"Plastic is not good for me," she told AFP through a translator during an interview in Geneva, where she came to bear witness on the sidelines of 184-nation talks to forge the world's first global plastic pollution treaty.
"It started 30 years ago" in the Bangladeshi capital, the 55-year-old said, supported by her union.
At first, "plastic was for cooking oil and soft drinks", she recalled. Then came shopping bags, which replaced traditional jute bags. "We were attracted to plastic, it was so beautiful!"
Today, in one of the most economically fragile countries on the planet, plastic is everywhere: lining the streets, strewn across beaches, clogging the drains.
Alamgir Hossain, a member of an association affiliated with the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, showed photos on her phone.
Beghum wants non-recyclable plastics banned, pointing out that she cannot resell them and they have no market value.
"No one collects them," she said.
- 'Disaster for the environment' -
Indumathi from Bangalore in southern India, who did not give her full name, concurs: 60 percent of the plastic waste that arrives at the sorting centre she set up is non-recyclable, she told AFP.
This includes crisp packets made of a mixture of aluminium and plastic, and other products using "multi-layer" plastic. "No one picks them up from the streets and there are a lot of them," she said.
Scientists attending the treaty negotiations at the United Nations in Geneva back her up.
"Multi-layer plastic bags are a disaster for the environment," said Stephanie Reynaud, a polymer chemistry researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.
"They cannot be recycled."
Indamathi was also critical of what she described as public policy failures.
After single-use bags were banned in her country in 2014, for example, she saw the arrival of black or transparent polypropylene lunchboxes, which are also single-use.
"We're seeing more and more of them on the streets and in landfills. They've replaced shopping bags," she said.
According to a recent OECD report on plastic in Southeast Asia, "more ambitious public policies could reduce waste by more than 95 percent by 2050" in the region, where plastic consumption increased ninefold since 1990 to 152 million tonnes in 2022.
- Plastics 'colonialism' -
Consumer demand is not to blame, argues Seema Prabhu of the Swiss-based NGO Trash Heroes, which works mainly in Southeast Asian countries.
The market has been flooded with single-use plastic replacing traditional items in Asia, such as banana leaf packaging in Thailand and Indonesia, and metal lunch boxes in India.
"It's a new colonialism that is eroding traditional cultures," she told AFP. According to her, more jobs could be created "in a reuse economy than in a single-use economy".
Single-dose "sachets" of shampoo, laundry detergent or sauces are a scourge, said Yuyun Ismawati Drwiega, an Indonesian who co-chairs the International Pollutants Elimination Network NGO.
"They are the smallest plastic items with which the industry has poisoned us -- easy to carry, easy to obtain; every kiosk sells them," she told AFP.
In Indonesia, collection and sorting centres specialising in sachets have failed to stem the tide, mostly shutting down not long after opening.
In Bali, where Ismawati Drwiega lives, she organises guided tours that she has nicknamed "Beauty and the Beast".
The beauty is the beaches and luxury hotels; the beast is the back streets, the tofu factories that use plastic briquettes as fuel, and the rubbish dumps.
Plastic pollution treaty talks in disarray
Geneva (AFP) Aug 13, 2025 -
With time running out to seal a deal among the 184 countries gathered at the United Nations in Geneva, several countries slammed a proposed compromise text put forward by talks chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso of Ecuador.
A larger bloc of countries seeking more ambitious actions blasted what they consider a dearth of legally binding action, saying the draft text was the lowest common denominator and would reduce the treaty to a toothless waste-management agreement.
But oil-producing states said the text went too far for their liking, crossing their red lines too and not doing enough in paring down the scope of the treaty.
The talks towards striking a legally binding instrument on tackling plastic pollution opened on August 5.
Five previous rounds of talks over the past two and a half years failed to seal an agreement, including a supposedly final round in South Korea last year.
But countries seem no closer on a consensus on what to do about the ever-growing tide of plastic rubbish polluting land, sea and human health.
With a day left to go, Vayas presented a new draft but the discussions quickly unravelled as the text was savaged from all quarters.
- 'Without ambition entirely' -
Panama said the goal was to end plastic pollution, not simply to reach an agreement.
"It is not ambition: it is surrender," their negotiator said.
The European Union said the proposal was "not acceptable" and lacked "clear, robust and actionable measures", while Kenya said there were "no global binding obligations on anything".
Tuvalu, speaking for 14 Pacific island developing states, said the draft risked producing a treaty "that fails to protect our people, culture and ecosystem from the existential threat of plastic pollution".
Britain called it a text that drives countries "towards the lowest common denominator", and Norway said "It's not delivering on our promise... to end plastic pollution."
Bangladesh said the draft "fundamentally fails" to reflect the "urgency of the crisis", saying that it did not address the full life cycle of plastic items, nor their toxic chemical ingredients and their health impacts.
"This is, as such, without ambition entirely," it said.
- 'Not worth signing' -
A cluster of mostly oil-producing states calling themselves the Like-Minded Group -- including Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran -- want the treaty to focus primarily on waste management.
Kuwait, speaking for the club, said the text had "gone beyond our red lines", adding that "Without consensus, there is no treaty worth signing."
"This is not about lowering ambition: it's about making ambition possible for all," it said.
Saudi Arabia said there were "many red lines crossed for the Arab Group" and reiterated calls for the scope of the treaty to be defined "once and for all".
The United Arab Emirates said the draft "goes beyond the mandate" for the talks, while Qatar said that without a clear definition of scope, "we don't understand what obligations we are entering into".
India, while backing Kuwait, saw the draft as "a good enough starting point " to go forward on finalising the text.
- 'Betrayal of humanity' -
Environmental non-governmental organisations also blasted the draft.
The proposed text "is a gift to the petrochemical industry and a betrayal of humanity", said Greenpeace delegation chief Graham Forbes.
The World Wide Fund for Nature called the draft text a "devastating blow" to people suffering from the impact of plastic pollution.
The Center for International Environmental Law delegation chief David Azoulay said it "all but ensures that nothing will change" and would "damn future generations".
More than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year, half of which is for single-use items.
While 15 percent of plastic waste is collected for recycling, only nine percent is actually recycled.
Nearly half, or 46 percent, ends up in landfills, while 17 percent is incinerated and 22 percent is mismanaged and becomes litter.
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