SUSTAINABILITY SPOTLIGHT | 42 Fr漀洀 plastic waste TO BETTER HOMES in Nepal Copyright 2024 © Curie Park Every day, another 600 tonnes of plastic waste end up littering Nepal’s streets and mountains, often with dire consequences. The country has seen a dramatic increase in plastic imports over the last decade, and although they are a resilient, convenient and versatile group of materials, plastics require responsible management to prevent damage to people, animals and the environment. Dr Curie Park, of the Centre for Industrial Sustainability, set up the Plastic to Ghar (P2G) project in 2022. “Ghar” means “house” in Nepali, and the aim of P2G is to set up local innovation capacity to tackle Nepal’s plastic waste problem by turning it into a solution to other pressing problems. With support from the Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution Programme (SMEP, funded by UK Aid and UNCTAD), which covers 13 intervention areas in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, Curie and the local teams are about to enter the penultimate phase of their project, which sees plastic waste transformed into useful housing materials, and communities transformed into hubs for innovation.