Will Infinitely Recyclable Plastic Soon Be Available?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is an article from Earth911 website which I hope will be as interesting to you as it is to me!  I do however have some doubts as to wether or not it will be possible and what the heck do we do with all the bad plastic that we have already!

Written By Sarah Lozanova May 14, 2021 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many developed countries send their recycling to Southeast Asian countries that are not equipped to process it properly. Photo by Stijn Dijkstra from Pexels

A multidisciplinary team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has created a plastic that can be disassembled at a molecular level using an acidic solution. Then, it can be reassembled with a new color, texture, and shape, again and again. Unlike traditional plastic, which can only be recycled two or three times at most, this material, called poly(diketoenamine), or PDK, is infinitely recyclable.

Why is this an important development? Plastics are creating a waste management crisis. Globally, we produce 380 million tons of plastic annually, much of it for single use. Despite the presence of a recycling emblem on many plastic items, less than 9% is recycled. Much of the plastic intended for recycling is shipped to Asia, creating a considerable transportation footprint. At the heart of the issue is that plastic — at least until now — has not been infinitely recyclable and virgin plastic is often cheaper for manufacturers than recycled.

“Most plastics were never made to be recycled,” said lead author Peter Christensen, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry. “But we have discovered a new way to assemble plastics that takes recycling into consideration from a molecular perspective.”

A Financial Incentive for Recycling

A new study from Berkeley Lab indicates that PDK could be commercially viable, making it more likely to hit store shelves sometime soon. The study found that virgin PDK is relatively expensive to make but that recycling costs are similar to those of PET and HDPE. But PDK recycling costs are lower than those of polyurethane, which curbside recycling programs don’t accept. This price difference would make recycling PDK far more appealing than landfilling it.

“We’re talking about materials that are basically not recycled,” said Scown. “So, in terms of appealing to manufacturers, PDKs aren’t competing with recycled plastic – they have to compete with virgin resin. And we were really pleased to see how cheap and how efficient it will be to recycle the material.”

Because virgin plastic is so cheap, manufacturers have little incentive to use recycled plastic. And the cost of recycling has largely fallen on municipalities to shoulder because there is low demand and value for recycled plastic. Manufacturers don’t have much motivation to make plastics more recyclable because they aren’t responsible for end-of-life product disposal. It’s a vicious cycle that encourages waste. Thus, most plastic — recyclable or not — ends up in landfills, at waste incineration plants, or as litter.

 

Introducing PDKs in Products

The Berkeley Lab team has created models to understand the best use of PDKs by manufacturers. They conclude that the ideal applications are ones where the manufacturer takes back the product at the end of life, like electronics and automobile manufacturers. Many of these companies have recycling, trade-in, and take-back programs. This model would allow manufacturers to reap the benefits of next-generation polymers in their products through long-term cost savings and sustainable branding.

After introducing PDKs in durable goods like electronics and cars, Berkeley Lab researchers hope to expand their use into single-use products like packaging. Extended producer responsibility is an approach that involves manufacturers in the entire lifecycle of a product, including end-of-life. This approach helps embrace the circular economy and is a radical shift from the status quo, especially in the United States. Without extended producer responsibility, most manufacturers will opt to use the cheapest materials, regardless of the environmental and social impacts. This is because the waste management costs and environmental issues in the U.S. typically don’t fall on manufacturers.

“Some countries have plans to charge hefty fees on plastic products that rely on non-recycled material,” says Corinne Scown of the Berkeley Lab team. “That shift will provide a strong financial incentive to move away from utilizing virgin resins and should drive a lot of demand for recycled plastics.”

Governmental policies and consumer demand can help fuel the change needed to drive greener business practices. “These days, there is a huge push for adopting circular economy practices in the industry. Everyone is trying to recycle whatever they’re putting out in the market,” said Nemi Vora, a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley Lab. “We started talking to industry about deploying 100% infinitely recycled plastics and have received a lot of interest.”

Creating Recycling Infrastructure

The United States, the EU, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and South Korea lack the infrastructure necessary to recycle waste properly. As a result, many recyclables were being shipped to Asia for processing. In 2018, China instituted a ban on recycling imports.

After China’s bans, many developed countries then diverted their waste to Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, which lack the infrastructure, knowledge, and policies to handle it properly. Thus, the burden on the developed world’s trash is still ending up on beaches, waterways, and landfills overseas.

Ultimately, if PDKs prove to be the smartest path forward, plastics recycling needs to be reinvented for processing materials that were designed to be recycled. Additionally, domestic recycling infrastructure will need to be created so that the materials are processed far closer to the country of origin. Then we can begin to truly close the loop on plastics recycling.

Sarah Lozanova is an environmental journalist and copywriter and has worked as a consultant to help large corporations become more sustainable. She is the author of Humane Home: Easy Steps for Sustainable & Green Living, and her renewable energy experience includes residential and commercial solar energy installations. She teaches green business classes to graduate students at Unity College and holds an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio Graduate School.

Hopefully this will be a good thing and will not just be another switch like the energy shambles that we are experiencing at the moment.  We need to buy less plastic where we can, in our everyday lives it is possible to do this, our grandparents used to, then something went horrendously wrong and we are are in a right mess.

The blog song for today is:"Rock the Kasbah" by the Clash

TTFN

 

 

 

Update from some of my favourite sites!

 

This is the latest update from "onlyone."

 

Coming up in The Wave this week, a First Nations chief predicts a violent clash over lobster fishing on Canada’s east coast will reach a boiling point, the Biden Administration introduces its “America the Beautiful” plan, and a new study says Antarctica’s ice could cross a scary threshold within 40 years.

But first, in honor of Mother Ocean Day, we’re celebrating the Hawaiian Islands, where the ocean has been both life-giving and life-affirming for thousands of years.

In this Pacific archipelago of eight main islands, several coral-studded atolls, and more than 100 rocky islets, the cultural and the marine are one. Corals are considered by Hawaiian people to represent Kāne, an akua (“deity”) giving life to both the people and the islands. The living reef ecosystem in Hawaii houses more than 7,000 marine plant and animal species, with a quarter of these found only in this part of the world. Green sea turtles soar through the deep blue waters or bask in the sun on the shoreline, while endangered Hawaiian monk seals forage for fish, spin lobsters, octopuses, and eels. Hawaiian tradition regards all these creatures as our relatives, in no way lesser beings than humans.

When U.S. troops overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom 130 years ago, without just cause, its Indigenous people were forcibly distanced from their traditional interactions with the ocean. Now, the people of Hawaii are fighting for tomorrow, creating hope by passing maritime knowledge down to the youngr generations and by raising awareness of the need to protect natural resources. 

We’ve created a collection of stories to shine light on the ocean history and future of Hawaii, from pulling renaissance of the art of voyaging from the edge of extinction, to reviving unique fishponds after a time when Native Hawaiian people were prevented from fishing for subsistence. There is much we can learn from “the worldview of the Hawaiian” when it comes to how we approach protecting the global ocean in years to come.

From Earthday.org

April 29, 2021

Washington, D.C. — EARTHDAY.ORG, the global organizer of Earth Day, today announced initial results of Earth Day 2021: Exponential growth and the addition of hundreds of millions of new activists to the movement, united around a set of clear and concise demands presented to the Biden administration and world leaders.

Among Earth Day’s demands are that countries aggressively reduce their carbon emissions, that corporations be held accountable and set ambitious paths to net zero emissions by 2040 or sooner, that all primary and secondary schools globally adopt comprehensive climate literacy and civic skill building to prepare students for a global transition to green jobs, and that global leaders train existing and future workers for the green economy.

Despite year two of the coronavirus pandemic, the Earth Day movement surged ahead. Concurrent with the Biden climate summit, millions participated in three parallel summits representing vast networks of youth, social justice organizations, and educators. In partnership with EARTHDAY.ORG, Education International, representing 32.5 million members, organized the “Teach for the Planet: Global Education Summit.”

“This Earth Day, we experienced a cultural shift comparable to the first Earth Day in 1970,” said Kathleen Rogers, President of EARTHDAY.ORG. “Millions around the world, angry and frustrated with the pace of change, raised their voices and demanded comprehensive climate action from governments and corporations around the world. The environmental movement of 1970 has been reborn. We’ve entered into a new phase of progress, a new barometer of sustainability requirements, and a new chapter of activism. We must continue this momentum.”

Building on its position as the world’s most inclusive instrument to drive the movement forward, Earth Day 2021 boldly staked out its leadership. As the world’s environmental systems continue to collapse, leaving a badly damaged planet, civil society is no longer agreeing to be on the periphery of decision making, but rather is demanding a seat at the table with governments and international institutions to deliver solutions proportionate to the urgency of the climate crisis.

Speaking to Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day, on the Earth Day Live digital stage, John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate said, “We have to make 2020 to 2030 a critical decade of real decisions and real actions…The urgency of what we need to do cannot be overstated.”

His Holiness Pope Francis reflected that the challenges we are experiencing with the pandemic that are also manifesting in climate change must drive us toward innovation and invention and to seek new paths. “We become more resilient when we work together instead of doing it alone,” Pope Francis affirmed, adding that there is still time to act even though it is difficult to stop the destruction of nature when it has been triggered.

Around the world, Earth Day 2021 brought massive action.

Over a dozen countries including Italy, Mexico and most recently Peru, Argentina and Brazil committed to climate literacy. 

As of Earth Day 2021, over 500 signatories representing over 100 countries around the world joined EARTHDAY.ORG’s Climate Literacy campaign including groups such as International Labour Organization, Education International and International Trades Union Confederation.

In its second year, Schools for the Earth, an EARTHDAY.ORG partnership with EDUCA, Educación Ambiental Mundial EAM, enrolled nearly 4,000 schools across Mexico and 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The program involves over 800,000 teachers and students in rural communities, urban areas and indigenous intercultural schools.

In the Middle East and North Africa, women’s participation in Earth Day this year increased to 60%. 

Millions of people took part in volunteer activities including planting trees, reforestation projects and The Great Global Cleanup.

Earth Day’s 2021 theme, Restore Our Earth generated thousands of policy commitments and billions of dollars in financial commitments around reforestation, regenerative agriculture and investment in green carbon removal and decarbonization technology. 

Thousands of local government officials from across the planet committed to environmental action for Earth Day. 

Reflecting the power of Earth Day on social media, Earth Day hashtags including #EarthDay, #RestoreOurEarth, #EarthDayLive and #ClimateLiteracy reached over 400 million.

Millions tuned in to Earth Day Live and committed to personal climate and environmental action. Among the speakers were Prince Albert II of Monaco; Alexandria Villaseñor, Founder of Earth Uprising; Mayor Frank Cownie of Des Moines, Iowa and President of ICLEI; Gabriel Quijandría, Minister of the Environment, Peru; Gina McCarthy, White House National Climate Advisor; Greta Thunberg, Youth Climate Activist; Haldis Holst, Deputy General Secretary of Education International; John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate; Dame Karen Pierce, British Ambassador to the United States; Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta, Georgia; Kevin O’Leary, Venture Capitalist; Mary Steenburgen, Actor and Musician; Michael S. Regan, United States EPA Administrator; Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; Patrizio Bianchi, Minister of Public Education, Italy; His Holiness Pope Francis; Ricky Kej, Grammy® Award Winner; Tom Lovejoy, “Godfather of Biodiversity” and Tom Steyer, NextGen America Founder.

On Earth Day, EARTHDAY.ORG launched the “Earth Definition” campaign aimed at encouraging individuals around the world to learn more about their digital footprint and choose Earth Definition, otherwise known as standard definition, while streaming to reduce emissions. The campaign film has been chosen as a Vimeo Staff Pick.

As a part of the partnership between EARTHDAY.ORG and Facebook, Facebook Watch premiered “Earth Day! The Musical!” on April 22 at 12PM ET which garnered nearly 5 million views. The special featured appearances from Bill Nye, Alexia Akbay, Ben Platt, Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, Chloe Lukasiak, CNCO, Cody Simpson, Desus Nice and The Kid Mero, Fortune Feimster, Gaten Matarazzo, Idina Menzel, Jack Harlow, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Jerome Foster II, Justin Bieber, Karamo, Maluma, Nick Kroll, Phoebe Robinson, Retta, Steve Aoki, Tori Kelly, Xiye Bastida, Zac Efron and more.

For more information on EARTHDAY.ORG’s year-round campaigns and programs, please visit: https://www.earthday.org

 

From Change.org - Lion Aid update

10 de may. de 2021 — 

For over ten years LionAid has campaigned, lobbied, pushed the UK Government to end lion trophy hunting imports. We covered lion statues with black cloths, arranged marches on the streets of London, met with an endless array of politicians, managed to get three debates in UK Parliament, sat around many “round table” discussions with MPs, sat with ministers, sat with committees, provided endless information, sat with African wildlife departments and ministers, funded a seminal conference among African lion range states urging lion conservation, met with local communities in Africa, arranged virtual classrooms across the globe to educate children about lion conservation, challenged major universities and professors and international institutions on their stand in trying to equate lion hunting as “conservation”, delivered well over 700,000 signatures to appeal to the UK government to end lion trophy imports….

Not too bad for a small charity?

A few days ago we received an email from the UK Department of Environment informing us that change was hopefully coming.

Today, the UK media announced that in the upcoming Queen’s Speech, the UK Government will enact a number of animal welfare bills – including something called an “Animals Abroad” bill that will end some trophy hunting products imports into the UK.

 For those who might be puzzled about a “Queen’s Speech” – this is used by the current UK Government to announce future directions.

The fact that this Animals Abroad bill will be introduced is positive but not a “done deal”. It remains an intention?

Nevertheless, hope prevails.

We will update you all further in the days following the delivery of the Queen's Speech, once we find out a bit more detail on what might be developing.

The blog song for today is:"Uncle Sam" by Madness

TTFN

 

 

 

PETA Victories for animals in April 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought that after all the recent thought provoking stuff it would be nice to give some uplifting news and to show that we can make a difference!

HUGE NEWS: New Zealand Announces Total Live-Export Ban! 

Posted on 14 April 2021 at 10:45AM by PETA Australia

It’s the news we’ve all been waiting for: New Zealand will finally end its live-export trade.

The country – which currently sends around 3 million live farmed animals every year on horrific voyages around the world to be used as “breeding stock” – will phase out the practice over the next two years.

News reports suggest the New Zealand government delivered a letter to the Chinese Embassy on 31 March signalling the end of the trade.

Tragedy After Tragedy

PETA has written to the New Zealand government several times over the years urging it to ban live export. Just last month, we wrote when a blockage in the Suez Canal trapped at least 20 ships carrying cows and sheep, putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals at risk.

We also wrote in September 2020, when the vessel Gulf Livestock 1 went missing in the East China Sea after leaving Napier in New Zealand. Forty-one crew members on board died, alongside nearly 6,000 cattle.

Countless investigations have shown the ghastly conditions in which animals spend weeks travelling at sea, enduring seasickness, crowding, and exposure to all weather conditions.

 

Animals Exported as ‘Breeding Stock’ Still Suffer and Die

Unlike Australia, New Zealand opted to end live-animal exports for slaughter in 2008. However, just because New Zealand’s animals aren’t headed straight to slaughterhouses doesn’t mean they’re any less susceptible to illness and death on board vessels, and if they survive, it certainly doesn’t mean they’ll lead happy lives elsewhere.

In 2020, New Zealand exported almost 3 million live farmed animals, including 110,00 cows who will spend their short lives being forcibly impregnated on intensive dairy farms in China.

Day-old chicks make up the vast majority of exported animals. They’re torn away from their mothers and crammed into boxes by the thousands for transport overseas.

The animals tossed about on rough seas, trampled by their shipmates, suffocated by their own faeces, and dying of dehydration, starvation, and illness aboard these ships don’t care that New Zealand “only” exports “breeding stock”. They still endure gruelling journeys – and face unacceptable risks – only to give birth over and over on depressing factory farms, before being killed in ways which would be illegal in New Zealand.

The New Zealand government has made a historic and compassionate move. With this decision, the Ardern administration said “no more” to sending millions of animals – and many humans – on horrible journeys fraught with injury, dehydration, starvation, illness, and death.

Now, all eyes are on Australia to follow suit. Please join us in calling on Agriculture Minister David Littleproud to end this disgusting, dangerous trade at last:

 

Victory! Australian Surgeons to Stop Mutilating Live Animals

Following an extensive, nearly four-year campaign by PETA and PETA Australia, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) has announced that it will stop forcing civilian and military surgeons to cut holes into the throats, chests, and limbs of live pigs and sheep during the Early Management of Severe Trauma (EMST) program. Instead, EMST participants will now learn how to treat traumatic injuries in this course using advanced human-simulation technology. RACS’ announcement comes after more than 100,000 people wrote to RACS officials through PETA’s online action alert, a PETA Australia petition with thousands of signatures, and thought-provoking ads and protests.

Taiwan FDA Finalizes Regulation, Ends Drowning and Electroshock Tests on Animals After PETA Pressure

The Taiwan Food and Drug Administration has finalized a regulation and removed animal-testing recommendations and requirements for companies wanting to make anti-fatigue health marketing claims about their food and beverage products. It will now require only safe and effective human tests. This follows pressure from PETA that included the submission of a detailed scientific critique at the agency’s request and e-mails to agency officials from more than 73,000 supporters opposing animal experiments.

Prior to the agency’s announcement, thousands of animals were tormented and killed in efforts to establish anti-fatigue health claims for marketing food and beverage products. Experimenters fed mice or rats large quantities of the test foods, starved them for up to 24 hours, dropped them into individual beakers filled with water, and observed how long they struggled before drowning or remaining underwater for eight consecutive seconds. Experimenters also fed rats large quantities of the test foods and then put the animals on treadmills equipped with electrified plates to measure how long it took for them to choose repeated electroshocks over continuing to run at increasing speeds and steeper inclines.

 Great news for our animal companions!

The blog song for today is: "Mr Blue Sky" By the ELO

TTFN

 

Bright Green Lies - A documentary that we all should see or read the book

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recently watched a documentary called Bright Green Lies (here is the official website - https://derrickjensen.org/bright-green-lies) but there is also a book available. (Picture above)

It was a real wake up call to everyone who is fighting for our world and it made me think!

I have copied some of the information on the website commenting on it:

Here are some parts from the book:

Once, environmentalism was about saving wild beings and wild places. “The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind,” Rachel Carson wrote to a friend. “That, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done.” Silent Spring, which inspired the formation of the modern environmental movement, was more than a critique of pesticides—it was a clarion call against industrialized society’s destruction of the natural world.

That destruction has put us in peril. Like all animals, we need a home: a blanket of air, a cradle of soil, and a vast assemblage of creatures who make both. We can’t create oxygen, but others—from tiny plankton to towering redwoods—can. We can’t build soil, but the slow circling of bacteria, bison, and sweetgrass do.

All of them are bleeding out, species by species, like Noah in reverse, while the carbon swells and the heat burns on. Five decades of environmental activism haven’t stopped the destruction. We haven’t even slowed it. Instead, the beings and biomes who were once the center of our concern have disappeared from the conversation and the goal of environmentalism has been transformed to a singular question: “How can we save industrial civilization?”

Those who concern themselves with this question are known as bright green environmentalists and they are very much on the ascent. They believe that technology and design can render industrial civilization sustainable, and that so-called “green technologies” are good for the planet. Some bright green environmentalists are well-known and beloved politicians and writers like Al Gore, Naomi Klein, and Bill McKibben. The group also includes big, established organizations who are dedicated to fighting climate change like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace International, Audubon, and the Rockefeller Foundation

These committed activists have helped to bring the emergency of climate change into broad consciousness, and that’s a huge win as the glaciers melt and the tundra burns. But we believe the bright greens are solving for the wrong variable. All of the solutions to global warming they present take our current way of living as a given, and the health of the planet as the dependent variable. That is backwards: the health of the planet must be more important than our way of life because without a healthy planet you don’t have any way of life whatsoever.

The only way to build the bright green narrative is to erase every awareness of the creatures and communities being consumed. They simply don’t exist, and if they do exist, they don’t matter. Take, for example, the Florida yew whose home is one single 15-mile stretch, now under threat from biomass production. Or the Scottish wildcat who number a grim 35, all at risk from a proposed wind installation.

“Progress,” Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan reminds us, “is a sort of madness that is a god to people. Decent people commit horrible crimes that are acceptable because of progress.” And so our culture hurtles towards are new industrial paradigm, and the wildcats are consigned to history.

The true facts about supposedly renewable energy are hard, and worse than inconvenient. The first truth is that industrial civilization requires industrial levels of energy. The second is that fossil fuel—especially oil— is functionally irreplaceable. Scaling the current renewable energy technology, like solar, wind, hydro, and biomass, would be tantamount to ecocide. Consider that 12 percent of the continental United States would have to be covered in windfarms to meet current electricity demands. But electricity is only one-sixth of the nation’s energy consumption. To provide for the U.S.A.’s total energy consumption, fully 72 percent of the continent would have to be devoted to wind farms. In reality, solar and wind development threaten to destroy as much land globally as expansion of urban sprawl, oil and gas, coal, and mining combined by 2050.

Third, solar, wind, and battery technology are, in their own right, assaults against the living world. From beginning to end, they require industrial-scale devastation: open-pit mining, deforestation, soil toxification that’s permanent on anything but a geologic timescale, extirpation and extinction of vulnerable species, and use of fossil fuels. In reality, so-called “green” technologies are some of the most destructive industrial processes every invented. They will not save the earth. They will only hasten its demise.

There are solutions once we confront the actual problem. Simply put, we have to stop destroying the planet and let the world come back. A recent study published in Nature found that we could cut the amount of carbon emissions built up in atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution by half by reverting some 30% of the world’s farmland to its natural state. This would have the added benefit of preserving some 70% of endangered animals and plants. This is the lowest of low hanging fruit when it comes to combating climate change and healing our planet. Everywhere we can see examples of when the wounded are healed, the missing appear, and the exiled return. Forests repair, grasses take root, and soil sequesters carbon. It’s not too late.

If environmentalism is going to help save the planet—and if it is going to respond to global warming in any way commensurate with the threat—it needs to return to its roots, remember the love that founders like Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold had for the land. We need to pledge our loyalty to this planet, the planet that is home to the only life we know of in the universe. Jack D. Forbes wrote that “the universe is our holy book, the earth our genesis, the sky our sacred scroll.” This world is our only home, and to desecrate it is a deep evil. To repair and protect is our calling.

There’s no time for despair. We have to take back our movement and defend our beloved. How can we do less? The yew and the wildcats need us now.

Dr. Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology; author of Earth Democracy and Making Peace with the Earth

“Bright Green Lies exposes the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of leading environmental groups and their most prominent cheerleaders. The best known environmentalists, he illustrates, are not in the business of speaking truth, or even holding up rational solutions to blunt the impending ecocide, but a mendacious and self-serving illusion that provides comfort at the expense of reality. They fail to state the obvious. We cannot continue to wallow in hedonistic consumption and industrial expansion and survive as a species. The environmental debate, Jensen argues, is, because of them, distorted by hubris and the childish desire by those in industrialized nations to sustain the unsustainable. All debates about environmental policy needs to begin with honoring and protecting, not the desires of the human species, but the sanctity of the earth itself. We refuse to ask the right questions because these questions expose a stark truth—we cannot continue to live as we are living. To do so is suicidal folly.

‘Tell me how you seek and I will tell you what you are seeking,’ the German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said. This is the power of Bright Green Lies. It asks the questions most refuse to ask and in that questioning, that seeking, uncovers profound truths we ignore at our peril.”

—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of America: The Farewell Tour

“Bright Green Lies dismantles the illusion of ‘green’ technology in breathtaking, comprehensive detail, revealing a fantasy that must perish if there is to be any hope of preserving what remains of life on Earth. From solar panels to wind turbines, from LED light bulbs to electric cars, no green fantasy escapes Jensen, Keith, and Wilberts revealing peek behind the green curtain. Bright Green Lies is a must-read for all who cherish life on Earth.”

—Jeff Gibbs, writer, director, and producer of the film Planet of the Humans

“This disturbing but very important book makes clear we must dig deeper than the normal solutions we are offered.”

—Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia

 So for all these years we have been led to believe that natural energy (green) is the answer to all our problems when it seems to be the exact opposite.

There was a piece in the film about agriculture and that is playing a very big part in the destruction of our wonderful planet.  There was also interviews with one of the experts trying to put all this green energy across the USA and elsewhere and his reply to the question about the amount of birds and insects that the solar sites were killing, was positively mind blowing.

 To all the people who for years have been championing the "green energy" revolution, my heart goes out to you because I can imagine how you must be feeling about how all this has turned out.

We cannot give up. As you are all aware, we are the first generation to fully know that we are all doing to the Earth.  

The blog song for today is " Out of time" by the Rolling Stones.  

TTFN

 

 

 

 

Plastic manufacturing and the real cost to communities

 

I am watching a documentary series on Netflix called Dirty Money.  The first one was about landlords, in particular Donald Trumps son in law, the second was about blood gold, how the drug cartels of south america are laundering their money by illegally mining gold in Peru, sending it to the USA and they would pay in clean money.  The one I watched today was all about a plastic manufacturing company originating in Taiwan and how they ruined and poisened a whole town.  The company is called Formosa, but they are just one of many polluting everything they touch as well as cutting corners on safety, all to make more and more money.  We have to stop buying so much plastic.

Here is more information on the succesfull lawsuit that the residents of the area of Point Comfort brought against Formosa.

On the afternoon of January 15, activist Diane Wilson kicked off a San Antonio Estuary Waterkeeper meeting on the side of the road across from a Formosa plastics manufacturing plant in Point Comfort, Texas. After Wilson and the waterkeeper successfully sued Formosa, the company agreed to no longer release even one of the tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles into the region’s waterways. The group of volunteers had assembled that day to check whether the plant was still discharging these raw materials of plastics manufacturing.   

Their suit against Formosa Plastics Corp. USA resulted in a $50-million-dollar settlement and a range of conditions in an agreement known as a consent decree. Key among the conditions was the company’s promise to halt releasing the nurdles it manufactures into local waterways leading to the Texas Gulf Coast by January 15.

Wilson described the occasion as “day one of the zero discharge settlement.” As of that date, Formosa could be fined up to $15,000 a day if it were found still discharging nurdles. That would put the multi-billion-dollar plastics maker in violation of the court settlement made after U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt determined the company had violated the Clean Water Act by discharging plastic pellets and PVC powder into Lavaca Bay and Cox Creek in a June 27 ruling last year.

The deal, signed by Judge Hoyt in December, represents the U.S.’s largest settlement in a Clean Water Act lawsuit brought by private individuals against an industrial polluter. The settlement mandates that both Formosa and the plaintiffs agree to a monitor, remediation consultant, engineer, and trustee for ongoing monitoring of the plant.

After calling the group’s meeting to order, Wilson gave an update on how requirements of the consent decree were progressing. The volunteer team of nurdle monitors, who have been collecting nurdles discharged by the plant for the last four years, listened eagerly. Wilson said that Formosa had missed the January 15 deadline to deliver the waivers they needed to sign, which would grant them permission to monitor on the company’s property along the fence line. Without the signed forms, the group put off their on-the-ground monitoring trip. Instead, they headed for the banks of Cox Creek, where Wilson set off in a kayak to check on one of the plant’s outfalls.

Within 10 minutes she collected an estimated 300 of the little plastic pellets. Wilson says she will save them as evidence, along with any additional material the group collects, to present to the official — and yet-to-be-selected — monitor.

Wilson received the waiver forms from Formosa a day after the deadline. The group plans to set out by foot on January 18, which will allow them to cover more ground on their next monitoring trip. They hope to check all of the facility’s 14 outtakes where nurdles could be still be escaping. Any nurdles discharged on or after January 15 in the area immediately surrounding the plant would be in violation of the court settlement.

Pointing along the creek’s edge, Ronnie Hamrick, a member of the San Antonio Estuary Waterkeeper and former Formosa employee, showed me how to distinguish new plastic pellets from the legacy nurdles from past discharges. The new ones are brighter and white compared to the older ones, which take on a dull gray color. Old nurdles were plentiful along the creek’s banks despite cleanup crews deployed by Formosa in that area. Newer ones were easy to find in the water after Hamrick pushed a rake into the marsh, stirring them up from below the water’s surface in Cox Creek.

When Wilson returned from her kayak, she showcased her find: The nurdles she had just collected from the Formosa outfall were bright white, making them easy to distinguish from the older ones littering the bank where she had launched her kayak. She plans to turn them over as evidence of newly discharged nurdles to the official monitor once one is selected in accordance to the consent decree.

Lawsuit Against Formosa’s Planned Louisiana Plant

On that same afternoon, Wilson learned that conservation and community groups in Louisiana had sued the Trump administration, challenging federal environmental permits for Formosa’s planned $9.4 billion plastics complex in St. James Parish.  

The news made Wilson smile. “I hope they win. The best way to stop the company from polluting is not to let them build another plant,” she told me. 

The lawsuit was filed in federal court against the Army Corps of Engineers, accusing the Corps of failing to disclose environmental damage and public health risks and failing to adequately consider environmental damage from the proposed plastics plant. Wilson had met some of the Louisiana-based activists last year when a group of them had traveled to Point Comfort and protested with her outside Formosa’s plastics plant that had begun operations in 1983. Among them was Sharon Lavigne, founder of the community group Rise St. James, who lives just over a mile and a half from the proposed plastics complex in Louisiana.

Back then, Wilson offered them encouragement in their fight. A few months after winning her own case last June, she gave them boxes of nurdles she had used in her case against Formosa. The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups in the Louisiana lawsuit, transported the nurdles to St. James. The hope was that these plastic pellets would help environmental advocates there convince Louisiana regulators to deny Formosa’s request for air permits required for building its proposed St. James plastics complex that would also produce nurdles. On January 6, Formosa received those permits, but it still has a few more steps before receiving full approval for the plant.

 In their January 15 lawsuit, the groups, which also include Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and Healthy Gulf, point out that a Texas judge called Formosa’s Point Comfort plant a “serial offender” of the Clean Water Act. They also cite another Formosa facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which has been in violation of the Clean Air Act every quarter since 2009. 

The new plant slated for St. James Parish “is expected to emit and discharge a variety of pollutants, including carcinogens and endocrine disrupters, into the air and water; [and] discharge plastic into the Mississippi River and other waterbodies,” the lawsuit alleges.

DeSmog’s Sharon Kelly reported that out of all the new or expanding U.S. refineries, liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, and petrochemical plants seeking air permits, Formosa’s St. James plant would top the list of air polluters.

“Wilson’s victory against Formosa was very encouraging,” Sharon Lavigne told me over the phone. She plans to cite it as one of the many reasons why the St. James Parish Council should reverse its 2018 decision to grant Formosa a land use permit for the sprawling plastics facility. She and others will address the council over a multitude of issues at its upcoming January 21 meeting.

From the Gulf Coast to Europe

Just a day after Wilson found apparently new nurdles in Point Comfort, the Plastic Soup Foundation, an advocacy group based in Amsterdam, took legal steps to stop plastic pellet pollution in Europe. On behalf of the group, environmental lawyers submitted an enforcement request to a Dutch environmental protection agency, which is responsible for regulating the cleanup of nurdles polluting waterways in the Netherlands.

The foundation is the first organization in Europe to take legal steps to stop plastic pellet pollution. It cites in its enforcement request to regulators Wilson’s victory in obtaining a “zero discharge” promise from Formosa and is seeking a similar result against Ducor Petrochemicals, the Rotterdam plastic producer. Its goal is to prod regulators into forcing Ducor to remove tens of millions of plastic pellets from the banks immediately surrounding its petrochemical plant.

Besides polluting waterways, the ongoing build-out of the petrochemical and plastics industry doesn’t align with efforts to keep global warming in check.

Wilson and her fellow volunteers plan to keep monitoring the Point Comfort plant until it stops discharging the tiny plastic pellets into Texas waters entirely. 

I reached out to Formosa about whether it was aware its Point Comfort plant was apparently still discharging nurdles but didn’t receive a reply before publication.

 So as long as we keep buying plastic companies like these will get bigger and bigger, we are in fact causing our own downfall.

Its all about supply and demand.

The blog song for today is: "Are you going to be my girl"by  Jet

TTFN

 

 

 

Seaspiracy the movie was chilling – but what can I do now? Greenpeace has this to say!

 

I’ve seen Seaspiracy, now do I need to go fish-free to save the ocean?

 A report by:

Ellie Hooper

1 April 2021

 

The film has already caused some controversy (not a bad thing), but like its Cowspiracy counterpart, unfortunately some of the information it contains has also been questioned. 

It has also been criticised for ignoring indigenous knowledge of the ocean and how to take care of it. Read more on that here.

Seaspiracy does however make some important points and there is no doubt that the oceans are in big trouble. I’m not going to do a full fact-check of Seaspiracy, but I do want to challenge the idea that the only thing you can do is stop eating fish. 

In the Global North where our access to a variety of different food types is greater, we should all be eating less animal products. It’s better for the planet and it’s better for us, too. 

But the problem with claiming this is the best thing you can do, or the only route to saving the ocean, is that it’s just not enough for some of us to change our diets. We need big systemic change, and we need it quickly.

Also, many communities around the globe, and indeed here in Aoteaora, depend upon fishing to survive. Not everyone can afford to avoid seafood, and many of these communities don’t take more from the sea than they need. A blanket ban on eating fish would unfairly disadvantage these communities. It is industrialised fishing that’s the true evil here, not traditional harvesters taking what they need to feed their family.

Many people in the Global South are amongst the most vulnerable in the world, fighting multiple threats including climate change and overfishing – both catastrophes that have been largely caused by the privileged Global North.   

Going fish-free is great if you can, but our true power lies in when we work together. If we want to change things at the speed we need to, we must put pressure on global governments to change the way we treat the ocean. The ocean doesn’t have time to wait for every individual to go vegan. Read more about why going vegan can’t be the only answer.

Global solutions to problems raised by Seaspiracy

Solving a problem as large as this is not simple. But there are solutions, backed up by scientists who have been waving red flags for years.

What we need to get these solutions implemented is people power. Everyday people, getting together and creating pressure on their government to protect the ocean for us all. 

This is how we’ve made change happen many times before – including kicking oil and gas giants out of New Zealand, stopping shark finning, and getting more protections for Māui dolphins.

Protecting key areas of the sea from commercial fishing – areas that are known migratory pathways, biodiversity hotspots and spawning grounds – is one of the major solutions scientists have put forward to save the ocean from collapse. 

A Global Ocean Treaty at the UN would give us the ability to protect 30% of the world’s ocean from fishing and other threats, and allow it to start recovering. The good news is that we know recovery is possible, and that it could happen within a few decades, if we take action now.

Greenpeace has been campaigning for a Global Ocean Treaty for years, and it is vital that we get the strongest version of it across the line.

If you do one thing for the ocean today – make it joining this campaign for international ocean sanctuaries

It starts local

In Aotearoa and around the world, the commercial fishing industry is doing widespread damage to the ocean through techniques like bottom trawling that destroy habitats, kill non-target species, and take too many fish for populations to rebuild. 

 

 

 

Greenpeace NZ activists deliver a Christmas tree to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, calling for cameras on boats in order to curb destructive fishing practices.  

As Seaspiracy noted, this is having a devastating effect on the functioning of the ocean – our biggest carbon sink, and home to an estimated 80% of life on this planet. 

We cannot fight the twin crises in biodiversity and climate if we don’t protect the ocean, take less from it, and stop damaging its ability to sequester carbon. 

So we must take the commercial fishing industry to task, and force governments to stop letting them off the hook for the damage they do. Our survival, and the survival of everything else on this planet, depends on a healthy ocean. If the ocean dies, we die too.

In Aotearoa we’ve known for years that Big Fishing companies have too much influence over our Government and ocean management decisions, and we know the way we fish needs to change. 

We know that the commercial fishing industry lobbies the Government relentlessly and has successfully watered-down ocean protection measures for decades – from those that protect seabirds to those designed to protect coral. We suspect that it’s their influence preventing New Zealand from committing to a strong Global Ocean Treaty at the UN.

Take on the most destructive forms of fishing

 Bottom trawling – the most devastating form of fishing there is – needs to be banned where corals grow and provide vital habitats for fish and the very basis of the oceanic food chain. 

When bottom trawlers target seamounts where these corals are found, they bulldoze everything. Their giant nets capture everything in the area, from target to non target species, ancient corals to sharks. Worse still is that the nature of the trawling destroys the habitat, flattening it, meaning it can no longer support life, and won’t for decades to come.

In Seaspiracy they quote the stat that 3.9 billion acres of seafloor is destroyed by bottom trawling every year, compared to 25 million on land. 

The impacts of this on biodiversity are obvious, but just last month it was revealed that bottom trawling also releases more carbon emissions than global aviation.

This form of fishing is a double whammy for the environment – wiping out species and habitats, and disturbing the world’s largest carbon sink on which life on Earth depends.

Over 50,000 New Zealanders have already joined the campaign to ban bottom trawling on seamounts, will you join them today?

ADD MY NAME TO STOP BOTTOM TRAWLING

Hold the fishing industry to account 

The commercial fishing industry needs to be held to account for what they do out at sea. A key component to that is getting more transparency around it. 

There are already rules for fishers about how to protect the ocean, but without independent checks there is no way to ensure they are being followed. Again and again we are shown that when we rely on commercial fishing to self-report the impacts of their fishing, they don’t tell the whole truth. 

To ensure they do, and to make sure commercial fishing can’t stay out of sight and out of mind, we need cameras on all commercial fishing vessels, and the footage accessible to more than just the industry.

Join the campaign to get cameras on 100% of the commercial fishing fleet:

ADD MY NAME

  

Tackle plastic fishing waste

The plastic-free movement has exploded in the past five years, bringing with it millions of individuals who vowed to avoid plastic bottles, ban the bag, and ditch the plastic packaging. Eliminating single-use plastic is important if we want to stem the tide entering the ocean, but there’s one industry that’s still getting off the hook and they’re a major contributor.

Ghost fishing gear – lines and the like that are lost or discarded at sea by commercial fishing – is everywhere. It’s estimated fishing waste makes up a whopping 46 per cent of what’s in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

This stuff is all the more deadly to ocean life because it was always designed to kill, and when it’s lost at sea it goes on killing for years after becoming separated from its original owner. Many whales, dolphins, turtles and fish get caught up in these nets and perish, or ingest them and die.

It’s high time commercial fishing was held to account for their role in the plastics crisis, and we’ve got a campaign for that too. 

ADD MY NAME

Don’t just sign petitions

Taking action is what Greenpeace is all about. For fifty years, we’ve been standing up for the ocean, and all life on this Earth. 

Greenpeace campaigned to get Thai Union to implement sustainable fishing practices and worker-protection, following revelations that Thai Union has been linked to human rights abuses in its supply chain. © Will Rose / Greenpeace

Our independence matters. We don’t take money from governments or corporations, so we’re free to campaign against whatever and whoever we need to. 

If you want to get involved further in protecting our blue planet, send us a message at genz@greenpeace.org and someone will be in touch with you.

And sign up now to donate monthly, it’s regular contributions from people like you that keeps us in action.

DONATE NOW

 

I donate 6 euros a month because I think these people are doing an absolutely wonderful job, I have supported them for over 30 years.