Global plastic waste in a world severely blighted by plastic pollution is set to almost triple by 2060, with around half ending up in landfills and less than a fifth recycled, according to a new report.

Annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics are set to top 1.2 billion tons by 2060 and waste to exceed 1 billion tons, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Even with aggressive action to cut demand and improve efficiencies, plastic production would almost double in less than 40 years, the 38-nation body projects in a report.

Such globally coordinated policies, however, could hugely boost the share of future plastic waste that is recycled, from 12% to 40%.

There is increasing international alarm over the volume and omnipresence of plastics pollution, and its impact.

Infiltrating the most remote and otherwise pristine regions of the planet, microplastics have been discovered inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean and locked inside Arctic ice.

The debris is estimated to cause the deaths of more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year.

"Plastic pollution is one of the great environmental challenges of the 21st century, causing wide-ranging damage to ecosystems and human health," OECD chief Mathias Cormann said.

Since the 1950s, roughly 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced with more than 60% of that tossed into landfills, burned or dumped directly into rivers and oceans.

Some 460 million tons of plastics were used in 2019, twice as much as 20 years earlier.

The amount of plastic waste has also nearly doubled, exceeding 350 million tons, with less than 10% of it recycled.

On current trends, the use of plastics is projected to roughly double in North America, Europe and East Asia. In other emerging and developing countries, it is expected to grow three to five-fold, and more than six-fold in sub-Saharan Africa.

The new report contrasts a business-as-usual trajectory with the benefits of more ambitious global policies of reduced plastic use and pollution.

Driven by economic growth and an expanding population, plastics production is set to increase under either scenario, the OECD warns.

Where policies can make a huge difference is in the handling of waste.

Currently, nearly 100 million tons of plastic waste is either mismanaged or allowed to leak into the environment, a figure set to double by 2060.

"Co-ordinated and ambitious global efforts can almost eliminate plastic pollution by 2060," the report concludes.

It could also curtail the amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases projected to seep into the atmosphere.

Currently, the full life-cycle of primary plastics – from production to disintegration – contributes about two billion tonnes of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, roughly 3% of human-caused carbon pollution.

Without targeted policy action, that figure will likely double by 2060, the OECD warns.

Earlier this year, the United Nations set in motion a process to develop an internationally binding treaty to limit plastic pollution./AFP

A harmless desire to swim in public pools in a burkini, a full-body swimsuit, by a group of Muslim women in the southeastern Grenoble city of France has triggered national outrage this summer.

A French court on Wednesday suspended the decision by the Grenoble municipal council to authorize the long outfit known as a burkini in the city’s public pools for religious purposes, which it said seriously undermined the principle of public service neutrality. Public authorities and far-right political parties claim that donning the burkini is a "symbolic submission" to extremism.

"Our fight is not just about our right to wear a long costume but also for those who want to swim topless. It’s a true fight for feminism,” said Naima, a resident of the city and member of the Alliance Citoyenne (Citizens Alliance), the organization behind the campaign to lift clothing restrictions in the municipal pools of Grenoble.

According to the recently approved modifications, from June 1, the city’s municipal pools were to abolish restrictions on swimwear. The relaxed rules would allow women and men to wear full-body swimming costumes or swim topless if they want.

However, the regulation peeved the Interior Ministry and the local prefecture challenged the authorization for the burkini in a court of law, which has now ruled against the wearing of the long costume. The suspension of the rules is a huge setback for Grenoble’s Muslim women who have been fighting for access to the city’s public pools for the last four years.

A long fight

France follows stringent rules when it comes to the public display of religion and religious signs. A 2004 law prohibits the wearing of the hijab or the headscarf along with other religious symbols in public schools and a 2010 legislation outlaws full face-covering Islamic veils or the burqas in public. While the wearing of the burkini is not banned, several municipalities have adopted a ban disallowing women with full-bodied swimsuits on the beaches and in public pools.

To fight against the indiscriminate ruling that prevented their access to the city council’s pools, Muslim women from Grenoble’s Citizens Alliance formed the Muslim Women's Union to protest against this and other discrimination on religious grounds.

"We were made to stand on the side if we accompanied our children to the pool. If we got in with the long costume the staff would scream at us to get out or call the cops,” said a mother who did not want to be named.

In summer 2019, the association wrote several letters to the Office of Mayor Erick Piolle and the city council, wanting to initiate a dialogue to change the clothing rules, only to be overlooked with a stiff silence. Then one day, they mobilized to launch a nonviolent protest – by demonstrating in the external premises of a public pool dressed in the burkini to grab the attention of the authorities.

Some of the protesters broke the security cordon and jumped inside the pool.

"We were elated with joy. This was our civil disobedience. We wanted to show that a woman swimming in a burkini was harmless and the rules were silly,” Naima recalled. The happiness was brief and the women were promptly evicted by the local cops and suspended from coming to the pool for a period of two months.

‘Pools for all’

The citizens' campaign continued in the following year amid the pandemic, but the previous year’s demonstration had created resentment among the council authorities who refused to engage in any dialogue. The women were, however, determined to dismantle the patriarchal rules and free municipal pools from allowing all kinds of costumes.

What followed was a novel way of protest – a pool party. Demonstrators carried inflatable pools, filled them with water, and sat inside dressed in burkinis, chanting "pools for everyone and all women.” The action was disrupted once again as cops descended on the party and physically assaulted the protesters.

"We were just trying to swim and make a point. Instead, they called the cops on us as if we robbed a bank,” Naima, said, recalling the day’s events.

The union then expanded its campaign to include non-Muslim citizens who also felt constrained by the archaic rules. They backed their arguments for wider support with scientific research to prove that the long costume did not create hygiene issues in the pool and that change in the clothing regulations would benefit transgender people, women who were not comfortable with skin exposure as well as those wanting to bathe topless.

"Our basic argument was to let women decide what they want to wear or not wear,” said Naima, who had to forgo swimming from the time she started wearing the hijab 10 years ago. "It’s a very simple demand to allow us access to the pools in the costume we are comfortable with,” she stressed.

Reclaiming right to swim

The signature campaign yielded the support of nearly 2,300 citizens, including men who saw it as a reasonable demand. The union once again knocked at the doors of the council, clamoring for a discussion on the possible change in the clothing rules. To their surprise, the council agreed to a hearing but maintained they were not in a position to decide on modifying the rules.

Then suddenly a few weeks ago, the union women were shocked to learn of Piolle’s proposal for amending the rules. Piolle, an Ecologist Party leader, said he supports the feminist agenda behind the proposal. He also cited the anguish of transgender people who are held back from accessing the pools due to fear of being ostracized or those who prefer the full costume due to faith or for sun protection.

The new regulations, approved on May 16 by a narrow margin that lift all restrictions on swimwear and allow women to wear the long costume or swim bare-breasted, have raised a storm in the pool.

Besides the far-right politicians, even Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has accused Piolle and the Grenoble council of wading too deep in the troubled water. He claimed the rules were against the 2021 legislation dubbed as anti-separatism law or "reinforcing the respect of the principles of the Republic” to battle radicalism that obligates public bodies to uphold secular values and maintain neutrality.

Meanwhile, the Muslim women of Grenoble, who were eagerly awaiting to step out in the public pools on June 1 when the new rules were due to be enforced, must wait for an indefinite time to reclaim the right to swim. "We get a lot of hate for being Muslim women in France,” Naima said./aa

Inflation figures for the month of May showed that the rise in consumer prices is on a downward trend, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Sunday.

Turkey’s annual inflation rate rose at a lower-than-expected pace in May but still jumped to a 24-year high of 73.5%, fueled by soaring food and energy prices.

Speaking to members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Erdoğan said the government was working on ways to alleviate households’ economic woes and combat soaring prices.

“We never underestimate the problems experienced by our people in their daily lives. We are looking for ways to reduce the cost of living burden,” Erdoğan noted.

He reiterated that the government has been closely following the course of the prices and has put under the scope the exorbitant hikes.

Turkey’s consumer price index has surged since last autumn as the Turkish lira weakened after the central bank in September embarked on a 500 basis-point easing cycle.

Prices have been increasing despite tax cuts on basic goods and government subsidies for utility bills to ease the burden on household budgets.

The government says inflation will fall under its new economic program, which prioritizes low-interest rates to boost production and exports to achieve a current account surplus.

In a presentation to AK Party members on Saturday, Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati said the fight against inflation is the top priority for the coming period.

Nebati stressed the importance of strengthening coordination and communication in the fight against rising prices, effective monetary policy, a prudent approach to public finances, as well as comprehensive and effective implementation of macroprudential policies.

The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) revised its inflation forecasts for this year and next mainly because of the rise in commodity prices and supply issues.

A presentation by Governor Şahap Kavcıoğlu in April suggested inflation would peak around 70% before June before sliding to 42.8% by the end of the year.

The central bank has held its benchmark interest rate steady at 14% in five meetings this year and said disinflation will start due to other measures, the so-called base effect and an expected end to the Ukraine conflict.

Nebati also said that the leading indicators showed that the economy maintained its positive outlook in the second quarter of the year.

Strong demand, manufacturing and exports helped Turkey post better-than-expected 7.3% annual economic growth in the first quarter./agencies

German carmaker Mercedes-Benz is recalling almost a million older vehicles from around the world due to possible problems with the brake booster, the company said on Saturday.

The recall affects models of the SUV series ML and GL (BR 164) and the R-Class (BR 251) luxury minivan produced between 2004 and 2015, it said.

The German federal transport authority (KBA) had also confirmed the recall, which it said covers 993,407 vehicles worldwide, including around 70,000 in Germany.

“We have found that in some of those vehicles, the function of the brake booster could be affected by advanced corrosion in the joint area of the housing,” Mercedes-Benz said in a statement.

This could result in an increase in the brake pedal force needed to decelerate the vehicle and/or to a potentially increased stopping distance, it added.

The KBA said that “corrosion on the brake booster can in the worst case lead to the connection between the brake pedal and the braking system being interrupted.”

“As a consequence, the service brake can stop functioning,” it noted.

The move was based on an "analysis of isolated reports for certain vehicles," Mercedes-Benz said in a statement to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“In rare cases of very severe corrosion, it might be possible for a particularly strong or hard braking maneuver to cause mechanical damage to the brake booster, whereby the connection between the brake pedal and brake system would fail,” the statement read.

“In such a very rare case, it would not be possible to decelerate the vehicle via the service brake. Thus, the risk of a crash or injury would be increased.”

The company said it would “start with the recall immediately” and contact the owners of the “potentially affected vehicles.”

“The recall process will involve inspecting potentially affected vehicles and, depending on the results of the inspection, replacing the parts where necessary,” the company said.

“Until the inspection takes place, we ask our customers not to drive their vehicles.”/agencies