One month after the end of the elections, flyers, blankets and other electoral propaganda remains on the streets. Although the political parties announced that they would remove and treat what was collected, the recycling plans presented by each one do not have details of how electoral waste will be treated, according to a review carried out by Causa Natura Media.
“They sent a 'recycling plan', in quotation marks, that does not include anything required by law because for the majority all they were responsible for doing was copying and pasting general information about what recycling is, what are the types of plastics, the different types of recycling and other theoretical information just to fill out the document,” said Ornela Garelli, an Oceans Without Plastics campaign at Greenpeace Mexico.
Since the electoral process, Greenpeace pointed out that the collection of propaganda would be insufficient. And he asked parties and coalitions to make public their recycling plans, as well as reports on the materials they used and the estimate of their plastic footprint. Requests that were not resolved.
For this publication, the Natura Media Journalism Unit called for the recycling plans of each political party through requests for information. Everyone responded with the exception of Morena and the National Action Party (PAN). These two indicated that the National Electoral Institute (INE) was responsible for providing the information, so the request was sent to the institute in order to access their plans.
As described by Garelli, recycling plans have no specifications on how electoral waste will be treated. “What should really have a plan are the measures to ensure that all these tarps and banners are collected; which company is going to take them to actually be recycled; what type of recycling is going to be used, and what will be done with the products that result from that recycling,” he explained.
No details
According to the Foundation for the Rescue and Recovery of the Urban Landscape, for this year's electoral process, between 25 and 30 thousand tons of electoral waste were generated in Mexico City alone.
Article 209 of the General Law on Electoral Institutions and Procedures of the INE states that “all printed electoral propaganda must be recyclable, made of biodegradable materials that do not contain substances that are toxic or harmful to health or the environment” and that “political parties and independent candidates must submit a plan to recycle the propaganda they will use during their campaign”.
While article 295 of the INE Elections Regulations details that parties must submit reports during the pre-campaign and campaign that include the names of the suppliers contracted for the production of electoral propaganda; the plan for recycling the propaganda, and the quality certificates for the resin used in the production of their electoral propaganda printed on plastic.
In the recycling plans for political parties, provided by the INE, it was found that all parties ensure that at the end of the elections there will be a collection in collection centers to later be recycled or reused, mainly, to be donated to communities in Mexico.
However, none of them detailed how many collection centers are allocated, for what period they will be in operation and how the process of recycling and reusing each type of advertising will be achieved, considering primarily canvas and banners, but leaving the fate of flyers and decals in the background.
In the case of Morena, from the pre-campaign report, he indicated the companies and materials that were used for electoral propaganda. In addition to establishing some commitments such as the use of biodegradable plastics and water-based inks that are more environmentally friendly.
“In this sense, we will seek to ensure that the plastics to be used in electoral propaganda are properly biodegraded and that the production of CO2 (carbon dioxide), a determining factor in the greenhouse effect, is eliminated,” the plan states.
In addition to these mentions, most of the information is theoretical. These are definitions of concepts such as reusing, recycling, reducing and recovering, and explanations of how biodegradable plastics are formed.
For its part, the National Action Party (PAN) made a slightly more detailed breakdown of who would be its suppliers responsible for removing the propaganda and some of its objectives after the collection. For example, for fabric t-shirts and caps, they pointed out that they could be reused by the population; ecological bags are proposed to produce clothes hooks and drink lids, and some of the tarps could cover windows and awnings in affected communities.
However, there is no description of the type of plastics with which each of the printed materials are made and how many of these will be used for the objectives they propose.
In the case of the Citizen Movement (MC), the list of suppliers was provided along with the certificates where the companies briefly mention the type of materials and the work they do. While the plan generally cites recycling technologies and the procedure for collecting in collection centers.
“That electoral propaganda can be donated to rural areas or communities and to whoever requests it for a specific purpose, for which it will be necessary to train citizens to place plastic material, such as on the roofs of homes, schools and others,” concludes MC's recycling plan.
For their part, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM) and Labor Party (PT) also limited themselves to giving definitions of the recycling stages, names of suppliers and general mentions of types of plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and low-density polystyrene (LDPE) and high-density (HDPE).
Regarding materials and the proposal to donate tarps to communities that need infrastructure for their homes, Greenpeace noted that the parties are not considering the types of materials to achieve this proposal.
“For example, polyethylene is used to make bags and that could be recycled, but canvases that were made of PVC require recycling that is complicated, there are not many companies that do it, and it would also be toxic recycling, because PVC has added chemicals that result in toxicity and that can have implications for health,” explained Ornela Garelli.
Plastic imprint
Greenpeace Mexico recently reported that it sent a letter addressed to Guadalupe Taddei Zavala, president of the General Council of the National Electoral Institute (INE), to ask that the problem of electoral waste be addressed and that the plastic footprint be transparent to allow estimating the amount of electoral propaganda materials printed.
The Causa Natura Media team also made a transparent request for the types and quantities of printed advertising and the budget invested, but only MC and the PVEM provided a breakdown.
In the case of MC, more than 70,000 stickers, more than two million flyers, 1,579,000 diptychs and 133,100 stickers were printed just to promote the presidential candidacy. While the PVEM printed more than 363 thousand square meters of canvas for spectacular and 1,44 square meters of vinyl, which in total would be equivalent to 50 courts at the Azteca Stadium.
Other parties such as the PRI argued that this information is “strictly federal competence”, so they did not respond. For their part, Morena, PAN and PRD provided public information links that do not specify the required information such as the quantities of printed electoral propaganda.
According to organizations such as Greenpeace, UN Environment, Natura and World Wilde Life, the plastic footprint allows us to understand how much of plastic production ends up as waste in the environment.
“There are no specific studies for electoral waste, but since we already know what plastics it is made of, we could expect the environmental impact to be similar (to that of other plastic products) and in that case there are many studies in this regard. For example, at least 14 million tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year; there are other studies that estimate that there are around four trillion pieces of waste floating in the oceans and, once it arrives, there are other studies that indicate that it interacts with nearly 700 marine species to which it can cause problems such as choking, strangulation and suffocation,” explained Ornela Garelli.
For organizations like Greenpeace, ideally, elections would be necessary in which there is no longer any printed propaganda. Although they also consider it essential that complete and comprehensive recycling plans be drawn up “as part of a public commitment” and that political parties seek other dissemination alternatives such as digital media.
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