“Together in everything”, observations on the environment in La Plata

Welcome back to all readers after a short interval in publication. This week’s blog post will follow up on the article that appeared in El Día, a regional newspaper based in the city of La Plata, that reports on news in Buenos Aires Province. Here I further outline the ideas and opinions of interns at Fundación Biosfera about city material waste and public transport.

La Plata’s ‘Green City’ scheme has come under criticism by many at Fundación Biosfera, for its lack of organisation and transparency. Contemporary organizations such as the UNFCCC have unified international governments in adopting ambitious and clear climate action goals -known as NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions)-, but this mindset has not filtered down to the regional level in La Plata. As far as can be found by any reasonably accessible resources of publicly available information, the city lacks a cohesive, trans-departmental, long-term plan to combat the more localised climate and environment pressures in the city, with regards to urban waste collection, recycling and public transport. The most promising action towards sustainable development was a government-sanctioned consultant body that published a ‘Strategic Plan’ for the city in 2016, outlining the ‘weaknesses’ of and giving suggestions for improvement in government directives relating to collection and waste management. In our opinion, many of these directives have not been acted upon, an issue I shall discuss below, along with lessons learned from cities in our home countries.

In relation to waste management, Plastic is the key word. Commonly recognised as one of the worst material contaminants of both human and natural environments (oceans, countryside, cities), public awareness has been raised globally by politicians, the UNFCCC and campaign groups such as Greenpeace. In May of 2016, the consultant body in La Plata pointed out the lack of state efficiency in instilling and incentivising positive practices. Despite this warning, and to our continued shock while living here in La Plata, dependence on plastic bottles, straws, packaging and most notably, bags is still very much a common feature in the daily life here. For instance, the norm is still to offer a new plastic bag every time in the supermarket or grocery, instead of encouraging the sale of durable, multi-use bags-for-life, which can generate income and publicity for the shop, while also reducing their environmental impact. Another option would be to simply impose a plastic bag-tax, which in Wales achieved a 96% reduction in their use after only 9 months. Imposing a similar tax in Buenos Aires province would tackle the problem of excess plastic bags taken to landfill at its source.

Perpetuating the issue, in our opinion, is the frequency and non-differentiation of the rubbish collection, which services some areas of the city on a daily basis. This is unnecessarily regular for most households and in fact, incentivises further use of single-use plastic products by providing an easy and convenient method of pushing them out of sight, therefore out of mind. The incredible thing is that rubbish collections outside the main city are much less regular, creating an environment in which to litter and fly-tip is the only option to dispose of extra household waste, and thus making the service doubly wasteful. While using copious amounts of government resources no doubt, this service does very little to alleviate either the environmental pressures on this populous province or the inequality between the relative wealth concentrated in the city centre and the poverty-stricken outskirts. Find out more about recycling and waste management in La Plata here.

Turning over to the subject of public transport now, and the government’s subsidies through use of the SUBE card greatly incentivise the extensive use of buses and trains by the public by reducing travel costs to virtually nothing. However these, also somewhat incredibly, seem to be funding a prohibitively unreliable and inefficient service. While there are no official timetables to speak of, even the unofficial versions often do not correspond to the reality. Late bus services could be put down to a multitude of reasons: car traffic, inefficient or slow buses, or drivers flaunting the rules of the road. The principal reason perhaps, beyond just human error, could be the concentration of services in the centre of the city, resulting the the overcrowding of streets and the concentration of contaminants in the place where most people live and breathe. Once again, this problem is conducive to perpetuating socio-economic inequalities in the outskirts, which are serviced by fewer buses and longer journeys, restricting access to city centre salaries.

The modern city must prioritise the pedestrian and alternative modes of transport to the individual car, if we are to live in more dense, more efficient urban spaces. The surplus of car-friendly areas and on-street parking in La Plata makes it easy and convenient to drive, but also to guiltlessly contaminate and clog up inner-city streets while restricting public transport’s ability to function correctly. Creating bus lanes that bypass traffic and take exclusive shortcuts are widely adopted models in big cities such as London and Bristol, with fines for cars that defy these regulations. Pollution can also be tackled by state or private investment in cleaner buses, the installation of exhaust filters on petrol engines, or completely electric units that avoid the problems of exhaust emissions entirely, which -according to the WHO (World Health Organisation)- claim 6.5 million lives a year.

I realise that today’s post has perhaps been based more on opinion than hard facts, some might say more in-line with what a blog ought to be. However, the difficulty I had in finding facts from the municipal website shows the lack of transparency demonstrated by the local authorities about environmental matters, a core principle of the UNFCCC process, which attempts to unite international environmental activity. In my opinion, the city must be more proactive about its efforts to connect with its citizens on subjects of environmental importance, if La Plata wishes to join the long list of local authorities remembered as contributories to the solution, rather than part of the problem.

Regards,

Will Feakes