Barnaba point man on plastics

Mark Barnaba reaches for a familiar phrase when asked to describe the enormity of his job chairing the Minderoo Foundation’s Sea the Future initiative.

“This plastics battle isn’t a knife fight in a telephone box,” Mr Barnaba told Business News.

“By that, I mean it won’t be a swift and short-lived battle.”

Many familiar with the colourful language of Minderoo’s founder and chair, Andrew Forrest, would recognise the expression, which, used prominently during Mr Forrest’s appearance on the ABC’s Boyer Lectures series, has become something of a catchphrase of the mining magnate-cum-philanthropist.

To hear Mr Barnaba tell it, the phrase perfectly encapsulates the enormity of battling the world’s petrochemicals industry on behalf of the Fortescue Metals Group founder.

That battle, waged primarily through Sea the Future’s no plastic waste campaign, seems straightforward: reduce the use of plastics produced from fossil fuels and tip the scales in favour of recycled plastics.

Research commissioned by Minderoo and published in May cast doubt on the prevalence of recycling, estimating that 98 per cent of all single-use plastic is manufactured from ‘virgin’ polymers derived from oil, gas, or coal.

Mr Barnaba admits that convincing regulators, businesses, and individuals that recycling is not yet at an acceptable standard is hard enough, given he has had to make a conscious effort to train himself and his family to actively avoid buying or using goods in plastic packaging.

On a grander level, however, targeting every player in the value chain – from regulators to manufacturers, through to the members of the public buying these goods – is going to be the subject of a public relations fight Mr Barnaba is aware will likely drag on for the better part of the next decade.

“This war to rid the planet of plastic pollution and of ever-increasing virgin plastic will be drawn out,” he said.

“Resilience, persistence and obsession are needed to fight the good fight on this.”

That fight will likely be aided by much of the research contained within ‘The Plastic Waste Makers Index’ report, which has circulated globally over the past month.

That report has become something of a sensation in the past month, with Minderoo estimating global reach of 3.2 billion media impressions owing to coverage in The New York Times and South China Morning Post, and appearances by Mr Forrest on CNN and ABC in the US.

Those who have yet to read the report would likely be startled by the findings, not least of all that Australians are globally the second highest contributors to single-use plastic waste on a per capita basis.

Others may yet be impressed by the presentation, star power, and depth of research behind the report’s findings: a foreword by former US vice-president and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, alongside comprehensive lists clearly naming, among others, petrochemical giants ExxonMobil, Dow, and Sinopec as the world’s worst offenders for producing single-use plastic waste.

Mr Barnaba speaks with great pride of the work that went into the research, which includes contributions from academics at Oxford University and the Stockholm Environment Institute, as well as independent auditing courtesy of KPMG.

“As a team, we made certain this report was beyond the reproach of verification, independence and academic integrity,” he said.

“The use of public data, publishing all data sources and methodology, the profile and quality of the steering committee, having KPMG provide an independent audit of data, analysis and methodology were all design criteria to achieve a report that could stand the test of strong objective inquiry.

“A report like this doesn’t necessarily make you friends, and it isn’t meant to.

“It is meant to shine the light on an opaque industry that specialises in greenwashing, and which avoids accountability like the plague.”

If those figures helped endear the report to academics and other researchers, having Mr Barnaba’s name attached to the initiative has lent significant credibility to its aims within the private sector.

Of course, high-profile names are not confined to Sea the Future’s board.

At Fortescue Future Industries, for instance, the presence of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as chair has brought significant publicity to Mr Forrest’s advocacy for green energy projects.

Credibility

Currently a member of the Reserve Bank of Australia board, Mr Barnaba enjoys a decade-long tenure with Fortescue, and its founder.

Having earned prominence through his early career in corporate advisory, having worked alongside the likes of John Poynton as a founder of Azure Capital, Mr Barnaba’s transition to directorships came in the early 2010s when he was appointed chair of Western Power.

Following a two-year stint atop the state’s largest, public-owned utility, he bounced between the boards of Macquarie Group and a handful of other financial institutes while working his way up to become deputy chair of Fortescue, alongside Sharon Warburton, in 2017.

Mr Barnaba’s friendship with Mr Forrest has been well documented in that time, as too has the latter’s growing commitment to his philanthropic causes.

Nowadays, Mr Barnaba often fills in as chair of Fortescue, given Mr Forrest’s interests in Minderoo, which itself distributed more than $500 million this past year to charitable causes.

Plastics, however, appear to be something of growing concern for Western Australia’s wealthiest man, much as early childhood education has become his wife’s raison d’être with the Thrive by Five initiative.

Interviews over the years have stoked a folksy tale that starts in Mr Forrest’s early teens, when he developed an obsession with the ocean, and ends with him being awarded a PhD in marine science, aged 57.

His dissertation, numbering 284 pages, outlines the startling figures that underpin the Sea the Future initiative, including that more than $US2 trillion worth of plastic waste is produced every year, and that less than a 10th of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled.

“This is a cause that is very close to Andrew’s heart,” Mr Barnaba said.

“Keep in mind that he completed his PhD in marine ecology only a few years ago [which is] no mean feat for anybody, let alone a person as busy as Andrew, and he did it with his PhD being ranked in the top five per cent of [those orally examined by international experts in his field].

“His leadership on this cause has been steadfast, unflinching, and courageous [and that's] exactly what we have come to expect from Andrew.

"That is why it is so inspirational working with him."

Notable, too, is the report’s release coming as Mr Forrest’s full-throated embrace of green energy has led the famously tight-lipped billionaire to speak more openly about the resources industry’s record on climate change.

The first signs of an increasingly combative stance on the subject followed a 12-month road trip that took him from central Asia all the way to a hospital in Switzerland fighting a COVID-19 infection, when he took aim at Tesla chief executive Elon Musk for comments made in 2019 lambasting the concept of hydrogen-fuelled cars as “mind bogglingly stupid”.

Speaking as part of the Boyer Lectures series in January, Mr Forrest called into question Mr Musk’s green credentials by alluding to the water and energy intensive processes needed to manufacture lithium-ion batteries.

Similar blows have landed a lot closer to home in the past month, with claims Santos and Woodside, two of Australia’s largest players in the oil and gas sector, had “disgraceful” records on carbon emissions and that Santos’s Barossa project, located off the coast of Darwin, was “atrocious”.

And while Mr Musk remained relatively silent on Mr Forrest’s comments, Kevin Gallagher (Santos) and Meg O’Neill (Woodside), speaking at an APPEA-sponsored event in Perth earlier this month, pushed back against those comments and boasted of their own work in championing emissions reduction.

That the two felt a need to respond speaks volumes not just of Mr Forrest’s increasing assertiveness in this space, but the wealth and influence he has thrown behind his efforts.

In financial terms, spending through his and his wife, Nicola’s, Minderoo Foundation topped $88 million this past year, with more than a fifth of that going to the Flourishing Oceans initiative.

And while his work has reportedly not endeared the support of more notable names, such as ExxonMobil, which Minderoo estimates has contributed to 6 million tonnes worth of the world’s plastic waste, it has corralled a long list of notables to its side.

Mr Barnaba said players in the value chain such as Unilever, Reliance Industries and Saudi Aramco, had been amenable to Minderoo’s work thus far and had embraced the initiative’s message.

No doubt, the presence of former Dow chief executive Andrew Liveris on the Sea the Future board may have played some part in appealing to the petrochemical giants named in the report.

Mr Liveris, who also sits on the boards of Saudi Aramco, Novonix and Worley, has since stepped down as co-chair of the initiative.

Mr Barnaba is nevertheless thankful for his contributions, which, he believes, lent significant credibility to the initiative’s aims.

“Andrew Liveris has added enormous value as co-chair,” Mr Barnaba said.

“Keep in mind he was one of the most prominent US CEOs and arguably one of the most prominent Australian international CEOs in leading Dow.

“He has been enormously generous with his time and has had huge impact in this area.

“It would have been very easy for Andrew to not commit to improving plastics circularity, given his leadership of Dow, but he stood tall and has continued to provide support, and indeed, openly and publicly.

“That shows backbone and courage and for that I deeply respect him.”

Now sole chair of the initiative, Mr Barnaba will bear greater responsibility going forward for its aim of ‘greening’ the single-use plastics value chain.

And while he is not remunerated for his work, Mr Barnaba told Business News he took the job purely out of his own desire to leave the planet in a sustainable position for future generations.

“Without change we are headed for ruin; and much quicker than we think,” he said.

“I feel deeply passionate about plastics pollution and am in this for the long haul.”