Reflections -PlastExpo 2025
Look at your water bottle on the desk. Is it plastic?
The trend of changing our drinking habits to incorporate reusable containers is laudable. It helps people to be more mindful about their consumption and effectively reduces plastic waste. It is ironic that I (a vegetarian, used to wearing secondhand clothing) have not yet taken this step.
A Plastic-Oriented Fair
I felt as much irony walking through the doors of Hall 2 of the Casablanca International Fairgrounds, into the “PlastExpo 2025” fair as a Local Pathways Fellow. Yes, you read it right, it is plast as in plastic.
However, as I looked through the companies and universities exposed, I could see how much attention was paid to the environment, recycling and other “green solutions”, as mentioned on the poster. I could see slogans such as: “Le climat change, peut-être que nous devrions faire de même” or petrochemical companies claiming they are sustainable and responsible. There were representatives from China, Saudi Arabia, India, etc.
The peak of this experience was a conference by the engineer, researcher, and auditor Nouha Khaled. She discussed packaging practices, but also plastic, paper/carton, and metal production methods. I would like to highlight some of her concepts:
3R - Réduire, Réutiliser et Recycler
Emotional & Sensorial experiences
Communicating values (ethics or authenticity, for instance)
They are quite intuitive, but one specific well-chosen example made them evident. Buying in bulk is a system that is slowly gaining traction in Europe, but that has actually been used since the dawn of time (in Morocco as well as in China). That is for dry, as well as wet ingredients or materials, although European countries tend to focus on re-introducing the former rather than the latter (such as modern zero-waste stores opening in Bangkok, and the Food Policy for Copenhagen). I will walk you through all the concepts using this example, then put it into perspective on the scale of a city.
Case Study: Buying in Bulk
Reduce: customers can take just what (or as much as) they need without wasting products. Most importantly, it means that people doing their grocery shopping could only use one container to store the product they purchase. For instance, it is one bag of rice, not several individual plastic bags of 100 grams in a bigger carton box. Additional advantages are found in accessibility and storage ease.
Reuse: some containers are often reusable because they fit any sort of ingredient. Thus, a paper bag or glass jar can be used to store vegetables, starches, or spices. They can be dusted or cleaned, then used again and so for as long as they are handled with care to last as long as possible in the aim of economizing this resource. Their flexibility, in turn, allows their users to reduce their need for containers.
Recycle: glass breaks, paper tears, but a package made from only one material will have more chances of being recycled and/or more easily. Placing milk or yogurt in glass jars with a metallic lid means there are two fully distinct materials that can be processed and reconverted. It is an alternative to having single use lids or containers layered with paper, plastic and aluminum that will be hardly recycled.
What will happen when people start to reuse their containers? They can create an emotional attachment to them and handle them with even greater care. Let me tell you, after seeing students going through their exams with the motto “it’s my water bottle and I against the world”, it opens a universe of possibilities. It means people could start taking their hand-painted glass jar as an alternative to plastic when they go grocery shopping. A smart design with one's token animal, an agreeable texture or aesthetic is more than enough!
Last, but absolutely not least, the values. They must come from both the seller and buyer's side. On one hand, the seller needs to ensure the cleanliness, freshness, and integrity of the product using the least amount of packaging. On the other hand, consumers ought to treat the product with respect and care to avoid intruding on their peers’ ability to enjoy the same product. Ethics also come from the willingness of people to shift their habits to a more sustainable system of consumption and remembering to carry their boxes, jars, or bags up to the stores, for example.
SDG 11 – A Specific Target
Now, you are expecting to read about how this would look like, applied to SDG 11 for sustainable cities and communities?
Firstly, it directly touches target number 11.6.1. Quoting UN Habitat, it touches on the “proportion of urban solid waste regularly collected and with adequate final discharge out of total urban solid waste generated, by cities”. In short, there is a need to reduce the impact of cities’ waste and improve their waste management. Straightforwardly, habits of production and consumption in urban areas should evolve to match this target. Some solutions are laid out in the table below.
| Target 11.6.1 | Producers | Consumers | Impacts |
| Reduce | Create as little packaging as possible e.g.: having single layer plastic |
Adopt bulk buying practices e.g.: taking the habit of buying just what one needs |
Alleviates the creation of waste > Reduce the impact of cities > Improves waste management |
| Reuse | Create easily reusable packaging e.g.: accessing contents does not damage the pack |
Adopt more durable containers e.g.: showing up to stores with used containers |
Packaging is no longer “waste” after 1st use > Reduce the impact of cities |
| Recycle | Create single materials packaging e.g.: facilitating selective sorting |
Adopt a better recycling discipline e.g.: separating in good faith final waste |
Facilitates recycling process > Improves waste management |
SDG 11 – A Sustainable Community Life
Secondly, there is a more holistic way to look at the matter of plastic and packaging in urban communities. Cities gather considerable numbers of people who do not have the possibility to produce resources for their own sustenance. They systematically buy food and drinks, which are mostly sold in today’s favorite packaging: plastic materials. The packaging of these resources accumulates extremely fast. Plastic waste alone accounts for millions of tons per country per year according to Plastic Bank (even in small countries such as Japan and Italy). Furthermore, the organization highlights how large urban centers cannot cope with the management challenges they face.
~ Economy ~ Tourism depends a lot on people’s comfort and the aesthetics of a specific area. Cluttered or smelly streets could deter visits or increase the risks of visitors littering. Beauty and awe that usually stems from the admiration of architecture or other cultural delicacies could be turned into negative advertisement and reduce trade. The tourism sector is not the only one impacted; any company receiving clients depends on their capacity to provide a tidy and clean image of their settings to enhance sales or deals.
~ Health ~ I will not reiterate the list of the dangers of microplastics in our organism, in the soil and the water they contaminate. Plastic wrapping often affects our bodies when consuming products, but also the food we grow and the water we are surrounded by. Keep in mind that littering is not the only driving cause of this risk. Indeed, even when properly disposed of, plastic waste takes centuries to decompose, affecting throughout this span of time its surroundings.
Running the numbers, making a pros and cons list, or doing any other cost-benefit analysis clearly shows that plastic and overall packaging in cities is a contemporary scourge on many levels. This reflective essay focused mainly on people’s direct consumption, but observing the extent to which plastic is used in our everyday lives while visiting PlastExpo is startling.
A future without plastic means finding new ways to seal sterile medical equipment or other invisible plastic (cosmetics, clothing, etc.). For instance, some hospitals started using washable sterilized containers to eliminate “blue wrap” covering the tools or the EnviroPouch, or replacing plastic bags by woven fabric to protect sterilized instruments. There is a long way to go before the health sector can become fully sustainable given the biohazard some of its waste represents.
After this stay in Morocco, I decided it was time I got my own reusable water bottle!
Blog entry by Jeanne VINCENDEAU - Local Pathways Fellow 2025 and dual Masters degree student in International Relations, Jeanne is passionate about academic interdisciplinarity and intersectionality in contemporary issues.