Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged recycling

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
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.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • 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.
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.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • 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.
mattrenz16

10 New Year's resolutions that help the planet - CNN - 0 views

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

shared by mattrenz16 on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • When setting your New Year's resolutions, try making those that help our planet and better the environment.
  • Did you know that recycling just one aluminum can saves enough energy to power a television for three hours?
  • he current amount of energy saved in one year just from recycling aluminum cans in the United States could light the entire city of Denver for more than 10 years, according to the Action Recycling Center in Colorado.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • In fact, about 75% of all aluminum ever produced in the US is still in use today.
  • Action Recycling points out that the amount of aluminum Americans throw away every three months could rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
  • Try using a reusable bottle instead, and only use the single-use bottles in emergencies, or when you do not have access to reusable bottle.
  • When you go to a restaurant, unless you actually need it, tell them you don't want a straw.
  • When you answer a trivia question on the Free the Ocean website, the company will remove a piece of plastic from the ocean.
  • Albeit a little more expensive initially, swapping out old bulbs saves you money in the long run.
  • You can cut down on paper waste by asking for email receipts.
  • You can create a giant garden bed full of fruits and vegetables in your backyard, or have just a few small potted plants inside your home.
  • Some gift wrap is recyclable when it doesn't use foil or glitter or any other such additives that interfere with the recycling process.
  • Composting lowers the amount of garbage that ends up in a landfil
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.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “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

Farms aren't tossing perfectly good produce. You are. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...perfectly-good-produce-you-are

farm food waste recycling

shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • f food waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of CO2, after China and the United States. In our nation alone, we throw away some 63 million tons of food a year, even as 40 million Americans are considered food insecure.
  • boil down to the old mantra to reduce, reuse and recycle.
  • advocates are getting the problem exactly backward. Less than 20 percent of total food waste happens at farms and packinghouses, where the ugly-produce movement works its magic, according to ReFED, a nonprofit dedicated to researching food waste policies.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • The vast majority of waste — more than 80 percent — is generated by homes and consumer-facing businesses like grocery stores and restaurants.
  • The hype surrounding this movement is inflated by the public’s ignorance of the food supply chain.
  • Despite the dramatic anecdotes about truckloads of landfilled crops, little of farm waste is due to merely “cosmetic” blemishes. Much of it is bruised or weeping goods that can quickly break down and rot the entire crate. With many crops, misshapen produce knocks against its neighbors during transit, poking holes and jeopardizing entire bins. “Drops” (produce that’s fallen on the ground) are left behind because otherwise they tend to cause food-poisoning outbreaks. Farms till excessively damaged produce back into the soil along with the crop’s stems and leaves, recycling their nutrients.
  • North America’s packinghouses discard about 1 percent of the produce that enters their doors, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization — usually because it’s straight-up rotten.
  • For the most part, ugly-produce initiatives are simply gentrifying second-grade produce that was already being eaten — just not, perhaps, by upscale shoppers. It’s the food equivalent of Lyft “inventing” a bus.
  • The most effective ways to tackle that
  • “Approximately 20% of organic and conventional produce in the U.S. never leaves the farm just because it looks a little different. . . . We think that’s crazy.”
  • The single biggest source of U.S. food waste, accounting for 43 percent of the problem, is our own homes
  • Most of all, we should sync our shopping habits with our eating habits. Affluent shoppers waste the most produce because of how much of it they buy and then trash
  • The most important behavioral change consumers can make to address food waste isn’t to buy certain kinds of produce. It’s to actually eat what we bring home.
  • Homes, food service and grocery stores generate 7.8 million tons of food waste per year that can’t be salvaged, accounting for 12 percent of the problem. This waste needs to be recycled. The Environmental Protection Agency says that the United States composts only 5 percent of its food waste. (Compare that with 15 percent in the European Union.)
  • Biochar — made by heating inedible food and other organic waste until it becomes inert, odorless, nutrient-rich charcoal — could be a very effective way to recycle food waste, but it’s underutilized, because the equipment to do it at municipal scale is so new. Like composting, biochar can be used as a fertilizer, returning food waste’s nutrients back to the soil. Unlike composting, it can handle food waste that’s mixed with general nonhazardous trash — no need for costly separate collection and handling. Biochar also sequesters carbon for centuries.
  • But the infrastructure — donation matching software, cold storage and refrigerated trucks — to handle large donations of eggs, dairy, meat, bread and produce is still being built. Funding more food bank infrastructure, educating potential donors about liability laws, creating more donation tax incentives and standardizing food safety regulations would recover up to 996,000 tons of food, or 1.7 billion meals, per year, according to ReFED.
  • For certain crops like berries, tomatoes, leafy greens and cucumbers, farms can take advantage of state and federal funds that would help them switch from open-field to hoophouse or greenhouse methods. Already common in East Asia and Europe, these methods boost yields and dramatically reduce how much of the crop is too damaged to leave the farm
  • As long as we eat fresh food instead of shelf-stable nutrient bars, perishability is part of the bargain. The only way to completely eliminate food waste is to abolish fresh food. Beyond that, all we can do is manage the waste.
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.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • “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.
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
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • experience shows that even environmentally conscious people need prodding and incentives to change their behavior permanently.
  • 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.)
  • 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.
  • 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.”
johnsonel7

My Europe: Illegal garbage dumps reflect EU′s east-west divide | Opinion | DW... - 0 views

www.dw.com/...a-52480168

europe waste opinion politics

shared by johnsonel7 on 23 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • Romania and Bulgaria have a major garbage problem. In January this year, the European Commission threatened to take legal action against the former for failing to properly recycle municipal waste since 2014. Revelations about the garbage problem caused a political earthquake in Romania, with environmental minister Emil Dimitrov being arrested and police launching investigations in numerous cities. Everything came to light when Italian police, which had uncovered illegal garbage exports to both countries by mafia-affiliated figures, tipped off Romanian and Bulgarian authorities about the practice
  • In Romania and Bulgaria, less than 10% of national waste is recycled.
  • . Each year, some 100,000 tons of toxic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) waste are incinerated in Romania, for example
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • countless illegal rubbish dumps across the country. The waste, which was imported from abroad, was never recycled as the companies paid to do so failed to live up to their side of the bargain. Over the past ten years, rubbish imports to Bulgaria have risen twentyfold! And some journalists have reported that at times, waste is simply dumped under bridges or along motorways and then set alight.
  • In Romania and Bulgaria, just like in Italy, the waste disposal business is controlled by shady figures. High-ranking politicians are involved, corruption is rife, and environmentalists are vilified as radicals who are supposedly paid by western competitors to slow down the country's economic development.
  • The garbage crisis also has a symbolic dimension in that many eastern Europeans feel like second-class citizens on the continent.
  • Today, eastern Europe's garbage problem hurts the pride of people in Romania and Bulgaria — but also in Poland, Ukraine and Russia. They feel as if the rest of Europe, and even some developing countries, are using their countries as veritable garbage dumps.
  • The globalization of waste disposal illustrates how capital accumulates in wealthy parts of the world, while waste accumulates in the poor regions. Bulgaria's environmental minister Dimitrov has now attempted to slow down this process by closed several border crossing to waste imports. But critics have lamented that this breaches EU regulations, and pointed out that while waste disposal is a lucrative business it is also important for environmental reasons. How can Romania and Bulgaria be prevented from importing waste that harms their peoples' health just to make a quick buck? EU regulations and fines alone will not suffice. For years now, rubbish has been piling up in both countries — but many just seem to just shrug their shoulders and accept the status quo.
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.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • 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%.
  • “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
  • “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.
  • 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
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.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • 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.”
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.
brookegoodman

Uber disposes of tens of thousands of bikes, sparking backlash - CNN - 0 views

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

US crisis culture

shared by brookegoodman on 31 May 20 - No Cached
  • Washington, DC (CNN)Videos and photos are surfacing of thousands of Uber's Jump bikes and scooters stripped of parts and crammed into trucks to be scrapped.
  • Roughly 20,000 to 30,000 Jump vehicles have now disappeared from streets nationwide in recent weeks, according to estimates from four former Jump employees. Uber confirmed that tens of thousands of its bikes and scooters are being "recycled."
  • Asked why Lime did not take all of Jump's bikes, the spokesman said the company took the newest bikes that will allow it to offer a quality bikeshare service over the long term. The rest were left for Uber to deal with.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • "Our acquisition of JUMP was a direct investment in the idea that the best way to get around a city is sometimes not in a car at all," Khosrowshahi said in a Sept. 2018 blog post. By 2019, Uber users were taking six times as many trips on Jump's vehicles compared with the year before.
  • Shared bikes like Jump's are generally made with proprietary parts, which better protects them from theft and vandalism, but makes it all but impossible for a local bike shop to perform maintenance.
  • Bikeshare companies have donated bikes in the past, and some groups told CNN Business they would have been interested in such an offer.
  • Unlike Spin and Ofo bicycles, Jump's bikes have the additional wrinkle of an electric battery, which wasn't designed to be charged in someone's home. The battery could be removed, but the bikes weigh about 75 pounds, making them difficult to pedal.
  • Cris Moffitt, who posted online videos of Jump bikes being scrapped, said he hoped to spur the company to donate any remaining bikes to a non-profit. Moffitt said he depended on a bike in college to get to work and school after he wrecked his car.
Javier E

Young people 'failing to act on carbon concerns' - 0 views

www.thetimes.co.uk/...t-on-carbon-concerns-92rqjvlhj

climate change response young failure inaction inactivity

shared by Javier E on 30 Oct 23 - No Cached
  • Greta Thunberg may be the voice of a generation alarmed about climate change but she is also the voice of a generation failing to do much about it, research suggests.
  • young people are taking less action to lower their carbon footprint than older Britons and are much worse at taking simple steps to help the environment, such as recycling.
  • The YouGov survey of 1,008 Britons found that more than 80 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds say they are worried about global warming compared with nearly 70 per cent of the over-65s
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • A higher proportion of young people also believe that urgent action is required to deal with climate change.
  • nearly 90 per cent of the over-65s say they recycle as much as possible compared with only half of young people.
  • Retired Britons are also three times more likely than younger people to have installed energy-saving measure
  • The over-65s are also more likely to have reduced the number of flights they take, to take steps to save water, to repair items, to wash clothes at low temperatures and to choose a renewable energy tariff.
  • They are also more likely to turn the heating down and switch off lights in rooms they are not using.
  • young people have a long way to go to live up to their reputation as being concerned for the planet.
  • There are some areas where 18 to 24-year-olds are doing more than older people, however. Young people are more likely to walk or cycle than older people
  • and they are more likely to be vegetarian or vegan.
  • 17 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds do not eat any meat compared with only 8 per cent of the over-65s
  • cross the population as a whole, 12 per cent of people say they are vegan or vegetarian.
  • Half of people questioned said that dealing with the cost of living is a greater priority than making changes to lower their environmental impact.
lilyrashkind

Lesson of the Day: 'The Unlikely Ascent of New York's Compost Champion' - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ew-yorks-compost-champion.html

new york lesson US

shared by lilyrashkind on 31 May 22 - No Cached
  • Growing up in the Bronx, Domingo Morales was never interested in urban farming, and he thought vegetables were gross. However, after landing a job at a nonprofit that trains young people for solar installation, horticulture and other green jobs, Mr. Morales found his way to becoming, arguably, the most famous compost person in New York City.
  • Take a few minutes to write about how you and your family deal with waste: In a typical week, what kinds of things do you throw away? Do you throw everything in the trash? Do you recycle? Do you compost? Do you ever feel guilty about what, or how much, you toss out?The article you will read today talks about composting. Watch this six-minute video from NowThis to learn about the process:
  • Questions for Writing and DiscussionRead the article, then answer the following questions:1. How did Domingo Morales get started in urban gardening? Why had he been hesitant to try it previously? Do you relate to any part of his journey?
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • What is one environmental action you can take in your home or school community?Start by brainstorming a list of ideas. Here are some things you might consider:
  • Do you recycle at home or at school? What could make the process easier or clearer for people?Is composting available where you live? Is it accessible to everyone? What could make it more accessible?How much do people care about the environment and climate change where you live? Could you do something to educate your friends and family about why these issues matter?What else matters to your community when it comes to the environment?
  • Next, make a plan for putting your project into action. Here are some questions to think about:What are the materials you need to do this project? Where can you do research for it?
  • Finally, take action, and let us know how it goes! Once you’ve got a plan in place, or have started your project, share it in the comments section of this article.
Javier E

David Stockman: Mitt Romney and the Bain Drain - Newsweek and The Daily Beast - 1 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...romney-and-the-bain-drain.html

finance ROmney private equity LBO investment

shared by Javier E on 16 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Is Romney really a job creator? Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, takes a scalpel to the claims.
  • Bain Capital is a product of the Great Deformation. It has garnered fabulous winnings through leveraged speculation in financial markets that have been perverted and deformed by decades of money printing and Wall Street coddling by the Fed. So Bain’s billions of profits were not rewards for capitalist creation; they were mainly windfalls collected from gambling in markets that were rigged to rise.
  • Mitt Romney claims that his essential qualification to be president is grounded in his 15 years as head of Bain Capital, from 1984 through early 1999. According to the campaign’s narrative, it was then that he became immersed in the toils of business enterprise, learning along the way the true secrets of how to grow the economy and create jobs. The fact that Bain’s returns reputedly averaged more than 50 percent annually during this period is purportedly proof of the case
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • Except Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.
  • That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn’t be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value. But we have a rigged system—a regime of crony capitalism—where the tax code heavily favors debt and capital gains, and the central bank purposefully enables rampant speculation by propping up the price of financial assets and battering down the cost of leveraged finance.
  • So the vast outpouring of LBOs in recent decades has been the consequence of bad policy, not the product of capitalist enterprise. I know this from 17 years of experience doing leveraged buyouts at one of the pioneering private-equity houses, Blackstone, and then my own firm. I know the pitfalls of private equity. The whole business was about maximizing debt, extracting cash, cutting head counts, skimping on capital spending, outsourcing production, and dressing up the deal for the earliest, highest-profit exit possible. Occasionally, we did invest in genuine growth companies, but without cheap debt and deep tax subsidies, most deals would not make economic sense.
  • In truth, LBOs are capitalism’s natural undertakers—vulture investors who feed on failing businesses. Due to bad policy, however, they have now become monsters of the financial midway that strip-mine cash from healthy businesses and recycle it mostly to the top 1 percent.
  • Accordingly, Bain’s returns on the overwhelming bulk of the deals—67 out of 77—were actually lower than what a passive S&P 500 indexer would have earned even without the risk of leverage or paying all the private-equity fees. Investor profits amounted to a prosaic 0.7X the original investment on these deals and, based on its average five-year holding period, the annual return would have computed to about 12 percent—well below the 17 percent average return on the S&P in this period.
  • having a trader’s facility for knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em has virtually nothing to do with rectifying the massive fiscal hemorrhage and debt-burdened private economy that are the real issues before the American electorate
  • Indeed, the next president’s overriding task is restoring national solvency—an undertaking that will involve immense societywide pain, sacrifice, and denial and that will therefore require “fairness” as a defining principle. And that’s why heralding Romney’s record at Bain is so completely perverse. The record is actually all about the utter unfairness of windfall riches obtained under our anti-free market regime of bubble finance.
  • When Romney opened the doors to Bain Capital in 1984, the S&P 500 stood at 160. By the time he answered the call to duty in Salt Lake City in early 1999, it had gone parabolic and reached 1270. This meant that had a modern Rip Van Winkle bought the S&P 500 index and held it through the 15 years in question, the annual return (with dividends) would have been a spectacular 17 percent. Bain did considerably better, of course, but the reason wasn’t business acumen.
  • The credentials that Romney proffers as evidence of his business acumen, in fact, mainly show that he hung around the basket during the greatest bull market in recorded history.
  • The Wall Street Journal examined 77 significant deals completed during that period based on fundraising documents from Bain, and the results are a perfect illustration of bull-market asymmetry. Overall, Bain generated an impressive $2.5 billion in investor gains on $1.1 billion in investments. But 10 of Bain’s deals accounted for 75 percent of the investor profits.
  • The secret was leverage, luck, inside baseball, and the peculiar asymmetrical dynamics of the leveraged gambling carried on by private-equity shops. LBO funds are invested as equity at the bottom of a company’s capital structure, which means that the lenders who provide 80 to 90 percent of the capital have no recourse to the private-equity sponsor if deals go bust. Accordingly, LBO funds can lose 1X (one times) their money on failed deals, but make 10X or even 50X on the occasional “home run.” During a period of rising markets, expanding valuation multiples, and abundant credit, the opportunity to “average up” the home runs with the 1X losses is considerable; it can generate a spectacular portfolio outcome.
  • By contrast, the 10 home runs generated profits of $1.8 billion on investments of only $250 million, yielding a spectacular return of 7X investment. Yet it is this handful of home runs that both make the Romney investment legend and also seal the indictment: they show that Bain Capital was a vehicle for leveraged speculation that was gifted immeasurably by the Greenspan bubble. It was a fortunate place where leverage got lucky, not a higher form of capitalist endeavor or training school for presidential aspirants.
  • The startling fact is that four of the 10 Bain Capital home runs ended up in bankruptcy, and for an obvious reason: Bain got its money out at the top of the Greenspan boom in the late 1990s and then these companies hit the wall during the 2000-02 downturn, weighed down by the massive load of debt Bain had bequeathed them. In fact, nearly $600 million, or one third of the profits earned by the home-run companies, had been extracted from the hide of these four eventual debt zombies.
  • The bankruptcy forced the closure of about 250—or 40 percent—of the company’s stores and the loss of about 5,000 jobs. Yet the moral of the Stage Stores saga is not simply that in this instance Bain Capital was a jobs destroyer, not a jobs creator. The larger point is that it is actually a tale of Wall Street speculators toying with Main Street properties in defiance of sound finance—an anti-Schumpeterian project that used state-subsidized debt to milk cash from stores that would not have otherwise survived on the free market.
  • Ironically, the businesses and jobs that Staples eliminated were the office-supply counterparts of the cracker-box stores selling shoes, shirts, and dresses that Bain kept on artificial life-support at Stage Stores Inc. At length, Wal-Mart eliminated these jobs and replaced them with back-of–the-store automation and front-end part-timers, as did Staples, which now has 40,000 part-time employees out of its approximate 90,000 total head count. The pointless exercise of counting jobs won and lost owing to these epochal shifts on the free market is obviously irrelevant to the job of being president, but the fact that Bain made $15 million from the winner and $175 million from the loser is evidence that it did not make a fortune all on its own. It had considerable help from the Easy Button at the Fed.
  • The lesson is that LBOs are just another legal (and risky) way for speculators to make money, but they are dangerous because when they fail, they leave needless economic disruption and job losses in their wake. That’s why LBOs would be rare in an honest free market—it’s only cheap debt, interest deductions, and ludicrously low capital-gains taxes that artifically fuel them.
  • The larger point is that Romney’s personal experience in the nation’s financial casinos is no mark against his character or competence. I’ve made money and lost it and know what it is like to be judged. But that experience doesn’t translate into answers on the great public issues before the nation, either. The Romney campaign’s feckless narrative that private equity generates real economic efficiency and societal wealth is dead wrong.
  • The Bain Capital investments here reviewed accounted for $1.4 billion or 60 percent of the fund’s profits over 15 years, by my calculations. Four of them ended in bankruptcy; one was an inside job and fast flip; one was essentially a massive M&A brokerage fee; and the seventh and largest gain—the Italian Job—amounted to a veritable freak of financial nature.
  • In short, this is a record about a dangerous form of leveraged gambling that has been enabled by the failed central banking and taxing policies of the state. That it should be offered as evidence that Mitt Romney is a deeply experienced capitalist entrepreneur and job creator is surely a testament to the financial deformations of our times.
malonema1

The new industrial revolution - Cyprus Mail Cyprus Mail - 0 views

cyprus-mail.com/...new-industrial-revolution

industrial revolution global industry economy

shared by malonema1 on 13 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • We must replace our old linear industrial model with a new – and circular – industrial model.
  • Similarly, BioGen in Britain has a renew and restore strategy where it produces renewable energy (biogas) from food waste and in turn use the waste slurry as bio-fertilizer, which has been shown to produce higher crop yields compared with chemical fertilizers.
  • Similarly, the Dutch company aWEARness has created the first true “circular” clothing items. WearEver suits are made from 100per cent recyclable polyester, giving the total life of the suit between 40 and 50 years.
Javier E

The Great Divorce - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...brooks-the-great-divorce.html

class US upper class lower-class trends cultural conservative

shared by Javier E on 01 Feb 12 - Cached
  • His story starts in 1963. There was a gap between rich and poor then, but it wasn’t that big.
  • Since then,
  • America has polarized. The word “class” doesn’t even capture the divide Murray describes. You might say the country has bifurcated into different social tribes, with a tenuous common culture linking them.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Roughly 7 percent of the white kids in the upper tribe are born out of wedlock, compared with roughly 45 percent of the kids in the lower tribe. In the upper tribe, nearly every man aged 30 to 49 is in the labor force. In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad. People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.
  • anonymous on 01 Feb 12
     
    "The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids. Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive" (Haner). A gripping fresh look on the classes of today. I enjoyed reading about this spin on the topic of cultural corruption on behalf of the socially elite. I also liked how Haner brought up the time-old conflicting views of Democrats and Republicans. Haner is able to easily criticize both sides- unlike most of us, as we tend to automatically focus our energy on the recycled ideas of past party members.
Javier E

Internet Archive's Repository Collects Thousands of Books - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...llects-thousands-of-books.html

internet archive books

shared by Javier E on 07 Mar 12 - Cached
  • “We want to collect one copy of every book,” said Brewster Kahle, who has spent $3 million to buy and operate this repository situated just north of San Francisco. “You can never tell what is going to paint the portrait of a culture.”
  • A Silicon Valley entrepreneur who made his fortune selling a data-mining company to Amazon.com in 1999, Mr. Kahle founded and runs the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving Web pages — 150 billion so far — and making texts more widely available.
  • “We must keep the past even as we’re inventing a new future,” he said. “If the Library of Alexandria had made a copy of every book and sent it to India or China, we’d have the other works of Aristotle, the other plays of Euripides. One copy in one institution is not good enough.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “A lot of libraries are doing pretty drastic weeding,” said Judith Russell, the University of Florida’s dean of libraries who is sending the archive duplicate scholarly volumes. “It’s very much more palatable to us and our faculty that books are being sent out to a useful purpose rather than just recycled.”
  • “Microfilm and microfiche were once a utopian vision of access to all information,” Mr. Kahle noted, “but it turned out we were very glad we kept the books.”
  • If serious “1984”-style trouble does arrive, Mr. Lesk said, it might come as “all Internet information falls under the control of either governments or copyright owners.” But he made clear he thought that was unlikely.
  • Before the books make it the 150 feet to the shipping containers for storage, some will have to travel 12,000 miles to China. The Chinese, who are keen to build a digital library, will scan the books for themselves and the archive and then send them back. The digital texts will be available for the visually impaired and other legal purposes.
Javier E

The Rise of Anti-Capitalism - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-rise-of-anti-capitalism.html

zero marginal cost commons nonprofit

shared by Javier E on 19 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces.
  • in 1999 when Napster, the music service, developed a network enabling millions of people to share music without paying the producers and artists, wreaking havoc on the music industry. Similar phenomena went on to severely disrupt the newspaper and book publishing industries.
  • Cisco forecasts that by 2022, the private sector productivity gains wrought by the Internet of Things will exceed $14 trillion. A General Electric study estimates that productivity advances from the Internet of Things could affect half the global economy by 2025.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The Internet of Things is a game-changing platform that enables an emerging collaborative commons to flourish alongside the capitalist market.
  • This collaborative rather than capitalistic approach is about shared access rather than private ownership.
  • Millions of people are using social media sites, redistribution networks, rentals and cooperatives to share not only cars but also homes, clothes, tools, toys and other items at low or near zero marginal cost. The sharing economy had projected revenues of $3.5 billion in 2013.
  • In the United States, the number of nonprofit organizations grew by approximately 25 percent between 2001 and 2011, from 1.3 million to 1.6 million, compared with profit-making enterprises, which grew by a mere one-half of 1 percent. In the United States, Canada and Britain, employment in the nonprofit sector currently exceeds 10 percent of the work force.
  • A recent study revealed that approximately 50 percent of the aggregate revenue of the nonprofit sectors of 34 countries comes from fees, while government support accounts for 36 percent of the revenues and private philanthropy for 14 percent.
  • A formidable new technology infrastructure — the Internet of Things — is emerging with the potential to push much of economic life to near zero marginal cost over the course of the next two decades. This new technology platform is beginning to connect everything and everyone. Today more than 11 billion sensors are attached to natural resources, production lines, the electricity grid, logistics networks and recycling flows, and implanted in homes, offices, stores and vehicles, feeding big data into the Internet of Things.
Javier E

Americans Least Green-And Feel Least Guilt, Survey Suggests - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...inable-science-consumers-world

green international comparative guilt responsibility culture survey sustainability

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Americans are the the least likely to suffer from "green guilt" about their environmental impact, despite trailing the rest of the world in sustainable behavior, according to a new National Geographic survey.
  • "In our culture of consumption, we've sort of been indoctrinated to believe that we can buy ourselves out of environmental problems," said Whan, who's based in Toronto, Canada, another country ranked low in the survey."But what people need to realize is that the sheer volume of consumption is relevant as well."
  • the Greendex report explored environmental attitudes and behaviors among 17,000 consumers in 17 countries through an online survey that asks questions relating to housing, transportation, food, and consumer goods
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • This year Americans ranked last in sustainable behavior, as they have every year since 2008. Just 21 percent of Americans reported feeling guilty about the impact they have on the environment, among the lowest of those surveyed.Yet they had the most faith in an individual's ability to protect the environment, at 47 percent.
  • Consumers in India, China, and Brazil led the pack, with Greendex scores in the high fifties. Paradoxically, many Indians, Chinese, and Brazilians reported feeling the most guilt about their environmental impact and had the least confidence that their individual actions can help the environment.
  • the findings suggest that those with the lightest environmental footprint are also the most likely to feel both guilty and disempowered
  • Americans also ranked last in the area of transportation. According to the Greendex report, Americans were the most likely to report regularly driving alone in a car or truck (56 percent) and the least likely to use public transportation (7 percent).They were also the least likely to bike or
  • One area where Americans scored well was in the area of purchased goods, with U.S. respondents (31 percent) saying that they prefer to buy "used" or "pre-owned" products over new ones.
  • Americans are also above average when it comes to recycling (69 percent) but are surpassed by Canadian, British, German, and Australian consumers
  • more than half of all consumers in almost all the countries surveyed reported eating beef—one of the most environmentally intensive food sources—once or more per week. Argentines reported eating the most beef (61 percent), as opposed to 35 percent of Americans and 9 percent of Indians.
  • Chinese consumers eat the most vegetables: 63 percent eat them every day, versus just 37 percent of Americans.
  • Germans are the biggest consumers of bottled water, with two-thirds reporting that they drink it daily. And Spaniards are now the biggest consumers of seafood,
  • t it might also be due to a well-known effect in sociology called the social desirability bias, in which respondents often say what is socially desirable than stating their true feelings and actions, said Darnall."It's not a surprise that consumers believed they were environmentally responsible," she said. "Consumers want to respond in a socially desirable way, and there is a lot of research that suggests they're not going to respond very honestly about their less socially acceptable behaviors."
1 - 20 of 53 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page