The Pacific Commonwealth islands on the front line of the plastic waste crisis

Theresa May this week urged the Commonwealth's nations to join together to fight the scourge of plastic waste choking the world’s oceans.

To spearhead the efforts the Prime Minister announced £60 million worth of funding to bolster collective efforts and urged member countries to join the newly-formed Commonwealth Clean Oceans Alliance.

As the heads of the Commonwealth’s nations met in London this week, Mrs May described the plastic crisis as “one of the most significant environmental challenges facing the world today”.

One of the first countries to sign up to the alliance was the archipelago nation of Vanuatu, which has recently banned single-use non-biodegradable plastics.

The nation is determined to avoid the fate of some of its Pacific neighbours, who have become overwhelmed by plastic waste.

However as a small nation its government knows it cannot stem the tide alone and it is looking to the collective power of the Commonwealth for meaningful action.

‘Drowning in plastic’

Another Commonwealth island nation, Tuvalu, sits 900 miles to the east of Vanuatu in the Pacific and offers a stark warning about the dangers of inaction over the plastic crisis.

The atoll gained its independence in 1978 and soon after started to import plastic products. With little space to dispose of the waste the island started to use its “borrow pits” as landfill.

These were huge holes left in its lagoons after the US military dug out large amounts of coral in the 1940s to use as cement for its  Second World War air base on Tuvalu.

Decades of discarded plastic soon filled up the borrows and as the island’s population grew to over 10,000, and villagers ended up living on top of the mounds of waste.

Jo Ruxton, a former researcher on the BBC's Blue Planet programme, visited Tuvalu as part of her 2016 documentary, A Plastic Ocean.

Describing her time on the islands she said: “It was probably the most emotional part of the whole journey, going there and meeting the people.

“It just struck me as I was looking out at this village that was drowning in plastic - the lagoon was full of plastic - and I thought ‘if we don’t get our act together that this could be a glimpse into the future for all of us'."

Ruxton said that Tuvalu’s plight was a microcosm for of where the world was headed if plastic waste is not brought under control.

Plastic production has boomed in recent decades and it is estimated that more plastic has been produced since 2000 than in the entirety of the previous century.

She added: “We were told in the 1950s that we could use plastic and that it was disposable. What I don’t understand is how now we are still doing it when we can see the evidence in South Asia and developing countries”.

‘We don’t want to get to that stage’

Dr Christina Shaw, 43, grew up in the Norfolk village of Gunthorpe and first visited Vanuatu as a locum veterinary surgeon a decade ago.

After meeting her Australian husband, Andrew Hibgame, there she settled in the capital Port Vila and is now the CEO of the Vanuatu Environmental Science Society.

The society aims to preserve the archipelago's idyllic natural enviroment and regularly organises clean-ups of litter and plastic waste.

“We are seeing quite a few clean up campaigns on land and water and we are always finding plastic," said Dr Shaw.

“It’s probably not as bad as in other places in south east Asia, we don’t have beaches completely strewn with litter but we don’t want it to get to that stage."

The islands' have a population of around 270,000 and most of the plastic waste comes from Port Vila and second city, Luganville.

There’s centralised waste collection in the two main cities and Vanuatu has two landfill sites. But at some point those landfill sites will be full and the cost of shipping waste overseas if too prohibitive for the small nation.

As a result earlier this year the island nation’s government banned single-use plastics including bags and polystyrene takeaway containers.

Commonwealth action

Vanuatu is not just under threat from domestic plastic waste. Dr Shaw said the population was noticing increasing plastic waste coming into the ocean waters around the islands.

She said: “The marine environment is very important and a lot of people here depend on it for artisanal fishing and gleaning from the coral reef."

This is partly why Vanuatu has been a keen proponent of Commonwealth efforts to tackle the problem through collaboration within its family of nations.

Dr Shaw said that ultimately ocean plastic pollution was a global problem that would need a global response.

She added:  “We are a very small player but we can play our part”.