Good, Better, Best — Reducing Textile Waste

I read this article on one of my favourite websites, earth911.com and found it very interesting.  It has some good ideas and advice for reducing textile waste.  I usually give all my old clothes to a local charitiy shop here in Ciutadella, there are containers all around to place your donated clothes into which is good for me, because if I go into the shop I tend to come out with more clothes! I have had some great bargains from there!

Fabric seems like an oddly specific item to make the list of top waste categories. But textiles are the sixth most common material in the garbage.

Textile waste is a fairly new problem. Historically, fabrics were expensive, labour-intensive materials that would be reused until there was almost nothing left to throw away, and even rags would be recycled into new fabric or paper. Modern textile recycling is much less thorough.

Today, textiles comprise 6.3% of municipal solid waste. We’ve rounded up some good, better, and best options for reducing the textiles your household throws away.

Textile Waste

After paper, food, plastic, yard waste, and metal, textiles make up the largest component of household waste. Most textile waste is discarded clothing. But furniture, carpets, bedding, and even footwear and tires contribute to the total. The EPA estimates that textile waste generation was 16.9 million tons in 2017. Only 2.6 million tons of textiles (about 15%) were recycled that year.

Textile waste has increased 811% since 1960, and this is at least partly the result of the rise of fast fashion. One study found that the number of times a piece of clothing is worn before being discarded has decreased 36% in the past 15 years.

Good

A good time to start cutting down on textile waste is before you shop. Precycle by being more selective with your clothing purchases and only buying what you will actually wear. Buy the best quality you can afford and choose secondhand when possible.

Learn how to care for your clothes and do basic repairs so your clothes last longer. Don’t assume that just because you no longer want an item of clothing no one else will. You may be able to resell expensive and fashionable items, but even older and somewhat worn items can be donated to charity. To paraphrase a cliché, one person’s old trash is another’s vintage treasure. Help others reduce their textile waste by organizing a clothing swap.

Better

Items that are too worn or damaged to donate may still contain enough good fabric to repurpose, and the potential upcycling uses of T-shirts and denim are myriad. However, you may not have a need for (or time to make) recycled products from worn-out pieces of clothing and fabric scraps. If you’re not a crafter, T-shirts (together with old sheets and towels) are good candidates for use as cleaning rags. This will also cut down on paper waste.

Closing the loop with renewed and recycled clothing can be more expensive than mall brands, but are a better choice when you can’t find what you need secondhand.

Best

Once you’ve stopped adding used clothing to the landfill, turn your attention to household furniture, carpets, mattresses, and other less obvious sources of textile waste. As with clothes, consider whether the life of an item can be extended through deep cleaning or reupholstery before getting rid of it. (If you reupholster furniture, be sure to recycle the old fabric.)

When you no longer want usable items, donate them rather than disposing of them. Use the Earth911 database to look for recycling options for unusable items. If disposal is your only option, learn to disassemble items so that you can recycle the components, including upholstery fabric.

Shoes are another challenging product because they contain a combination of textiles, plastic, and leather. Wear your shoes as long as possible, then find out where to recycle tennis shoes. When you buy new shoes, seek out those made with recycled materials.

Often, the easiest way to deal with bulky items like furniture and mattresses is through producer responsibility programs. As with clothing, buy less, buy less often, and when you must buy, get secondhand or recycled products. When purchasing new, look for carpet suppliers and mattress brands that offer take-back programs.

If you are really serious about keeping textiles out of the landfill, it is possible to achieve zero textile waste.

This post was originally published on April 27, 2020.

The blog song for today is: "Save me" by Queen

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The plastic problem in Canada and what they are doing to resolve it. Plastic is Toxic

 

Blue surgical mask were aggressively sold to hospitals in the 1960s to replace reusable cotton masks. The shift to this "total disposable system" was sold as a way to reduce hospital labour and infrastructure costs, despite evidence well-made cotton masks might work better, a 2020 article in The Lancet notes.

Stouffer, the marketing guru, was delighted: “You are filling trash cans, the rubbish dumps, the incinerators with literally billions of plastic bottles, plastic jugs, plastic tubs, skin and blister packs, plastic bags and films and sheet packages — and now, even plastic cans,” he boasted to industry leaders in 1963.

But disposability soon fell under attack. Farmers, environmentalists and others infuriated by roadside litter began to point fingers at the plastic industry. Recycling was the manufacturers’ retort — a front that allowed them to shift responsibility for plastic waste onto consumers instead of cutting back on production and profits, explains Liboiron.

Beach Guardian's cleanup activity in Wadebridge, Cornwall, U.K. Photos by Beach Guardian / Greenpeace

“That’s what American environmentalism out of the 1970s was — the individualization of environmental problems to let industry off the hook,” they say. “Recycling is an industry project. Green consumerism is an industry project. It’s not a coincidence that the inculturation of environmentalism happened that way. It’s very American.”

Canadians quickly followed the trend. That storyline remains evident even now. The majority of plastic waste in Canada comes from businesses, institutions and industry, yet most provincial or regional waste management regimes focus on collecting plastic waste from homes.

And activism against all pollution, including plastic, evolved quite differently in other parts of the world, Liboiron points out. For example, Maori land guardians in New Zealand have linked plastic pollution to land and food sovereignty issues and are working to move people towards relying on local, unpackaged food sources, they say.

Hanging onto the recycling myth

Still, in Ottawa today, the idea that recycling is salvation remains prominent, both in the federal government’s plastics plan and on the lips of industry lobbyists.

“Industry agrees that we have a plastic waste matter that needs to be addressed,” says Elena Mantagaris, vice-president for the plastics division of the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC), the country’s leading plastics industry lobbying group. “But we believe that it’s not the use of plastics that’s the issue — it’s the end-of-life management.”

The organization has pushed the Trudeau government to refrain from listing plastics as "toxic" under CEPA, a key part of the federal plan to reduce plastic waste announced last October. Instead, the CIAC wants the federal government to co-ordinate a national plastic waste management regime. Other industry groups and companies have also been advocating for a similar approach.

Waste management currently falls under provincial jurisdiction and recycling programs are managed by municipalities, creating a patchwork of rules around what can — and can't — be recycled in the country.

Plastic waste on a street in Vancouver. Photo by Marc Fawcett-Atkinson

That's confusing for Canadians putting their trash in the sorting bin and makes it tricky for industry to develop easy-to-recycle products, including packaging. Some municipal sorting facilities can accept most plastic types; others can't. The lack of a co-ordinated waste stream reduces the amount of well-sorted, high-quality raw plastic available to recycling companies. As a result, lower-quality and badly sorted plastics usually end up in landfills or might be sent overseas via the U.S.

“Instead of having (thousands) of different recycling programs, get one,” says Mantagaris. She points to the concept of extended producer responsibility (EPR) as the solution. EPR programs force plastic producers to fund and operate recycling systems for their products.

Theoretically, transferring fiscal responsibility for recycling to producers incentivizes them to become more efficient, create products that are easier to recycle and invest in innovative recycling technology.

“One system, and industry will pay for it, industry will manage it,” Mantagaris says.

Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick are planning to implement EPR programs. However, environmentalists point out that B.C., which has the country’s most advanced EPR, still has a poor recycling record. In 2019, only about 46 per cent of plastic packaging was recovered, the program’s most recent annual report stated.

The December report by Greenpeace pointed out half of B.C.’s waste ends up in landfills, incinerators or the environment. And researchers at Memorial University found the B.C. program has had almost no impact on the volume of waste found on the province’s shoreline.

For World Cleanup Day, Greenpeace, community allies and volunteers co-ordinate a cleanup activity and plastic polluter brand audit. Photos by Amy Scaife / Greenpeace

That is particularly concerning because ocean plastic pollution is among the factors driving the government's decision to regulate plastic. In 2018, the Trudeau government committed to the international Oceans Plastic Charter, an informal agreement to drastically reduce plastic pollution while increasing the amount of recycled plastic on the market. And while the proposed plan aims to meet these international targets, actually achieving them without cutting back on how much plastic Canadians use will be a struggle, environmentalists say.

To meet the charter’s goals, mechanical recycling facilities, which currently handle about seven per cent of the country’s plastic waste, would need to roughly triple capacity by 2030. Canada’s chemical recycling rate would need to skyrocket from one per cent to 36 per cent. And even then, recycling could only take care of 62 per cent of the country’s plastic waste. The remainder would end up in incinerators, landfills or the environment, the 2019 ECCC-commissioned report projects.

Reduction over recycling

Focusing on building better recycling systems misses the point, says MacBride, the professor at CUNY.

“The direction we should be heading is drastically reducing the amount of plastic coursing through our economies,” she says.

That doesn’t mean getting rid of plastic entirely — it is necessary for some products like medical devices, she says. Rather, MacBride would like to see a systemic change to our throwaway culture.

That's particularly important because ridding the world of the plastic we've already created is almost impossible, Liboiron points out.

"Plastic can’t be contained," they say. “It’s one of the most durable things in the world. It’ll last epochs” — which means reducing how much we produce is key to keeping it out of the environment.

When consulted as an expert during the federal policy’s initial drafting phase, they recommended ending subsidies for the oil and petrochemical industry to slow plastic production. According to the December Greenpeace report, those subsidies have topped $334 million to virgin oil plastic producers alone since 2017. Canada's oil and gas industries, for their part, receive about $4.8 billion annually in public subsidies noted a December 2020 analysis by the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Still, cutting back production is only half the solution, they say. Canadian policy-makers need to take a holistic look at how Canadians eat, move and otherwise inhabit the world — then develop locally tailored systems that make it possible to live well without disposable plastic.

"There are people alive (who) have memories of before there was disposable packaging,” they note. “They ate things. They were OK.”

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

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How marine resources play a crucial role in economies.

 Another interesting report from "The Wave"

The future of ocean life in the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) Seascape will determine that of myriad communities in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia.

This remarkable area of ocean is crucial to the economy and culture of these four countries. With more than five million people living just a few miles from the shores of the ETP Seascape, essentially every member of these coastal communities is connected to the marine resources on their doorstep. Small-scale and artisanal fishing in the region employs an estimated 1.3 million fishers and fish farmers; many more people work in shipping or the thriving tourism industry. The hum of economic activity touches most of the population in one way or another. Needless to say, this ocean region is a vital source of livelihoods, opportunities, and recreation.

Today, the vibrant marine life of the ETP Seascape is under threat from industrial fishing and gaps in marine protection along important animal migration routes. Symbolic and critical marine species risk becoming extinct, causing coastal communities who rely on the ocean for their income and sustenance to suffer the worst outcomes.

Yet, the ETP Seascape is also an unparalleled opportunity for multinational guardianship of the ocean. If Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia can come together to create the world’s first multinational network of marine protected areas in their waters, it will help secure the health of the global ocean, supporting economies and sustainable progress locally and nationally along the way.

In May 2021, the Tide community is partnering with MigraMar to support their round-trip research expedition to the ETP Seascape.

Specifically, the MigraMar team is conducting a multi-stop scientific voyage through the Cocos-Galápagos Swimway—the critical “marine superhighway” that connects the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Cocos Island and the Galápagos Islands—with the goal of obtaining additional scientific information to inform marine policy proposals for the region. This will, in turn, help establish protections for endangered migratory species like hammerhead sharks, whale sharks, and leatherback sea turtles.

Learn about The Tide’s support for MigraMar’s critical scientific efforts to help protect endangered marine species we all know and love, for people and the planet.

 

May 2021

How The Tide is safeguarding endangered marine species in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape

Randall Arauz, a co-founder of MigraMar, has long been an advocate for his Costa Rican ocean, from protecting endangered sea turtles to regulating the practice of shark finning to phasing out shrimp trawling.

As a scientist, activist, and environmental policy plaintiff, Randall has seen how doing diligent research in the field is a pathway to enacting change in the courtroom. With his attention now focused on the ETP Seascape in its entirety, he’s looking to once again use data-driven science to preserve this jeopardized ecosystem and the small-scale fishers who depend on it.

For thousands of artisanal fishers that live along the coast of Ecuador, heading out to sea before the sun rises is not a choice, it’s a way of life.

For these fishers, the ocean isn’t just a workplace, it’s a source of life, of memories, of culture—an old friend that has always provided without asking for anything in return. But that same friend they’ve depended on for generations is now being attacked on all fronts: by pollution, the climate crisis, and especially excessive and illegal fishing that is altering the ocean beyond their control.

This is why we should all try to buy local produce and avoid the large conglomerates, they are the ones who are destroying everything and we are not helping by buying their products.  We need to hit them where it hurts and the only place (I am afraid to say) is in their wallets.

The blog song for today is: " Yellow Submarine" by the Beatles

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PETA Investigates How South African President Secretly Profits From Trophy Hunting

 

Trophy hunters and others who make a living selling hunting trips and accessories like to claim that they kill animals in the name of “conservation” or, patronizingly, to support “natives”—but as this just-breaking PETA video shows, hunting has nothing to do with respecting wildlife and everything to do with taking sadistic pleasure in needlessly taking life.

Following an undercover investigation, PETA has revealed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s hidden connections and investments in the trophy hunting industry and obtained video footage of an American trophy hunter who repeatedly shoots a young elephant just outside Kruger National Park.

PETA’s secret investigation has uncovered South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s hidden connections and investments in the trophy hunting industry.

Footage reveals that Ramaphosa is quietly developing and expanding a trophy hunting property called Diepdrift—stocking it with animals from his own wildlife breeding operation, Phala Phala—and that he owns a 50% stake in Tsala Hunting Safaris. In other words, far from “conserving” wildlife, wild animals are bred specifically to be killed for trophies. PETA recorded conversations in which Ramaphosa’s managers admitted that he shares equally in the profits from all hunts conducted through Tsala and spoke of the importance of concealing his involvement.

One manager said,

“We try to keep the president’s name actually out of the hunting thing because … of all the greenies …. So he wanna spare himself this, how can I say, bad publicity and all of that.”

 

Elephant Just Outside National Park Slaughtered by American Trophy Hunter

President Ramaphosa’s Tsala Hunting Safaris routinely organizes elephant hunts through Wayne Wagner Safaris on properties of the Greater Kruger Conservancy. PETA obtained video footage of an American trophy hunter attempting to gun down a curious young elephant who had peacefully ambled out of the bush on one of the hunts on these properties. The hunter takes his first shot, and the elephant falls to his knees and looks straight at the hunting party. He continues to suffer as the American—who paid $30,000 for this sick thrill—takes his time. The guides attempt to help him with his aim, and then he shoots the helpless elephant four more times, causing him to rumble in distress. How many more shots were fired and how long the elephant suffered before finally dying is unknown. The hunter later paid $20,000 to have his body parts preserved for shipment to the United States.

PETA has filed a request for an investigation into whether the prolonged death of the elephant shown in the video constitutes a cruelty-to-animals violation of the South African hunting permit.

The American hunter killed the elephant just outside the famous Kruger National Park in South Africa where no hunting is allowed. There are no fences, by design, so animals who inadvertently cross the boundary from the park to the reserve are no longer protected. Hunters’ guides often wait for this to happen or track the movements of the elephants in the park so that they will know exactly when the animals are unwittingly putting themselves in harm’s way.

Killing Wildlife for 'Sport'

Trophy hunters pay thousands of dollars to shoot animals, including antelopes, baboons, buffaloes, giraffes, hippos, and zebras, through Tsala Hunting Safaris. Earlier this year, a Dutch doctor and his wife slaughtered a buffalo, a bush pig, a kudu, and several impalas during a Diepdrift hunting safari. Hundreds of animals are also killed at Phala Phala by the property manager, and their flesh is sold as exotic game meat.

Shooting Lions in a Barrel

The animals have no chance of escaping a hunter’s bullet, and no animals are off limits. Tsala conducts lion and elephant hunts on other properties in South Africa and also organizes leopard hunts in Mozambique and Namibia. A Tsala representative told PETA’s investigator that the company could even make special arrangements to acquire rhinos to hunt.

Like the animals bred at Phala Phala and hunted at Diepdrift, many of the lions hunted by Tsala clients are captive-bred, meaning they are habituated to humans.

One video shows a group of hunters ambushing a captive-bred lion resting under a tree. The lion roars and charges after he is shot and wounded by the hunter, and it takes four more shots by the hunter and his guides to kill him.

What You Can Do

All animals are beloved by their own mates and offspring, but to hunters they are only the sum of their body parts, seen simply as living targets to kill, decapitate, and display on the wall. You can help wild animals by demanding an end to trophy hunting.

Do more: Animals shot by trophy hunters often endure a prolonged and painful death—simply so that hunters can chop off their heads and other body parts and send them back home as trophies. By allowing hunters to ship these macabre items, UPS is supporting the slaughter of magnificent animals.

Please use the form below to urge UPS to ban the shipping of hunting trophies. UPS has banned the transport of not only shark fins and certain live animals but also ivory—and if it can ban an animal’s tusks, surely it can ban the head and other body parts, too.

please visit the page below to sign the petition:

https://investigations.peta.org/south-africa-president-ramaphosa-trophy-hunting/

I realise that this is quite a distressing report but these things must be brought to everyone´s attention if anything is going to change.  If there was no demand for this horrendous and disgusting trade then the people would´t provide it.  

I have never ever been able to understand the fascination that some crappy, lowlife, unfeeling, power hungry morons have with killing other living things for fun.  What is the matter with them? It saddens me that there is a market for this barbaric and cowardly crime.  As usual it is all about money.

I really would like to see these "hunters" let loose in the habitat without their guns and weapons to face the animals on the same level. They would be hiding in fear, but unfortunately that would never happen because these people are cowards, and as for the women who do this, that is a whole different level, what on earth are they trying to prove, that they can be just as big a coward as a man? Stupid, stupid, ignorant, greedy, evil idiots who are  totally unaware that they are destroying many species on our only planet.

The blog song for today is " True" by Spandau Ballet

TTFN

Parece que Ecoembes relanza el programa de reciclos!

 

“Reciclos”: reciclar en Ciutadella tiene premio

Ecoembes y Ajuntament dan un nuevo impulso a la campaña de reciclaje

Contenedor de Ecoembes.

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Ahora reciclar en Ciutadella tiene premio. “Reciclos”, el primer sistema de reciclaje digital, ha iniciado una nueva campaña. Se trata de una iniciativa que contará con una acción de marketing en la calle, que durante cuatro días, y que enseñará a los participantes a sumar “Reciclos”.

Los ciudadanos optarán a diversos premios y se podrán donar “Reciclos” a la Creu Roja, después del convenio que han firmado Ecoembes y la organización de voluntarios.

Todos los contenedores amarillos de Ciutadella llevan desde hace días un código QR que permite sumar “Reciclos” y atrapar premios. Tres monitores, que se ubicarán en la plaça de la Catedral los días 21 y 29 de mayo, así como el 4 y el 12 de junio, enseñarán de primera mano como funciona.

Los monitores rodarán por el centro de la ciudad con sus bicicletas eléctricas para transmitir de una forma ecológica el mensaje de los beneficios que comporta unirse a “Reciclos”, la nueva forma de reciclar diseñada por Ecoembes.

“Es un proyecto pionero internacionalmente en el que se unen reciclaje, tecnología e incentivos“, explican desde Ecoembes. “El sistema busca revolucionar y repensar la manera de movilizar al ciudadano en cuestiones medioambientales.

¡Aquí vamos de nuevo! Lo que deberían explicar es cómo debemos reducir la producción de plástico en primer lugar.
Necesitamos usar y comprar menos, no dar recompensas por aumentar el reciclaje.

Empecé usando esta aplicación, pero en realidad no era una aplicación, era una página web y no funcionaba muy bien.
 

Solo funcionaba con botellas de 5 litros de marcas reconocidas, no con marcas propias de las tiendas, lo que me pareció muy extraño.
 

Envié un correo electrónico sobre esto y me dijeron que el programa no funcionaba con botellas de 5 litros, pero algunas habían sido aceptadas.

Puedeser me voy a probar otra vez, pero tengo dudas!

El cancion del blog para hoy esta: " Riders on the storm" de "the Doors"

Hasta pronto

 

This is our moment. We cannot turn back time. But we can grow trees, green our cities, rewild our gardens, change our diets and clean up rivers and coasts. We are the generation that can make peace with nature. Let’s get active, not anxious. Let’s be bold, not timid.

 Information from the United Nations official website:

REIMAGINE. RECREATE. RESTORE.

For too long, we have been exploiting and destroying our planet’s ecosystems. Every three seconds, the world loses enough forest to cover a football pitch and over the last century we have& destroyed half of our& wetlands. As much as 50 per cent of our coral reefs have already been lost and up to 90 per cent of coral reefs could be lost by 2050, even if global warming is limited to an increase of 1.5°C.

Ecosystem loss is depriving the world of carbon sinks, like forests and peatlands, at a time humanity can least afford it. Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown for three consecutive years and the planet is one pace for potentially catastrophic climate change.

With this big and challenging picture, the World Environment Day is focus in the ecosystem restoration and its theme is “Reimagine. Recreate.Restore.”

Ecosystem restoration means preventing, halting and reversing this damage – to go from exploiting nature to healing it. This World Environment Day will kick off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a global mission to revive billions of hectares, from forests to farmlands, from the top of mountains to the depth of the sea.

Only with healthy ecosystems can we enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change and stop the collapse of biodiversity.

Ecosystem Restoration Playbook

UNEP has published a practical guide to ecosystem restoration that provides an introduction to the range of actions that can slow and halt the degradation of ecosystems and foster their recovery.

Investing in ecosystems is investing in our future

World Environment Day 2021, which counts with Pakistan as the host country this year for its official celebrations, calls for urgent action to revive our damaged ecosystems.

From forests to peatlands to coasts, we all depend on healthy ecosystems for our survival. Ecosystems are defined as the interaction between living organisms - plants, animals, people - with their surroundings. This includes nature, but also human-made systems such as cities or farms.

Ecosystem restoration is a global undertaking at massive scale. It means repairing billions of hectares of land – an area greater than China or the USA – so that people have access to food, clean water and jobs.

It means bringing back plants and animals from the brink of extinction, from the peaks of mountains to the depths of the sea.

But it also includes the many small actions everyone can take, every day: growing trees, greening our cities, rewilding our gardens or cleaning up trash alongside rivers and coasts.

Restoring ecosystems carries substantial benefits for people. For every dollar invested in restoration, at least seven to thirty dollars in returns for society can be expected. Restoration also creates jobs in rural areas where they are most needed.

World Environment Day launch the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030. 

 This decade aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean. It can help to end poverty, combat climate change and prevent a mass extinction. It will only succeed if everyone plays a part. Find out more about ecosystems and the UN Decade, and join the global movement to restore our world.

 Join the #GenerationRestoration movement through the official website of World Environment Day 2021. You can access more interesting information about ecosystems, the actions you can carry out to contribute to their restoration, as well as a large number of materials to promote the movement through social media. Every performance, no matter how small, matters.

If we all work together, we can at least slow things down, keep up the war against plastic production by reducing, when we can, the amount of plastic containers, single use plastics, refuse plastic bags (or better still take your own along with you, I have cloth ones that fold up really small and fit in my bag) and in general think before we buy or use!

 Happy World Environment Day to our only World.

 The blog song for today is: " All over the world" by Electric Light Orchestra

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Turkey has announced a ban on almost all UK plastic waste imports.

 

 

A message from our friends at Greenpeace, for more information and what more people like us can do, visit the website!

Finally, the government is showing real leadership to protect people, wildlife and our oceans. Unfortunately it’s not the UK government - it’s the Turkish government. Turkey has announced a ban on almost all UK plastic waste imports. [1] That’s incredible news!

 

While it’s great that Turkey is acknowledging the problem with plastic, we can’t let the UK government just find another country to exploit and dump our waste onto instead. The government must take responsibility for our waste and fix the plastic crisis by stopping waste exports to all countries and reducing the amount of plastic that is produced.

 

Plastic is all over the news right now, can you help pile the pressure on Boris and tell him to stop dumping our waste on other countries and take proper plastic action? 

 

 

Last week, a Greenpeace investigation found British plastic recycling being dumped and burned in the open air in Turkey.  And we released Wasteminster (https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/wasteminster-downing-street-disaster/) a film that exposes government hypocrisy on plastic pollution. It’s been watched over 6 million times, with journalists and politicians sharing it. Just two days later, Turkey announced a ban on 95% of UK plastic waste imports. But the UK government, who call themselves plastic leaders, are still silent. Below is a report about the film from Greenpeace.

 

This is a huge milestone in the fight against plastic pollution - but there’s still more to do. Nearly 40% of our recycling goes to Turkey. The government can’t just find more countries to dump that on. First China said no to our waste, now Turkey, where’s next?  The government must take responsibility for our waste, and not expect another country to deal with it for us. 

 

The government has announced a few things like a ban on plastic stirrers, cotton buds and straws and increasing the charge on single-use carrier bags. But these measures won’t stop the plastic crisis. As the UK is the second biggest producer of plastic waste per person in the world, behind the USA,  what the government needs to do is introduce targets to cut single-use plastic by 50% by 2025.  Thanks to your pressure, supermarkets like Sainsbury’s and then Aldi have already done this, so the government should too.

 

One great way to deal with our plastic crisis would be to finally introduce a deposit return scheme (DRS) - when you buy a drink you pay a tiny bit extra, which you get back when you return the container. It’s so effective, some countries with DRS have seen up to 95% recycling rates! The government announced one in 2017, but since then has delayed and tried to water down any potential scheme, making it less effective.

 

To tackle the plastic crisis the government must be the leader it claims it is. It must stop dumping our waste on other countries, and introduce proper measures to reduce plastic waste and improve recycling - like a DRS and plastic reduction targets. Can you make sure Boris Johnson knows people want him to be a plastic leader, and message him on social media?

 

We’ve already made an impact. Thanks to people like you, Turkey has stopped importing almost all of our plastic waste. The UK government has to deal with that now, and with the huge public support and outrage that’s been shown in the past week - we can make them take responsibility. Make sure you use your voice.

P.S. The government currently has a consultation open for Deposit Return Schemes - they’re trying to water it down, again. 

 

The UK is the 2nd biggest producer of plastic waste per person in the world, behind the USA. And because we’re producing so much plastic, the government is dumping it on other countries who can’t cope with it either. 

It’s hard to get your head around the true scale of the plastic problem, so we worked with the talented animators at Park Village Studios to show what it would look like piled up on Boris Johnson’s doorstep.

he UK is the 2nd biggest producer of plastic waste per person in the world, behind the USA. And because we’re producing so much plastic, the government is dumping it on other countries who can’t cope with it either. 

It’s hard to get your head around the true scale of the plastic problem, so we worked with the talented animators at Park Village Studios to show what it would look like piled up on Boris Johnson’s doorstep.

What you see in the film is the amount of plastic we dump on other countries every single day. That’s on average, 1.8 million kilograms a day – or 688,000 tonnes a year of our plastic waste that is fuelling health and wildlife emergencies around the world. Plastic kills hundreds of thousands of marine birds, sea mammals and turtles every year – but it’s not just harming wildlife and our oceans, it’s harming people too.

Plastic being sent overseas is being dumped or burned in the open air, with local communities in Turkey and Malaysia reporting serious health problems, like respiratory issues, nosebleeds and headaches. We have all lived through a health emergency over the past year in the form of Covid-19. But by dumping our plastic waste on other countries, the government has been fuelling another health emergency for even longer.

Time to take responsibility

It’s illegal for the government to send plastic waste to countries if it’s not going to be recycled. But a new Greenpeace investigation has found more evidence of plastic waste being dumped in Turkey.  Turkey receives over a third (38%) of all of our plastic waste exports. The government must take responsibility. 

The government wants to be seen as a leader in tackling plastic pollution, and every line in the film is an actual quote from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove (brilliantly voiced by Matt Forde and Jon Culshaw). And although they’ve announced positive yet very small steps to reduce the UK’s plastic production, they must take proper action to reduce our plastic pollution – and stop dumping our plastic waste on other countries.

If we all join together and work on this now to decrease the amount of plastic produced then we have a chance, if we just carry on like this the planet will not recover.  I cannot see what people do not get about it.

The blog song for today is: " Moby Dick" by Led Zeppelin 

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Los peores supermercados en la lucha contra el plástico (2019) - Espana - El Mejor esta Eroski

 

Carrefour y Mercadona, los peores supermercados en la lucha contra el plástico

17-12-2019 (lo mas nuevo no esta disponible aun)

• Por segundo año consecutivo, Greenpeace publica un ranking de los ocho principales supermercados, según sus compromisos contra el plástico de un solo uso
• Ningún supermercado cumple las demandas solicitadas, pero Eroski es el que más avanza este año
• La organización lanza un breve informe con su propuesta de “supermercado ideal”, basado en la reutilización y el fin del usar y tirar
• La reciente COP25 ha mostrado la urgencia de revertir la grave situación medioambiental, pero los supermercados no se comprometen a eliminar la mayoría de sus envases desechables para 2025

Madrid, 17 de diciembre de 2019.- Lentitud y falta de ambición. Con estas palabras resume Greenpeace la evaluación anual que ha realizado a los ocho supermercados con mayor cuota de mercado del país, para analizar sus progresos en la lucha contra el plástico de un solo uso. A día de hoy, ninguna de las marcas evaluadas (Eroski, Lidl, Alcampo, Aldi, El Corte Inglés, Día, Mercadona y Carrefour) ha integrado las diez medidas de mejora solicitadas por la organización ecologista.

“Muchos supermercados siguen sin apostar por una eliminación real de envases para tratar este problema, y, tras un año de deliberaciones, han decidido tomar medidas poco valientes, como simplemente reducir el grosor de sus envases para usar menos cantidad de plástico o sustituir los plásticos de un solo uso por envases biodegradables o compostables, pero estos también son de un solo uso y muchos pueden seguir conteniendo plásticos”, explica la responsable de la campaña de plásticos en Greenpeace, Alba García.

Eroski se sigue manteniendo a la cabeza, un año más, al haber implementado las mejores medidas por ahora, como aumentar sus frescos a granel e introducir las mallas reusables, entre otros. Aunque el compromiso más ambicioso lo ha presentado Alcampo al comprometerse a reducir el 30% de todos sus envases plásticos para 2025 y un 50% para 2030. Mercadona, Carrefour (1), DIA y El Corte Inglés siguen suspendiendo en este ranking, al no alcanzar ni la mitad de las metas establecidas.

“Con hasta 12 millones de toneladas de plástico llegando a los mares cada año, no podemos esperar diez años más. Urgen medidas ambiciosas que cambien el rumbo de esta situación de forma drástica. De lo contrario, los supermercados seguirán participando en la destrucción de nuestro medio ambiente. Para frenar la contaminación por plásticos hace falta muchísimo más que cambiar las bolsas de caja o eliminar el envase de un par de frutas”, añade García.

Para aumentar la presión e implicar a las y los consumidores, Greenpeace invita a la ciudadanía a llamar a su supermercado para pedirle más avances, por lo que les facilita, en el documento, el contacto público de cada marca.

“Supermercado ideal”

Para explicar qué cambios han de realizar los supermercados, la organización ecologista ha publicado un breve informe titulado “El supermercado ideal” en el que especifica las características de ese establecimiento idílico que, entre otras cosas, tendría que eliminar los envases de un solo uso y ofrecer alternativas reutilizables, rellenables y sostenibles como la venta a granel, los productos de higiene sólidos y sin envases, o los sistemas de retorno y depósito para poder reutilizar el mismo recipiente

 

El cancion del blog hoy esta¨ I want to break free" de Queen.

Adios!

Plastic packaging: which supermarket topped this year’s league table? UK

Here is the latest information from Greenpeace, very good.

Supermarkets still aren't doing enough to reduce plastic - but who's making the most progress? And how has the pandemic changed things? Find out where your supermarket ranks in the latest plastics league table.

Up to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans every year, and plastic pollution is now the biggest killer of marine life. Supermarkets are playing a major part in this tragedy, but they can also be a major part of the solution.

They’ve been talking the talk when it comes to reducing plastic – making pledges and commitments – but more importantly, have they been walking the walk?

For the third time Greenpeace has teamed up with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) to dig deeper into what supermarkets are really doing to cut plastic. Let’s take a look at our updated league table!

The supermarket plastic league table

		Reduced plastic	Reusables	Reduction commitment	Reuse commitment	Recycling	Supply chain	Transparency
1.	Waitrose	60%	60%	78%	48%	29%	76%	91%
2.	Aldi	42%	40%	71%	41%	40%	59%	81%
3.	M&S	67%	30%	22%	24%	43%	46%	77%
4.	Lidl	40%	30%	46%	35%	54%	63%	98%
5.	Sainsbury’s	33%	50%	72%	22%	67%	56%	91%
6.	Tesco	11%	70%	63%	63%	47%	76%	89%
7.	Asda	29%	70%	30%	59%	26%	46%	80%
8.	Co-op	22%	50%	57%	11%	43%	59%	80%
9.	Morrisons	9%	40%	46%	48%	49%	54%	91%
10.	Iceland	22%	60%	63%	19%	11%	22%	57%

Colours
Green: good
Yellow/orange: needs improvement
Red: poor

Key findings:

• Overall, supermarkets still aren’t doing enough to reduce plastic. In 2019 UK supermarkets produced 896,853 tonnes of plastic packaging. This is a slight decrease from 2018 (less than 2%), but it’s way off the progress that our planet really needs, and is certainly nothing to shout about.
• Aldi climbed from last place to second. They reduced their overall plastic footprint, removed single-use plastic carrier bags and committed to halve their plastic footprint by 2025.
• Morrison’s slipped down to ninth place as their plastic use increased. A significant rise in plastic bags and water bottles is a particular area for concern.
• Waitrose have remained top of the league table for the second year in a row. They reported a big reduction in plastic use (in relation to their size), showed good engagement with brands and suppliers and have committed to increasing reusable packaging and unpacked ranges.

Online shopping could mean less plastic

One change you might have guessed was a big increase in online shopping, which is expected to remain after the pandemic. It’s a huge opportunity to reduce plastic. Just last year Tesco partnered with Loop, who uses completely reusable packaging, which is returned, cleaned and reused. If supermarkets replicated this on a large scale they could ditch thousands of tonnes of plastic.

It’s fair to say that COVID-19 has been a setback in the fight against plastic pollution. But from what we can tell, there’s still an appetite from supermarkets to reduce single use and unnecessary plastics.

Shoppers still care about plastic – and change is on the way

Despite the pandemic, plastic packaging is still at the forefront of shoppers’ minds. As you can see from our league table, supermarkets have lots to do if they’re going to stop fuelling the problem and start solving the problem.

Aldi and Sainsbury’s have committed to halving their plastic footprint by 2025. Greenpeace is urging the other major supermarkets to do the same. Increasing ambition on reusable packing and refill stations in-store is vital to reducing throwaway plastic. So Greenpeace is also calling for 25% of packaging to be reusable by 2025, and 50% reusable by 2030.

Trials in reuse and refill are picking up pace across all UK supermarkets. Last year Asda opened a sustainability store in Leeds, which uses refill stations to give shoppers plastic packaging-free groceries. The store stocks big brands like PG Tips, Kellogg’s, and Persil, as well as own-brand staples like pasta. Asda says the store will cut around one million pieces of plastic per year.

If Asda and other supermarkets roll out schemes like this across the UK, it will go a long way to properly reducing plastic packaging.

The biggest supermarkets must lead the way

Shoppers take the single-use plastic wrapping off their bought fruit and vegetables outside Tesco in London. © John Cobb / Greenpeace

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA, Morrison’s and Aldi are the five biggest supermarkets in the UK. Because they have more stores and more customers, they produce a lot more plastic than some of the other supermarkets in the league table. That means they have a responsibility to lead the way – and an opportunity to have the biggest impact.

The pandemic has been a testing time for supermarkets – in particular their frontline staff – but they have also been making massive profits.

These profits shouldn’t be lining the pockets of executives or shareholders. Instead supermarkets have a responsibility to build back better from the pandemic.

Greenpeace has even given supermarkets all the solutions they need to halve their plastic footprints. The time for talking is over, in 2021 we need to see more action!

 

The blog song for today is: "Slap and Tickle" by Squeeze

 

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Wasteminister- A short documentary by Greenpeace - absolutely brilliant, it is very short

 

 

Here is the link:https://youtu.be/6NHiv5zDuZQ 

 

The UK is the 2nd biggest producer of plastic waste per person in the world, behind the USA. And because we’re producing so much plastic, the government is dumping it on other countries who can’t cope with it either. 

It’s hard to get your head around the true scale of the plastic problem, so we worked with the talented animators at Park Village Studios to show what it would look like piled up on Boris Johnson’s doorstep.

he UK is the 2nd biggest producer of plastic waste per person in the world, behind the USA. And because we’re producing so much plastic, the government is dumping it on other countries who can’t cope with it either. 

It’s hard to get your head around the true scale of the plastic problem, so we worked with the talented animators at Park Village Studios to show what it would look like piled up on Boris Johnson’s doorstep.

What you see in the film is the amount of plastic we dump on other countries every single day. That’s on average, 1.8 million kilograms a day – or 688,000 tonnes a year of our plastic waste that is fuelling health and wildlife emergencies around the world. Plastic kills hundreds of thousands of marine birds, sea mammals and turtles every year – but it’s not just harming wildlife and our oceans, it’s harming people too.

Plastic being sent overseas is being dumped or burned in the open air, with local communities in Turkey and Malaysia reporting serious health problems, like respiratory issues, nosebleeds and headaches. We have all lived through a health emergency over the past year in the form of Covid-19. But by dumping our plastic waste on other countries, the government has been fuelling another health emergency for even longer.

Time to take responsibility

It’s illegal for the government to send plastic waste to countries if it’s not going to be recycled. But a new Greenpeace investigation has found more evidence of plastic waste being dumped in Turkey.  Turkey receives over a third (38%) of all of our plastic waste exports. The government must take responsibility. 

The government wants to be seen as a leader in tackling plastic pollution, and every line in the film is an actual quote from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove (brilliantly voiced by Matt Forde and Jon Culshaw). And although they’ve announced positive yet very small steps to reduce the UK’s plastic production, they must take proper action to reduce our plastic pollution – and stop dumping our plastic waste on other countries.

 The blog song for today is: "Little lies" by Fleetwood Mac

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