Sabah NGO: Create plastic economy, protect biodiversity

KOTA KINABALU: A plan to give monetary value to plastic waste is set to be the bedrock for a non-governmental organisation’s (NGO) push to make Sabah plastic neutral.

Blu Hope’s founder Simon Christopher said they were working with various stakeholders towards creating a plastic economy for the local communities by introducing different recycling technologies.

“In order to achieve ‘Sabah Plastic Neutral’ within the next five years (by end-2026), we need to maximise value from plastic waste and bring real tangible, value in recycling plastic waste,” said Christopher whose NGO is expected to roll out its plans by April this year.

He said that currently there was no monetary value in discarded plastics but Blu Hope was working with various local and international groups to bring in appropriate technologies to recycle such waste into fuel and furniture among others.

“We want to create new circular plastic economies for local communities and help to protect Sabah’s unique biodiversity at the same time,” Christopher said, explaining that awareness and education among students were also key elements in the NGO’S efforts to push for plastic neutral plans.

He said that Blu Hope had signed a Kota-kinabalu-plastic Neutral memorandum of understanding with Kota Kinabalu City Hall towards collecting and recycling plastic waste issues faced by the city.

This includes tonnes of waste washed to the shores of the state capital daily.

Blu Hope will soon carry out a series of regular “quantitative and qualitative” beach clean-ups to obtain new scientific collection of marine debris across the city’s beaches.

“With this data, Kota Kinabalu City Hall can set up better waste management and collection facilities later this year,” he added.

Christopher said they were working with the Sabah Education Department to provide reliable, safe and clean drinking water to all students and teachers so that they would not have to rely exclusively on plastic bottles for clean water.

“It will significantly reduce Sabah’s single-use plastic problem in the process,” he said, explaining that students usually used plastic water bottles for safe drinking water.

He said Blu Hope was working with French water filter manufacturer Fonto de Vivo alongside UK’S Ocean Generation’s to provide safe water filtering systems for schools and to provide bottles for the students in hopes of cutting down reliance on plastic bottles.