Sustainable Plastic Attitudes to benefit Communities and their Environments (SPACES)

在中低收入国家，每年有40万至100万人死于与废物管理不当有关的疾病。然而，废物管理是一个复杂的领域，它影响到多个利益攸关方，如制造商、分销商、零售商、家庭、回收业、非正规废物收集者和地方政府，因此需要采取综合办法。马拉维和坦桑尼亚是世界上最贫穷的两个国家，但塑料的消费量在过去十年中呈爆炸式增长。坦桑尼亚和马拉维是重要的案例研究国家，因为它们最近政府对塑料袋的反应，以及它们在处理塑料废物方面的不同政策格局。在撒哈拉以南非洲的许多城市，塑料垃圾，特别是塑料袋堵塞了城市排水系统。在降雨期间，这会导致局部洪水，增加人类接触未经处理的污水的风险，并在人口密集地区传播水传播病原体。塑料垃圾还可以作为雨水的临时容器，从而为蚊子提供幼虫栖息地。因此，塑料污染对人类健康的负面影响可能包括霍乱和伤寒等病原体的传播，以及为携带疟疾和寨卡病毒等疾病的蚊子提供短暂的繁殖容器。与此同时，生活在严重的环境塑料污染中会对心理健康和福祉产生负面影响。然而，尽管普遍认识到中低收入国家政府需要在固体废物管理方面进行更彻底的投资，但这仍然是一个低资金优先领域，各部门之间的责任分散，缺乏时间或技术专长来谈判适当的废物管理战略。通常，撒哈拉以南国家的政府、社区和个人优先考虑保健、粮食和水安全，其次是就业、教育和住房。塑料污染很少被认为是一件重要的事情，足以将宝贵的资源从这些更紧迫的挑战中转移出来。然而，我们认为，废物管理与健康有着千丝万缕的联系，不应作为一个单独的问题来对待。通过描述人们每天如何与塑料相互作用，空间项目将提供建立循环经济所需的框架，以改善、更可持续的发展途径和新的经济机会，并对撒哈拉以南非洲及其他地区的人类健康和福祉、生态系统服务和经济稳定产生深远影响。将开发定量和定性混合方法，以了解激励政府清除塑料废物和增加可持续废物处理的社会经济和政治障碍。将利用广泛的行为经济学和人类学方法，结合环境、生物、流行病学和地理方法，共同制定地方社区干预、缓解和可持续适应的新战略。空间项目将与一系列当地回收协会和企业家，以及当地政府和理事会领导人合作，提供证据和激励措施，使个人、社区、商业领袖和国家决策者能够促进态度的持续变化，以应对塑料废物在环境中的挑战。反过来，为实现更清洁、更有弹性和更富有成效的环境做出了一步改变。

Between 400,000 and 1 million people die each year in LMICs due to diseases related to mismanaged waste. Waste management is, however, a complex area, which affects multiple stakeholders, such as manufacturers, distributors, retailers, households, the recycling industry, informal waste pickers and local governments, and therefore requires an integrated approach. Malawi and Tanzania are two of the world's poorest countries, yet the consumption of plastics has exploded in the last decade. Tanzania and Malawi make important case-study countries because of their recent governmental responses to plastic bags, and their contrasting policy landscapes in terms of tackling plastic wastes. In many cities in sub-Saharan Africa, plastic wastes, and plastic bags in particular, block urban drainage systems. During rain events this leads to localised flooding, with an increased risk of human exposure to raw sewage and the spread of waterborne pathogens within highly populated areas. Plastic waste can also act as a transient receptacle for rainwater and thus provide a larval habitat for mosquitoes. Therefore, the negative impacts of plastic pollution on human health can include the spread of pathogens such as cholera and typhoid, and the provision of transient receptacles for breeding mosquitoes that can carry diseases such as malaria and Zika virus. In parallel, the consequences of living with significant levels of environmental plastic pollution can negatively affect mental health and well-being. However, despite wide-scale recognition of the need for LMIC governments to invest more thoroughly in solid waste management, this remains a low funding priority area, with fragmented responsibility between departments and a lack of time or technical expertise to negotiate suitable waste management strategies. Typically, governments, communities and individuals in sub-Saharan countries prioritise health-care, and food and water security, followed by employment, education and housing. Plastic pollution rarely registers as something important enough to re-direct valuable resources away from these more pressing challenges. However, we argue that waste management is inextricably linked to health and should not be treated as a separate issue. By characterising how people interact with plastics on a day-by-day basis, the SPACES project will provide the framework needed to build circular economies with improved, more sustainable development pathways and new economic opportunities, and have far-reaching implications for human health and well-being, ecosystem services and economic stability in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.Quantitative and qualitative mixed methods approaches will be developed to understand what socioeconomic and political obstacles exist for incentivising governments to remove plastic waste and increase sustainable waste disposal. Novel strategies for intervention, mitigation and sustainable adaptation by local communities will be co-developed using extensive behavioural economics and anthropological methods in tandem with environmental, biological, epidemiological and geographical approaches. Working with a range of local recycling associations and entrepreneurs, together with local government and council leaders, the SPACES project will provide both the evidence and incentives that will allow individuals, communities, business leaders and national decision-makers to foster a sustained change in attitudes for tackling the challenges of plastic waste in the environment. In turn delivering a step change towards enabling a cleaner, more resilient and more productive environment.