End Plastics

INC Diary – Day 1

November 11, 2023

Saturday November 11

LOCATION: Nairobi attending the United Nation’s, Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop a legally binding instrument to eradicate plastic pollution. (Affectionally called INC 3)

Sleep: Not much but feel good

Mood: Excited about our anti plastic march

Arrived late last night from Washington DC and I feel surprisingly good. Perhaps because I managed to sit in an aisle seat and got to stretch my legs on the flight. Landed feeling really excited to be in Africa for the first time, and Kenya feels like the perfect country to start this journey in.

Woke up at 3am (far too early) and headed off for the #BreakFreeFromPlastics march at 7am. We are a coalition of NGO’s all calling for an end to plastic production. Which incredibly is, right now at least, NOT in the Treaty. 

Exhausted But cannot sleep!

Met some old friends and made some new ones. Feels like there is a lot of energy. Marching with like minded campaigners and activists in Nairobi with so much local support – is pretty special. Globally we produce 400 million metric tons of plastic waste every year, all of it contributing greenhouse gasses, less than 10% of it is ever recycled – that is what we are trying to deal with here, so we need radical action!!!

The only bug bear was that I had brought some sustainably sourced PLANET vs PLASTICS t shirts  (the EARTHDAY.ORG theme for 2024) for folks in the march but we were told we couldn’t wear anything like that.  Slightly disappointing and odd given we are ONLY here to talk about ending plastics. But good crowd, over 200 and lots of chanting. I actually wrote some chants down before we set off but everyone else was all over it and my chants did not make it! Felt good to be standing up for the planet. 

Had delicious biriyani lunch and then back to work. Went back to the UN building in Nairobi afterwards for preparatory meetings, yes meetings about meetings. It is the UN after all!!!

 

Exhausted but cannot sleep!!!

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Aidan Charron

Aidan Charron

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