Dear friends in the media,

This World Health Day, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) Asia Pacific and #breakfreefromplastic Asia Pacific would like to invite you to a virtual media briefing to look into another pandemic that is waiting to happen around the globe: diseases borne out of the toxic chemicals in our food packaging on April 7, 10:00 AM (GMT+8).

We have seen a rise in plastics use during the COVID-19 pandemic: PPEs, syringes for vaccines, and online deliveries for just about anything and everything we need including food, not knowing that while we are trying to distance ourselves from the virus, we are bringing in our homes toxic chemicals present in these plastics products.

The good news is there are cities that went on with the ban in the time of COVID such as Jakarta, as well as fast-food restaurants that recently banned the toxic chemical PFAS in their food packaging.  While these are happening, we can’t help but ask, why are we not banning single-use plastics, and why are we silent about other toxic chemicals?  

In this webinar, we will look at how lethal these toxic chemicals are in our food packaging, how bad is the plastic waste issue, and how we can help stop this new pandemic especially in the midst of another pandemic.

Joining us are Miriam Gordon, UPSTREAM Policy Director to talk about The Unwrapped Project: Exposing the health risks of plastics + food packaging chemicals, Michelle Chung, Senior Project Officer at Greeners Action in Hong Kong to share the citizen campaign to ban single-use plastics in commercial places, and Paeng Lopez of Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) Southeast Asia to talk about the campaign against non-essential plastics in health care.

This media briefing is the 2nd GAIA-BFFP Media Fellowship deep-dive and will be hosted by Adi Marsiela, a GAIA-BFFP Media Fellow.

We look forward to seeing you on the 7th.  You may register here https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_vh-4v0m7SfKBKbioXIyyuQ 

Thank you so much and we’re looking forward to your response!