Re-use & Reduce!

Summary

At present, the most visually obvious environmental issue concerning people is the overuse of plastic: mainly the plastic bags. It causes littering of the landscape, clogging the waterways and endangering wildlife. Plastic bags take hundreds of years to decompose and the recycling rate is very low.

To avoid this environmental and health issue, one needs to avoid the use of plastic bags and create an alternative path to get a risk-free environment worldwide.

In order to have big changes, small changes are necessary!

Together we, the ‘’Global Shapers Chisinau Hub’’ would work towards bringing this change. In order to address this issue in Chisinau city, we will organize campaigns to create awareness on reducing plastic waste, focusing first on decreasing plastic bags in supermarkets, and encouraging people to use other alternatives and/or reuse their plastic bags for multiple activities.

Main Goals

• To make the problem of plastic bags better known in the Moldavian society;
• To encourage people to opt for alternatives to plastic bags;
• Strengthen collaboration between relevant stakeholders working towards the reduction of plastic bags in Moldova.

Objectives

1. Create a campaign to encourage people to use less plastic for their daily activities;
2. Partner with local environmental organizations;
3. Provide & explain people with an alternative of plastic bag.

Problem

People become nowadays more and more aware of environmental pollution and waste management problems, feeling the need to implement urgent solutions. In the European Union, the Single-Use Plastics Directive was already approved. It aims at restriction and consumption and production of certain plastic products, as well as their replacement with more sustainable ones. Starting from 2021, as per the European Commission, more than 80% of marine litter is plastics. Because of the slow decomposition rate of the plastic.

In the Republic of Moldova, it was estimated that each Moldovan citizen uses approximately 140 plastic bags annually, accounting for a whopping 420 million plastic bags in total. Most of which is either single-use plastic and not recycled.

In response to the rapid rise of the plastic pollutant in the Moldavian society, the government recently approved a new regulation in regard to the use of plastic bags in the retail industry. Since the beginning of 2019, the use of shopping bags with or without a handle, with a thickness equal to or greater than 50 microns has been forbidden. Plastic bags with a thickness of less than 15 microns will be banned from January 2021, except for those used as packaging.

In order to address this issue of plastic pollutants, Global Shapers Chisinau Hub will partner with local environmental organizations and a pilot supermarket in order to create an offline as well as an online campaign that would encourage people to use less plastic bags and opt for alternative options.

In order to achieve this, we plan to divide the project into 3 main phases:

1. Initiation

2. Implementation

3. Follow-up

1. Initiation:

The initiation phase will be focused on planning the campaign and the KPIs that would help us reach our goal and have a successful project.

The main points will be:

• Define the purpose of the campaign with the messages to transmit;
• Define places to promote the campaign (Online & Offline)

Online: Facebook, Twitter, Media sites, Moldovan influencers, etc.

Offline: At the pilot supermarket.

• Define the partner’s organizations and active contributors;
• Define the period of the campaign;
• Define the pilot supermarket to collaborate with first and help to analyze the progress of the campaign.

2. Implementation

This phase will be the execution of the campaign itself and make the analysis with the partners of how the project is going on and the % of plastic bags used.

3. Follow Up

The follow-up part will be focused on understanding if the campaign was useful and understood by people, and find ways to improve it and get more people involved and support the cause.

Impact

• Raise awareness about the excessive use of plastic bags;
• Measure % of plastic bags decreased in the supermarket during the campaign;
• Gather opinions of people about the initiative and their thoughts on the issue.

Since this is going to be a pilot project, it is planned to be replicated and improved in each edition.

For more details follow our activities on Facebook or contact us at: globalshaperchisinau@gmail.com.