the Volvo Ocean Race, ocean health and how to tackle plastic pollution, visit: www.volvooceanrace.com/education
If you haven't yet, make sure to take the Clean Seas pledge, a campaign from United Nations Environment supported by Volvo Ocean Race Sustainability Programme, pledging to reduce your plastic footprint and to help contribute to reducing ocean plastic pollution – do it now and do it here: www.volvooceanrace.com/pledge
