Portuguese legislation is silent on products that can be sold in bulk, warns the Zero Waste Lab association, which calls for “great work of legislation” in this area.
Speaking to Agência Lusa, Sara Morais Pinto, co-founder of the association, also said that she would like the Assembly of the Republic to reactivate the working group on bulk sales.
Sara Morais Pinto spoke of the International Zero Waste Day, which is celebrated for the first time this Thursday, after being proclaimed by the UN General Assembly on December 14 of last year.
Regarding the event, Zero Waste Lab, created five years ago and recognized since last November as a Non-Governmental Organization for Development (ONGD), promoted the month of March as “March, month of the bulge”with nearly a hundred events across the country.
Sara Morais Pinto explained that the month-long promotion dedicated to bulk products, a way to avoid waste and promote local and seasonal products, involved neighborhood stores that sell bulk products and Liga-Ação, a digital platform promoted in particular by the ONGD.
“There was collaboration between the stores and journalists, actors or musicians, as well as associations and consumers also joined the campaign. It is the neighborhood stores that give exact information about the products they sell, about their origins,” said the manager.
It is these stores, he added, that promote a fairer sale, with respect to the origin and the product, and they are the ones that have promoted actions, in addition to cooperation, such as talks, visits to orchards, demonstrations and activities with children.
The initiative had the institutional support of the European Commission and the Portuguese associations Zero (environment) and Deco (consumer).
“Bulk is an important pillar in climate action and the avoidance of garbage,” stressed the head of Zero Waste Lab, an entity that closes the month of bulk this Thursday and promotes a debate on the international day and the role of bulk in climate action, and also launches a petition for the review of the flexibility of the regulation in bulk.
When asked if it is possible to achieve “zero waste”, which she says is actually “a process and an attitude”, Sara Morais Pinto prefers to highlight the “inconsistency that still exists today” between what people say and what does, and welcomes the fact that environmental issues are now part of the political and collective discourse.
“There is waste in the extraction, production, logistics and transportation of products, in the sales business”, it is necessary to promote and exalt the profession, facilitate access to repair equipment, reduce “use and throw away”, says Sara Pollito Morais .
International Zero Waste Day (or Zero Waste) aims to promote sustainable consumption and production patterns and raise awareness of how zero waste initiatives contribute to advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, says the UN.
The organization cites estimates by which it collects every year 11.2 billion tons of solid waste, and says that the waste sector contributes significantly to the emission of gases greenhouse effect in urban environments and the loss of biodiversity.
About 931 million tons of food is wasted each year, and it is estimated that up to 37 million tons of plastic waste will enter the ocean annually by 2040.
The President of the United Nations General Assembly will convene a one-day high-level meeting on Zero Waste on Thursday to exchange country experiences and success stories in developing and implementing solid waste management solutions and technologies.
Source: Observadora
