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Javier E

Opinion | The Complicated Truth About Recycling - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ng-plastic-paper-aluminum.html

recycling analysis

shared by Javier E on 30 Nov 23 - No Cached
  • Recycling has been called a myth and beyond fixing as we’ve learned that recyclables are being shipped overseas and dumped (true), are leaching toxic chemicals and microplastics (true) and are being used by Big Oil to mislead consumers about the problems with plastics.
  • Recycling is real. I’ve seen it. For the past four years, I’ve traveled the world writing a book about the waste industry, visiting paper mills and e-waste shredders and bottle plants. I’ve visited all kinds of plastics recycling facilities, from gleaming new factories in Britain to smoky, flake-filled shredding operations in India
  • While I’ve seen how recycling has become inseparable from corporate greenwashing, we shouldn’t be so quick to cast it aside. In the short term, at least, it might be the best option we have against our growing waste crisis.
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  • One of the most fundamental problems with recycling is that we don’t really know how much of it actually happens because of an opaque global system that too often relies on measuring the material that arrives at the front door of the facility rather than what comes out
  • What we do know is that with plastics, at least, the amount being recycled is much less than most of us assumed.
  • According to the Environmental Protection Agency, two of the most commonly used plastics in America — PET (used in soda bottles) and HDPE (used in milk jugs, among other things) — are “widely recycled,” but the rate is really only about 30 percent
  • Other plastics, like soft wraps and films, sometimes called No. 4 plastics, are not widely accepted in curbside collections.
  • The E.P.A. estimates that just 2.7 percent of polypropylene — the hard plastic known as No. 5, used to make furniture and cleaning bottles — was reprocessed in 2018
  • Crunch the sums, and only around 10 percent of plastics in the United States is recycle
  • the landfill-happy United States is far worse at recycling than other major economies. According to the E.P.A., America’s national recycling rate, just 32 percent, is lower than Britain’s 44 percent, Germany’s 48 percent and South Korea’s 58 percent.
  • the scientific research over decades has repeatedly found that in almost all cases, recycling our waste materials has significant environmental benefits
  • We need clearer labeling of what is and is not actually recyclable and transparency around true recycling rates
  • Recycling steel, for example, saves 72 percent of the energy of producing new steel; it also cuts water use by 40 percent
  • Recycling a ton of aluminum requires only about 5 percent of the energy and saves almost nine tons of bauxite from being hauled from mines
  • Even anti-plastics campaigners agree that recycling plastics, like PET, is better for the climate than burning them — a likely outcome if recycling efforts were to be abandoned.
  • The economic perks are significant, too. Recycling creates as many as 50 jobs for every one created by sending waste to landfills; the E.P.A. estimates that recycling and reuse accounted for 681,000 jobs in the United States alone.
  • That’s even more true in the developing world, where waste pickers rely on recycling for income.
  • before we abandon recycling, we should first try to fix it
  • Companies should be phasing out products that can’t be recycled and designing more products that are easier to recycle and reuse rather than leaving sustainability to their marketing departments.
  • Lawmakers can help by passing new laws, as cities like Seattle and San Francisco have done, to help increase recycling rates and drive investment into the sector.
  • Governments can also ban or restrict many problematic plastics to reduce the amount of needless plastics in our everyday lives, for instance in food packaging
  • According to a 2015 analysis by scientists at the University of Southampton in England, recycling a majority of commonly tossed-out waste materials resulted in a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
  • Greater safety regulations are needed to reduce toxic chemical contents and microplastic pollution caused by the recycling process.
  • consumers can do their bit by buying recycled products (and buying less and reusing more).
  • Yes, recycling is broken, but abandon it too soon, and we risk going back to the system of decades past, in which we dumped and burned our garbage without care, in our relentless quest for more. Do that, and like the recycling symbol itself, we really will be going in circles.
anonymous

World's first plastic-free supermarket aisle debuts - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

industrialization environment europe netherlands policy world

shared by anonymous on 28 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • The world's first plastic-free supermarket aisle was unveiled in Amsterdam today as pressure to curb the world's plastic binge and its devastating impact on the planet continues to grow. With nearly 700 plastic-free goods to select from at one of the branches of Ekoplaza, a Dutch supermarket chain, the aisle gives shoppers the opportunity to buy their groceries in "new compostable bio-materials as well as traditional materials" such as glass, metal and cardboard.
  • Sian Sutherland, co-founder of the environmental campaign group A Plastic Planet, which advocates for a plastic-free aisle in every supermarket, says the aisle is "a symbol of what the future of food retailing will be" and hopes it has a knock-on effect.
  • According to a study published in the journal Science Advances, by 2015 humans had manufactured 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic, and of that, 6.3 billion metric tons had become plastic waste. Of that waste, only 9% was recycled and 79% ended up in landfills or the natural environment.
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  • In August, Kenya introduced the world's toughest law aimed at reducing plastic pollution, where Kenyans who produce, sell or even use plastic bags risk up to four years or $40,000 fines. British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would eradicate avoidable plastic waste by 2042.Richard Eckersley, a former Manchester United footballer, says he recently set up the UK's first zero waste shop, Earth.Food.Love, with his wife in Totnes, southwest England. He says "plastic is an amazing material," the problem is how we use it.
johnsonel7

The missing 99%: why can't we find the vast majority of ocean plastic? | US news | The ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ocean-plastic-we-cant-see

crisis ocean plastic

shared by johnsonel7 on 02 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Every year, 8m tons of plastic enters the ocean. Images of common household waste swirling in vast garbage patches in the open sea, or tangled up with whales and seabirds, have turned plastic pollution into one of the most popular environmental issues in the world
  • What we commonly see accumulating at the sea surface is “less than the tip of the iceberg, maybe a half of 1% of the total,” says Erik Van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
  • Her team found that at a depth of 200m, there were nearly 15 bits of plastic in every liter of water, similar to the amount found at the surface of the so-called garbage patches. The remote samplers were still finding plastic at their maximum depth of 1km.
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  • How plastic descends to the deep ocean is, for the most part, a mystery. Because of its low density, most commercial plastic floats. It needs help to get below the surface. Plastic can become attached to ocean detritus that sinks, or fragment under the sun or waves, or find its way into something’s stomach.
  • The huge amounts of plastic on the ocean surface were what originally sparked public and scientific interest in the plastic problem. In this way, they acted like a buoy, pointing the way to something much larger beneath the surface. The deep ocean is, as Choy puts it, “the world’s largest habitat”. We’re just beginning the accounting of how much of our plastic has ended up there.
tsainten

Americans May Add Five Times More Plastic to the Oceans Than Thought - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...plastic-pollution-oceans.html

US climate crisis

shared by tsainten on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The United States contribution to coastal plastic pollution worldwide is significantly larger than previously thought, possibly by as much as five times, according to a study published Friday.
  • there’s no real standard for being able to provide good quality data on collection and disposal of waste in general,”
  • The United States, which does not have sufficient infrastructure to handle its recycling demands at home, exports about half of its recyclable waste. Of the total exported, about 88 percent ends up in countries considered to have inadequate waste management.
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  • “When you consider how much of our plastic waste isn’t actually recyclable because it is low-value, contaminated or difficult to process, it’s not surprising that a lot of it ends up polluting the environment,”
  • Americans are using more plastic than ever and the current study included pollution generated by United States exports of plastic waste, while the earlier one did not.
  • researchers had evaluated waste-disposal practices in countries around the world and used their “best professional judgment” to determine the lowest and highest amounts of plastic waste likely to escape into the environment. They settled on a range of 25 percent to 75 percent.
  • Of the plastics that go into the United States recycling system, about 9 percent of the country’s total plastic waste, there is no guarantee that they’ll be remade into new consumer goods. New plastic is so inexpensive to manufacture that only certain expensive, high-grade plastics are profitable to recycle within the United States, which is why roughly half of the country’s plastic waste was shipped abroad in 2016, the most recent year for which data is available.
  • China and many countries in Southeast Asia have stopped accepting plastic waste imports. And lower oil prices have further reduced the market for recycled plastic.
Javier E

French Food Giant Danone Sued Over Plastic Use Under Landmark Law - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-sued-plastic-use-france.html

law plastic sustainability environment response legal obligation suit france corporation

shared by Javier E on 09 Jan 23 - No Cached
  • Throughout their life cycle, plastics, which are manufactured from fossil fuels, release air pollutants, harm human health and kill marine life. In 2015, they were responsible for 4.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, one recent study found, more than all of the world’s airplanes combined.
  • Figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that, over the past seven decades, plastics production has soared from two million metric tons (there are about 2,200 pounds per metric ton) to more than 400 million — and is expected to almost triple by 2060.
  • Danone alone used more than 750,000 metric tons of plastic — about 74 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower — in water bottles a, yogurt containers and other packaging in 2021, according to its 2021 financial report.
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  • “We’re not going to recycle our way out of this,” Mr. Weiss of ClientEarth said.
  • Environmental groups also say that recycling has not proved effective at the scale necessary: Only 9 percent of all plastics ever made have been recycled, according to the United Nations, with most of the rest ending up in landfills and dumps.
  • The company said that it reduced its plastic consumption by 12 percent from 2018 to 2021, and that it has committed to use only reusable, recyclable or compostable plastic packaging by 2025. But Danone is not on track to reach that target, according to a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which set up a voluntary program with the United Nations for big companies to address plastic pollution.
  • To sue Danone, the environmental groups have relied on the so-called duty of vigilance law, a groundbreaking piece of legislation that France passed in 2017. It requires large companies to take effective measures to identify and prevent human rights violations and environmental damages throughout their chain of activity.
  • The French duty of vigilance law, the first of its kind in Europe, has since inspired similar legislation in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as a proposed European Union directive.
  • There is nothing like a duty of vigilance law in the United States. The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which would require plastic producers to finance waste and recycling programs, and ban single-use plastic bags and the exporting of plastic waste to developing countries, is currently in committee.
  • “It’s often about streamlining existing practices,” said Pauline Barraud de Lagerie, a sociologist at University Paris Dauphine who published a book on corporate responsibility. She added that by suing companies, “N.G.O.s are trying to somehow bring back an obligation of result.”So far, around 15 legal cases based on the French law have been reported. Half of them have gone to court and are still awaiting judgment, which could take years.
  • The lawsuit is part of a wider trend of climate litigation that has gained momentum in recent years, expanding the climate fight beyond traditional demonstrations and civil disobedience initiatives.
  • The number of climate change lawsuits globally has more than doubled from 2017 to 2022, from about 900 to more than 2,000 ongoing or concluded cases, according to data from the Grantham Research Institute and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
brookegoodman

From rubbish to rice: the cafe that gives food in exchange for plastic | Cities | The G... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-food-in-exchange-for-plastic

culture crisis

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • On bad days, when his employer made some excuse for not paying him his paltry daily wage, Ram Yadav’s main meal used to be dry chapatis, with salt and raw onion for flavour. Sometimes he just went hungry. For a ragpicker like him, one of the thousands of Indians who make a living bringing in plastic waste for recycling, eating in a cafe or restaurant was the stuff of fairytales.
  • Opened in October by the Ambikapur municipal corporation, the cafe is designed both to encourage awareness about the need to collect and remove plastic waste and to give a meal to anyone – ragpicker, student or civic-minded individual – who does so. The tagline? “More the waste, better the taste.”
  • Most Indian cities are struggling with huge amounts of unsegregated waste. There are few effective waste-management systems, and according to the country’s environment ministry the country generates approximately 25,000 tonnes of plastic waste every day – only about 14,000 tonnes of which are collected.
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  • Ambikapur is one of the cities at the front of the charge. It boasts 100% door-to-door waste collection and segregation, and was the second-cleanest in government rankings this year. It also generates about 1.2 million rupees (13,000 pounds sterling) a month selling plastic and recycled paper to private companies. The collected plastic from the Garbage Cafe will be used to construct roads – in 2015, the Ambikapur authorities built an entire road out of plastic. “It has lasted really well, even during the monsoon rains,” said Tirkey.
  • It has now reached the capital, New Delhi, where municipal authorities plan to open several Garbage Cafes along the lines of the one in Ambikapur. About 70% of the city’s plastic waste is single use, and most of it ends up in landfills or clogging drains. It is a particular menace for hungry cows who end up rummaging through garbage bins and eating plastic. Last year, a vet in Delhi removed 70kg of plastic from a cow’s stomach.
  • Tirkey stresses the importance of that loop. “What’s important is that our meals are nutritious and tasty. We didn’t want to give rubbish.”
Javier E

Should America Bag the Plastic Bag? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...erica-bag-the-plastic-bag.html

recycling plastic environment

shared by Javier E on 19 May 13 - No Cached
  • Many countries and a handful of American cities have more or less done away with this supposed convenience item, by discouraging its use through plastic-bag taxes at checkout counters or outright bans. Walk down the streets of Dublin or Seattle or San Francisco and there is barely a bag in sight. Life continues.
  • But in much of America we seem more addicted than ever. On a recent shopping trip to Target in Chicago for some dorm supplies while visiting my son, I emerged with what seemed to be more bags than socks or rolls of toilet paper (only a slight exaggeration). At my local supermarket, plastic bags are applied layer upon layer around purchases, like Russian nesting dolls.
  • “Plastic shopping bags are an enormous problem for New York City,” said Ron Gonen, the deputy commissioner of sanitation for recycling and waste reduction, noting that the city pays $10 million annually to send 100,000 tons of plastic bags that are tossed in the general trash to landfills
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  • experience shows that even environmentally conscious people need prodding and incentives to change their behavior permanently.
  • All across the country, plastic bags are the bane of recycling programs. When carelessly placed into recycling bins for general plastic — which they often are — the bags jam and damage expensive sorting machines, which cost huge amounts to repair.
  • most experts believe it will take a stiff stick to break a habit as ingrained as this one is in the United States. (In many European countries, like France and Italy, the plastic bag thing never fully caught on.)
  • Where they exist, bans and charges or taxes (when set high enough) have been extremely successful and often raise revenue for other environmental projects. Unfortunately, these tactics are deeply unpopular in most of the nation.
  • an economist at University College, Dublin, who has studied the effects of Ireland’s 10-year-old bag tax — the first in the world — is skeptical: “As regards the plastic bag issue, whatever is done has to be mandatory,” he said. “The New York model is designed to fail.”
anniina03

Single-use plastic: China to ban bags and other items - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-china-51171491

politics culture history economics

shared by anniina03 on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • China, one of the world's biggest users of plastic, has unveiled a major plan to reduce single-use plastics across the country. Non-degradable bags will be banned in major cities by the end of 2020 and in all cities and towns by 2022.
  • In 2017 alone, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste. But national figures for recycling are not available.
  • The National Development and Reform Commission on Sunday issued the new policy, which will be implemented over the next five years.
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  • The production and sale of plastic bags that are less than 0.025mm thick will also be banned. The restaurant industry must reduce the use of single-use plastic items by 30%. Hotels have been told that they must not offer free single-use plastic items by 2025.
  • Thailand announced earlier this year that single-use plastic bags would be banned in major stores, with a complete ban across the entire country in 2021.
  • Indonesia's capital Jakarta also is banning single-use plastic bags in department stores, supermarkets and traditional markets by June 2020.
  • The Indonesian island of Bali has also banned single-use plastic.
Javier E

Pakistan moves to ban single-use plastic bags - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html

plastic ban recycling pakistan pollution

shared by Javier E on 14 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • Each time someone in Pakistan runs out to the store for a carton of milk, a half-pound of loose sugar or an after-school snack, it comes in a flimsy plastic bag that usually gets thrown away
  • If all those bags are added up, officials estimate, they total 55 billion a year. Easily torn and too weak to use again, they end up clogging city drains and sewers, piled up in vacant lots and parks, ingested by grazing goats and dogs foraging for food, and polluting canals and streams.
  • all single-use polyethylene bags will be banned in the capital region of about 1.5 million people. Anyone who uses, sells or manufactures them will face a fine.
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  • The ban is the latest project in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s green initiative, which began last year with a campaign to plant 10 billion trees to fight deforestation.
  • Today, more than 40 countries have either banned or taxed single-use plastic bags
  • “The Kenyans told us a sudden ban is easier to enforce than trying to collect a tax or fee, because there is no incentive to bribe,”
  • The fines in Pakistan will also be steep — $31 for using a single bag, $63 for selling one and up to $31,000 for manufacturing them. The national per capita income is $1,200 per year
  • Shoppers are not likely to be aggressively pursued, but companies that make and supply the bags have been warned that they will be inspected to enforce the ban.
  • To encourage customers to obey the law, officials have introduced colorful cloth tote bags, which they have distributed at weekend markets
  • “We cannot bring change through force,” one federal capital commissioner posted on social media. “Our slight change in habits will do miracles for future generations.”
  • “This is a good step and I support it. People don’t realize how dangerous these bags are for our health,” said Ali Muhammad, 27, who runs a small grocery store
  • “I’m already losing money because no one wants to buy plastic now,” said Qasim Khan, 26, a scrap dealer who usually buys bulk plastic for pennies a pound and sells it for a little more. “But I’m happy this new law will get rid of all the filth in the gutters. That will be good for everyone.
Javier E

Costa Rica Set To Become The Worlds First Plastic-Free And Carbon-Free Country By 2021 - 0 views

www.intelligentliving.co/-rica-plastic-carbon-free-2021

sustainability environment politics history Costa Rica

shared by Javier E on 27 May 19 - No Cached
  • Costa Rica is in the top 5 of countries that are leading the way into renewable resources. It might seem small but it has a really big environmental impact. Since 2014 the country’s energy has been coming from 99% renewable sources, and it has been running on 100% renewable energy for over two months twice in the last two years. Then, since June 2017 they have been set on eradicating single-use plastic by 2021. The first be the first country in the world to do this. And most recently, in the summer of 2018, the country announced its aims to become completely carbon-neutral by the year 2021 – The first completely carbon-free country in the whole world.
  • Earlier this year, Carlos Alvarado Quesada was elected as Costa Rica’s new president. His first act in the office was to take a giant leap forward into reducing carbonization. During his inauguration as a world leader he announced his initiative to ban fossil fuels and become the world’s first decarbonized society.
  • The plastic dilemma came next. So, last year on World Environment Day the country announced its new national plan to eradicate all single-use plastics by 2021. From that day on, plastic has to be replaced by alternatives that are 100% recyclable or biodegradable and not petroleum-based.
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  • Since the 1980s, the government recognized that nature is Costa Rica’s strongest asset and has therefore made every effort to protect it: including, among other things, zoo closures, reforestation, and establishing protected areas (25% of the total surface area of the country). “With its rich biodiversity, Costa Rica has also demonstrated far-sighted environmental leadership by pursuing reforestation, designating a third of the country protected natural reserves, and deriving almost all of its electricity from clean hydro power.” – Joseph Stiglitz
  • “Decarbonization is the great task of our generation and Costa Rica must be one of the first countries in the world to accomplish it, if not the first.”
  • it is also conscious of the well-being of its citizens. It is part of the Wellbeing Economies Alliance—a coalition that includes Scotland, New Zealand, and Slovenia—which instead of emphasizing countries’ GDP, “seeks to ensure that public policy advances citizens’ wellbeing in the broadest sense, by promoting democracy, sustainability, and inclusive growth,” according to a recent column by economist Joseph Stiglitz.
anonymous

Plastic particles found in bottled water - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...science-environment-43388870

research human development water necessity crisis

shared by anonymous on 23 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • Tests on major brands of bottled water have found that nearly all of them contained tiny particles of plastic.
  • Research led by journalism organisation Orb Media discovered an average of 10 plastic particles per litre, each larger than the width of a human hair.
  • "It's not about pointing fingers at particular brands; it's really showing that this is everywhere, that plastic has become such a pervasive material in our society, and it’s pervading water - all of these products that we consume at a very basic level."
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  • Currently, there is no evidence that ingesting very small pieces of plastic (microplastics) can cause harm, but understanding the potential implications is an active area of science.
  • To eliminate any risk of contamination, purchases in shops and deliveries to courier companies were recorded on video. Some packs in the US were ordered over the internet.
  • Since the study has not been through the usual process of peer review and publication in a scientific journal, the BBC has asked experts in the field to comment.
anonymous

Plastic pollution: Images of a global problem - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...science-environment-44215881

pollution global problem crisis

shared by anonymous on 30 May 18 - No Cached
  • In its June issue, National Geographic magazine has published a selection of startling photos highlighting the vast amounts of discarded plastic choking the world's oceans, shorelines and rivers.
  • Wildlife, particularly marine animals, are at risk when they become entangled in plastic waste, or ingest it.
  • Plastic bottles choke the Cibeles fountain, in central Madrid. An art collective called Luzinterruptus filled this and two other Madrid fountains with 60,000 discarded bottles as a way of calling attention to the environmental impact of disposable plastics.
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  • To ride currents, seahorses clutch drifting seagrass or other natural debris. In the polluted waters off the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, this seahorse has latched onto a plastic cotton bud. Photographer Justin Hofman said it was "a photo I wish didn't exist".
magnanma

The History of Water Bottles - 0 views

healthfully.com/ory-water-bottles-5242430.html

history

shared by magnanma on 25 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • The Romans built the aqueducts at the turn of the first millennium to deliver water to the cities, and vases or animal skins were used to transport water in smaller quantites. Other containers were made from clay or woven materials.
  • At first, these companies sold their water in glass bottles. Although a certain form of plastic was invented by Leonardo DaVinci during the Renaissance, plastic did not become widely used commercially for water until the mid-20th century. This was due to the high cost of manufacturing the material. Once high-density polyethylene was introduced, plastic become the preferred choice starting in the late 1960s.
  • Nearly 25 percent of bottled water sold in the United States originated from a ground water source, according to a study conducted from 2004 to 2008 by the National Resources Defense Council. The study concluded, "there is no assurance that just because water comes out of a bottle, it is any cleaner or safer than water from the tap."
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  • Close to 50 billion bottles of water are consumed in the United States each year, with close to 200 billion in the world, according to a May 2008 article in The New York Times.
  • Bottle shapes and sizes evolved along with this trend, and different types of materials were used. Water is now sold and carried in jugs, cans, multi-gallon-sized plastic and even aluminum bottles.
anniina03

Nestle adds sausages to its plant-based menu - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

culture economics history

shared by anniina03 on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Nestlé is adding vegan sausages to its lineup of imitation meat products, as the world's largest food company moves to secure its position in the booming market for plant-based foods.The Swiss company said Friday that it will sell soy-based bratwurst and chorizo-style sausages in 11 European markets under its Garden Gourmet brand starting in March.
  • American shoppers will be able to purchase pea protein-based Sweet Earth sausages in April that come in habanero cheddar, Asian ginger scallion and chicken apple flavors. Nestlé (NSRGY) will also offer a range of plant-based alternatives to deli meats in the United States.The products are the latest additions to Nestle's growing range of meat substitutes, which already includes burgers and schnitzel.
  • Nestle was named one of the world's worst corporate plastic polluters by lobby group Break Free From Plastic last year. On Thursday, the company said it was planning to spend over $2 billion to create a market for recycled plastics for food packaging.
Javier E

Researchers Propose Earth's 'Anthropocene' Age of Humans Began With Fallout and Plastic... - 0 views

dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/...egan-with-fallout-and-plastics

anthropocene geology human effects

shared by Javier E on 18 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • we’ve left the Holocene behind — that’s the geological epoch since the end of the last ice age — and entered “a post-Holocene…geological age of our own making,” now best known as the Anthropocene.
  • the Anthropocene Working Group (because of my early writings, I’m a lay member), has moved substantially from asking whether such a transition has occurred to deciding when.
  • 1950 as the starting point, indicated by a variety of markers, including the global spread of carbon isotopes from nuclear weapon detonations starting in 1945 and the mass production and disposal of plastics.
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  • There’s little predictability in how things will play out after this anthropogenic jolt, especially in the living world. [More on the “great acceleration” behind the jolt is here.]
  • That’s a very different sensation than, say, mourning the end of nature. It’s more a celebration, in a way — a deeper acceptance of our place on the planet, with all of our synthetic trappings, and our faults, as fundamentally natural.
  • on whether it’s possible to have a “good Anthropocene.” Kolbert’s Twitter post last spring nicely captured their view:
  • Taking full ownership of the Anthropocene won’t be easy. The necessary feeling is a queasy mix of excitement and unease. I’ve compared it to waking up in the first car on the first run of a new roller coaster that hasn’t been examined fully by engineers.
  • Once you begin to get the many feedbacks bouncing off each other and bouncing off the Earth system, it’s going to be very hard to follow what’s going to happen, particularly biologically…. One could not imagine, at the very end of the Cretaceous, the beginning of the Tertiary, that the mammals — these itty-bitty little squeaky furry things, would take over – effectively taking the position that the dinosaurs held for so long. All we can say is that, for sure, it will be different. We’re going down a different trouser leg of history.
  • in the broadest sense we have to embrace the characteristics, good and bad, that make humans such a rare thing — a species that has become a planet-scale force.
  • “The way I would like to see it is in, say, 100 years in the future the London Geological Society will look back and consider this period…a transition from the lesser Anthropocene to the greater Anthropocene.”
  • Fully integrating this awareness into our personal choices and societal norms and policies will take time. It is “the great work,” as Thomas Berry put it.
  • Technology alone will not do the trick. Another keystone to better meshing humanity’s infinite aspirations with life on a finite planet will be slowly shifting value systems from the foundation up
  • Edward O. Wilson’s “Biophilia” was a powerful look outward at the characteristics of the natural world that we inherently cherish.
  • Now we need a dose of what I’ve taken to calling anthropophilia, as well.
  • We have to accept ourselves, flaws and all, in order to move beyond what has been something of an unconscious, species-scale pubescent growth spurt, enabled by fossil fuels in place of testosterone.
  • We’re stuck with “The World With Us.” It’s time to grasp that uncomfortable, but ultimately hopeful, idea.
Javier E

The story of a £4 Boohoo dress: cheap clothes at a high cost | Business | The... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ap-fast-fashion-workers-planet

cost clothing environment sustainability habits crisis

shared by Javier E on 24 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • the £5 dress epitomises a fast fashion industry that pumps hundreds of new collections on to the market in short time at pocket money prices, with social media celebrity endorsement to boost high consumer demand. On average, such dresses and other products are discarded by consumers after five weeks.
  • But behind the price tag there is an environmental and social cost not contained on the label of such products. “The hidden price tag is the cost people in the supply chain and the environment itself pays,” said Sass Brown, a lecturer at the Manchester Fashion Institute. “The price is just too good to be true.
  • nvironmental degradation, the textile industry creates 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 a year, more than international aviation and shipping combined, consumes lake-sized volumes of water, and creates chemical and plastic pollution – as much as 35% of microplastics found in the ocean come from synthetic clothing.
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  • Socially, the booming fast fashion industry is often built on low wages paid to women working in factories abroad but also increasingly in the UK
  • In the UK, we buy more clothes per person than any other country in Europe – five times what we bought in the 1980s, which creates 1.3m tonnes of waste each year, some 350,000 tonnes of which is dumped in landfill or incinerated.
  • Yet despite the overwhelming evidence gathered by the environmental audit committee (EAC), ministers this week rejected every recommendation for tackling abuses across the fashion industry, including a ban on incinerating or landfilling stock that can be recycled and a 1p charge on each garment to raise £35m a year for better clothing collection and sorting, a move supported by many in the industry.
  • But the response of the government was met with anger by many within the industry, where ethical fashion firms come up against others who produce at lower costs on the back of exploitative wage structures and environmentally damaging production models
  • “It is a vastly damaging industry that has been spiralling unchecked for far too long. The Earth and the people on it are exploited and damaged at every single step of the chain, and this culminates with unimaginable mountains of unused excess stock or badly made broken waste clothing with nowhere to go other than landfill or incineration.”
  • But others are less sure that voluntary measures will tackle what they say is a systemic power imbalance between brands and manufacturers, which leads to worker exploitation, or address the enormous environmental footprint of their trade.
  • “The fundamental problem with much of fast fashion is that its social and environmental costs are not taken into account. The environmental costs of materials and fabric are mostly offshored. The production that takes place in the UK often only pays half the legal minimum wage.
  • “So who is accountable for water and chemical pollution abroad, precarious work and employment, the undercutting of compliant manufacturers, the pollution from delivery and lack of recycling at home? Brands might find it difficult to make £5 fast fashion dresses and be socially and environmentally sustainable.
  • Ways to take the environmental heat out of your fashion habit
  • Commit to wearing every piece 30 times. If we doubled the amount of time we kept clothes for, we would cut our fashion emissions by 44%.
  • Get smart about fibres. Cheap cotton and synthetics come with huge environmental footprints. Cotton uses unsustainable amounts of water and pesticide. Go for hemp blended with organic cotton and silk and lyocel/modal.
  • Treat cotton as a luxury fibre. Buy products certified as organic to be free of the pesticide burden and plan to keep them for years.
  • Wash clothes less often. The average laundry cycle releases hundreds of thousands of tiny fragments of plastic from synthetic fibres into waterways. Put jeans in the freezer and remove dirt when frozen. Fleeces have been shown to release the most plastic fibres
  • Delete shopping apps from your phone and swear off insta-shopping for fashion. Go shopping for clothes in a shop.
  • f dry cleaning is a must, use an eco-friendly process: conventional dry cleaning harms the soil, air and wate
Javier E

'We can't go back to normal': how will coronavirus change the world? | World news | The... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ge-from-the-coronavirus-crisis

history culture politics

shared by Javier E on 17 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Every day brings news of developments that, as recently as February, would have felt impossible – the work of years, not mere days.
  • disasters and emergencies do not just throw light on the world as it is. They also rip open the fabric of normality. Through the hole that opens up, we glimpse possibilities of other worlds
  • he pessimistic view is that a crisis makes bad things worse.
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  • “In a rational world, we would be ramping up production of basic essential supplies – test kits, masks, respirators – not only for our own use, but for poorer countries, too. Because it’s all one battle. But it’s not necessarily a rational world. So there could be a lot of demonisation and calls for isolation. Which will mean more deaths and more suffering worldwide.”
  • prior to 9/11, the US government had been in the process of developing serious regulations designed to give web users real choice about how their personal information was and wasn’t used. “In the course of a few days,” Zuboff says, “the concern shifted from ‘How do we regulate these companies that are violating privacy norms and rights’ to ‘How do we nurture and protect these companies so they can collect data for us?’”
  • “People have a hard time remembering privacy rights when they’re trying to deal with something like a pandemic,” says Vasuki Shastry, a Chatham House fellow who studies the interplay of technology and democracy. “Once a system gets scaled up, it can be very difficult to scale it back down. And then maybe it takes on other uses.”
  • The US Department of Justice has, since the outbreak began, filed a request with Congress for a new rule that would allow judges to suspend courtroom proceedings in emergencies, creating the possibility of people being jailed without ever being able to formally object.
  • In a 2008 report on the legal aspects of pandemic response, prompted by the increase in pandemic flu outbreaks, a team of historians and medical ethicists assembled by the American Civil Liberties Union bemoaned a common tendency – resurgent, in their view, since 9/11 – for government to address public health problems using mindsets more appropriate to tracking down criminals.
  • here’s another school of thought that looks at crisis and sees glimmers of possibility
  • “Ideas that used to be seen as leftwing seem more reasonable to more people. There’s room for change that there wasn’t beforehand. It’s an opening.”
  • Covid-19 has revealed the political status quo to be broken. Long before anyone had heard of the new coronavirus, people died of diseases we knew how to prevent and treat. People lived precarious lives in societies awash with wealth. Experts told us about catastrophic threats on the horizon, including pandemics, and we did next to nothing to prepare for them
  • At the same time, the drastic measures governments have taken in recent weeks testify to just how much power the state does have – the extent of what government can accomplish (and quickly!) when it realises it must act boldly or risk being seen as fundamentally illegitimate. As Pankaj Mishra recently wrote: “It has taken a disaster for the state to assume its original responsibility to protect citizens.”
  • For years, in mainstream politics the conventional line – on everything from healthcare to basic living expenses such as housing – has been that even if the world has its problems, expansive government intervention is not a feasible solution
  • Instead, we have been told that what works best are “marketplace” solutions, which give large roles to corporations motivated not by outdated notions like “the public good” but by a desire to make a profit
  • From this perspective, the task today is not to fight the virus in order to return to business as usual, because business as usual was already a disaster. The goal, instead, is to fight the virus – and in doing so transform business as usual into something more humane and secure.
  • disasters opened up human reserves of improvisation, solidarity and resolve, pockets of purpose and joy, even in the midst of loss and pain
  • In her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, the Canadian writer Naomi Klein laid out a dark account of crisis politics. In Klein’s view, there is always Disaster 1 – the earthquake, the storm, the military conflict, the economic slump – and Disaster 2 – the bad things that people with power subsequently get up to, such as ramming through extreme economic reforms or gobbling up post-crisis opportunities for self-enrichment, while the rest of us are too dazed to notice
  • Both address crisis not in terms of what inevitably – or “naturally” – happens as they unfold, but in terms of choices that people make along the way. And both were well-timed to contribute to the political conversations taking shape in the rubble of the financial crash
  • We may not quite all be “in it together” – as always, the poor are hit worse – but there is more truth to the idea than there ever was in the wake of 2008.
  • In this, the optimists believe, there is hope that we might begin to see the world differently.
  • Maybe we can view our problems as shared, and society as more than just a mass of individuals competing against each other for wealth and standing. Maybe, in short, we can understand that the logic of the market should not dominate as many spheres of human existence as we currently allow it to.
  • in the years since publishing The Shock Doctrine, Klein has made climate change her central focus, framing it as the paradigmatic emergency that must be wrenched from the clutches of fossil-fuel profiteers and their enablers in government.
  • the two problems have suggestive similarities. Both will require unusual levels of global cooperation. Both demand changes in behaviour today in the name of reducing suffering tomorrow. Both problems were long predicted with great certainty by scientists, and have been neglected by governments unable to see beyond the next fiscal quarter’s growth statistics
  • both will require governments to take drastic action and banish the logic of the marketplace from certain realms of human activity, while simultaneously embracing public investment.
  • “What is possible politically is fundamentally different when lots of people get into emergency mode – when they fundamentally accept that there’s danger, and that if we want to be safe we need to do everything we can. And it’s been interesting to see that theory validated by the response to the coronavirus
  • Now the challenge is to keep emergency mode activated about climate, where the dangers are orders of magnitude greater. We can’t think we’re going to go ‘back to normal’, because things weren’t normal.”
  • Most people do not feel they or their loved ones could die from the climate crisis this month, and so emergency mode is harder to activate and sustain
  • Alongside these hopeful signs, a far less heartening story is unfolding, which fits Klein’s “shock doctrine” framework. Disaster 1: Covid-19. Disaster 2: the dismantling of even the meagre existing rules designed to protect the environment
  • advocacy groups funded by the plastics industry have launched a public relations blitz on behalf of single-use plastic bags, spreading the unproven claim that the virus is less likely to stick to plastic than to the cloth fabric of reusable bags.
  • On 26 March, following lobbying from the energy industry, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that, in recognition of the pandemic’s effects on the workforce, it will not punish violations of pollution regulations so long as companies can link those violations to the pandemic. China’s environmental ministry has started waiving inspections that assess the environmental impact of industrial facilitie
  • “It’s good that we’re entering emergency mode about the pandemic,” she said. “But unless we also do it for climate … ” She didn’t finish the sentence.
  • We need to learn to be scared together, to agree on what we’re terrified about.” Only then, she said, would governments be forced to act.
  • The historian Philip Mirowski, author of Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown, warns against complacency. “The left thought it was so obvious to everyone that the crisis revealed the utter bankruptcy of a certain way of looking at the economy,” he told me. “And it wasn’t obvious to everyone, and the left lost.”
  • How do we prevent the world from going back to a version of the way it was before Covid-19, with the virus vanquished but all of the old ongoing disasters still unfolding?
  • “The political outcome of the epidemic,” said Mike Davis, “will, like all political outcomes, be decided by struggle, by battles over interpretation, by pointing out what causes problems and what solves them. And we need to get that analysis out in the world any way we can.”
  • the past few weeks have exposed the fact that the biggest things can always change, at any minute. This simple truth, both destabilising and liberating, is easy to forget. We’re not watching a movie: we’re writing one, together, until the end
abbykleman

Trillions of Plastic Bits, Swept Up by Current, Are Littering Arctic Waters - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...arctic-plastics-pollution.html

shared by abbykleman on 20 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 20 Apr 17
     
    The world's oceans are littered with trillions of pieces of plastic - bottles, bags, toys, fishing nets and more, mostly in tiny particles - and now this seaborne junk is making its way into the Arctic.
Javier E

Recycling Is in Crisis. Could These Innovations Be the Answer? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...recycling-plastic-trash.html

recycling innovations policy

shared by Javier E on 13 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • “It’s our waste, and it’s our responsibility,”
  • leaders in Australia made bold moves toward eventually banning the export of any recyclable waste in a bid to increase onshore processing of the materials.
  • But Australia’s commitment also involves developing new approaches to recycling that, if scaled up, might one day change where your takeout containers and coffee cups end up.
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  • Policy experts say that reducing initial consumption of materials is essential
  • Build small, portable recycling factories.
  • researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney are exploring the possibility of “microfactories”: small, modular machines that can be used together in various combinations to create new materials.
  • Factories that reprocess materials like plastic, glass and paper are usually large, expensive operations that produce one or a few recycled products.
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