Month: August 2021

Plastic Free July starts today. Even if you only reduce your reliance on single-use plastics this month, it’s an opportunity to reduce plastic pollution, CO2 emissions related to plastic production, and toxins from your life. Simple steps applied every day in your shopping and dining decisions can make a huge difference to the world and its environment. The plastic-free movement has helped people around the world reduce their plastic consumption by 1.8 billion pounds. Created by the Plastic Free Foundation in Australia, Plastic Free July offers guidance for eliminating single-use plastic from your life as well as examples of what others have done. The organization, which was founded in 2011, got an estimated 326 million people involved globally in 2020. This is a movement with momentum. You can be good at plastic elimination, better, or best, based on your preference. The point is to improve and July is the month to get started — if you haven’t already. Do you need some motivation? Check out EcoWatch’s explanation about the volume of plastic in our oceans and its consequences for animal and human life.

GSK Consumer Healthcare (GSKCH), has announced today that it is partnering with two global packaging suppliers to launch fully recyclable toothpaste tubes across its specialist and science-based oral health brands, including Sensodyne, parodontax and Aquafresh.  The first partnership, with strategic packaging supplier, Albea, which is one of the world’s largest tube manufacturers, will see GSKCH switch its toothpaste tubes from aluminium barrier laminates to the patented Greenleaf laminate. The switch-over will begin with Sensodyne Pronamel tubes, which will be available in fully recyclable alternatives in Europe this July. This will be bolstered by a second partnership with EPL Global to produce tubes in Platina laminate. Both laminates have passed recycling-readiness tests set by the US-based Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) and by Europe’s RecyClass, meaning that the tubes will be recyclable and compatible with existing recycling processes. It is anticipated that the combined moves will see over a billion toothpaste tubes per year recyclable by 2025.

Fraunhofer Institute UMSICHT, SABIC and Procter & Gamble (P&G) have announced their collaboration in an innovative circular economy pilot project aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of closed-loop recycling of single-use face masks.
The billions of disposable face masks used during the COVID-19 pandemic is raising environmental concerns, especially those that have been thoughtlessly discarded in public spaces. Apart from the challenge of dealing with such huge volumes of essential personal healthcare items in a sustainable way, simply throwing the used masks away for disposal on landfill sites or in incineration plants represents a loss of valuable feedstock for new material. “Recognising the challenge, we set out to explore how used face masks could be returned into the value chain of new face mask production,” said Dr Peter Dziezok, director R&D open innovation at P&G. “But creating a true circular solution from both a sustainable and an economically feasible perspective takes partners. We therefore teamed up with Fraunhofer CCPE and Fraunhofer UMSICHT’s expert scientists and SABIC’s Technology & Innovation specialists to investigate potential solutions.”

Ørsted has announced its new commitment to reuse, recycle or recover all the wind turbine blades in its global portfolio of onshore and offshore wind farms upon decommissioning.
The commitment, made on the company’s Capital Markets Day, is part of Ørsted’s strategy to expand its sustainability position and work toward achieving a carbon-neutral footprint by 2040.
“We want to help create a world that runs entirely on green energy, and we want to do it in a sustainable way. That includes moving towards more circular models where we reuse resources and save energy, thereby reducing carbon emissions. That is a big challenge, but we look forward to working on this challenge together with our supply chain,” said Mads Nipper, chief executive officer of Ørsted.
According to Ørsted, between 85% and 95% of a wind turbine can be recycled, but recycling of blades remains a challenge, as they are designed to be lightweight, yet durable, making them difficult to break apart. Consequently, most decommissioned blades are landfilled.

As smartphone sales have skyrocketed, so has the device’s contribution to waste streams and carbon emissions.
Manufacturers will need to conserve resources as 6 of the key elements for mobile phones will run out in the next 100 years. Changes to business models and consumer habits will be needed to tackle electronic waste. The ability to repair phones will be key to conserving resources, tackling e-waste and climate mitigation, and building a circular economy for electronics. Roughly four in ten people globally owned a smartphone in 2018 and that number continues to grow rapidly. This growth is driven by steady sales of the devices – more than 1 billion each year – putting hand-sized computers in people’s pockets.

Researchers developing renewable plastics and exploring new processes for plastics upcycling and recycling technologies will now be able to easily baseline their efforts to current manufacturing practices to understand if their efforts will save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Benchmark data calculated and compiled at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) provide a measurement—at the supply chain level—of how much energy is required and the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from the production of a variety of plastics in the United States. “Today, we employ a predominantly linear economy for many of the materials we use, including plastics,” said Gregg Beckham, a senior research fellow at NREL. “Many people and organizations around the world are looking at ways to make our materials economy circular.”

A UN-backed report funded by the EU outlines a proposal whereby the recycling of certain components and sub-systems within electronic equipment should be mandated by law. The report by the CEWASTE consortium – led by the Switzerland-based World Resources Forum – says this requirement should apply to certain e-waste categories, including: End-of-life circuit boards, certain magnets in disc drives and electric vehicles, EV and other special battery types, and fluorescent lamps. The measure will be essential to safeguard these components against supply disruption, say the authors, who warn that access to the critical raw materials (CRMs) in these products is vulnerable to geo-political tides. Recycling and reusing them is “crucial” to secure ongoing supplies for regional manufacturing of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) essential for defence, renewable energy generation, LEDs and other green technologies, and to the competitiveness of European firms.

Deforestation Efforts Not Making Needed Progress – The New York Declaration on Forests reports that national and global programs to prevent deforestation are falling short of their goals because of a lack of transparency. The nonprofit says, “Progress toward Goals 3 and 4 — reducing deforestation from infrastructure and extractive developments, while supporting sustainable livelihoods — is too slow to protect remaining intact forest landscapes.” Infrastructure projects account for 17% of deforestation, mainly due to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The organization argues that accountability combined with transparency is required to force economic planners to acknowledge their words and deeds are not aligned. Arctic Thaw Awakens Ancient Microorganisms – As permafrost melts in Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Iceland accelerate, humans are at risk from microbes that have remained frozen for millennia. For example, anthrax broke out in Russia after the disease was released by melting permafrost due to higher ocean temperatures. We cannot know the consequences that will come to pass, but working to prevent the thawing of Northern permafrost by restoring the climate to pre-industrial CO2 levels does offer a path to avoid the risk. Human Pollution Includes Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria – The spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria due to human use of drugs and chemicals in medical and industrial waste is a growing threat to nature. As humans enter the third century of industrialization, the consequences of drug-resistant bacteria impact species worldwide, from Tasmanian devils and flying-fox bats to Australian sea lions. Researcher Michelle Power writes at Phys.org that “we need to use…

In its 2020 Impact Report, Tesla says, “In 2020, Tesla customers helped accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy by avoiding 5.0 million metric tons of CO2e emissions.” The company’s focus is on more than building electric vehicles. Here’s what Tesla has to say about its mission: “We are designing and manufacturing a complete energy and transportation ecosystem that is fully vertically integrated. By doing so, we are creating affordable products that work together to amplify their impact, leading to the greatest environmental benefit possible. We seek to achieve this through our research and software development efforts as well as through our continued drive to develop advanced manufacturing capabilities.” “Climate change is reaching alarming levels globally due in large part to emissions from burning fossil fuels for transportation and electricity generation. The world cannot reduce CO2 emissions without addressing both energy generation and consumption. And the world cannot address its energy habits without first directly reducing emissions in the transportation and energy sectors.

Our lives rely on technology. We work on computers, watch our favorite shows on services like Netflix, monitor our health with smartwatches and stay in touch with friends and family around the globe on our cellphones. These devices make our lives easier. Unfortunately, we also live in an era of planned obsolescence — everything you buy will fail at some point, forcing you to buy a new one. We generate massive amounts of e-waste in our quest to have the newest, fastest and most exciting toy in our collection. What does the life cycle of e-waste look like, and what can we do to reduce the number of electronic devices ending up in landfills around the world? The Life Cycle of E-Waste – What happens to your old cellphone or laptop when it’s reached the end of its life and you get rid of it? That depends mostly on where you live and how you dispose of it. If you live in one of the 19 states that have banned throwing old electronics away with the rest of your household garbage, your electronics are heading for the recycling plant. If not, they’re going to the landfill.

What happens to millions of these? As concern mounts over the impacts of climate change, many experts are calling for greater use of electricity as a substitute for fossil fuels. Powered by advancements in battery technology, the number of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles on U.S. roads is increasing. And utilities are generating a growing share of their power from renewable fuels, supported by large-scale battery storage systems. These trends, coupled with a growing volume of battery-powered phones, watches, laptops, wearable devices and other consumer technologies, leave us wondering: What will happen to all these batteries once they wear out? Despite overwhelming enthusiasm for cheaper, more powerful and energy-dense batteries, manufacturers have paid comparatively little attention to making these essential devices more sustainable. In the U.S. only about 5% of lithium-ion batteries—the technology of choice for electric vehicles and many high-tech products – are actually recycled. As sales of electric vehicles and tech gadgets continue to grow, it is unclear who should handle hazardous battery waste or how to do it.

Together with countries in the Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) region, UNEP is developing a project entitled “Reduce marine plastics and plastic pollution in Latin American and Caribbean cities through a circular economy approach” co-financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). This project aims at facilitating governments and businesses at the city level in the region to address the plastic pollution through accelerating their transition to a circular economy for plastics. The project is planned to be implemented in 6 cities in Colombia (Cartagena, one more to be decided), Jamaica (Kingston, Montego Bay), Panama (Panama City, Colon). UNEP is issuing the following two types of posts to support the development of the project: Data collection consultancy: collection of data related with marine plastics and plastic pollution from the 3 target countries, in particular the 6 target cities; Policy consultancy: policy baseline identification and stakeholder engagement at national and local level related with circular economy, marine plastics, and plastic pollution from the 3 target countries, in particular the 6 target cities.

There is a growing consensus that India is going through a waste crisis, and this awareness unfolds parallel to an increasing awareness of the beyond-human time it takes for plastics to disappear. It is striking that narratives of problems with waste, across different genres, often return to the same figures and figures of speech, the same heaps of numbers and piles of rubbish to give emphasis to the gravity of the affair. These elements reappear as ever more solidifying narratives, the repetitive patterns chalking out narratives of dysfunction that represent the waste crisis. Here I interrogate how such elements, figures of speech from earlier narratives of dysfunctional e-waste management, highlighting the threat of e-waste to the environment, are retooled into stories of success by private business. I do that through the story of a Producers’ Responsibility Organisation (PRO), a Delhi-based start-up I call Sahih Kaam (pseudonym to protect anonymity, meaning right or proper work in Hindi) that I worked closely with during fieldwork. I explore the powerful and influential tropes and imaginaries in action, put into practice by private companies in the pursuit of environmental and social change.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Hearing on Tuesday heard leaders from across the battery spectrum call for U.S. action on the growing demand for advanced batteries to power the transportation technologies of the future.  The hearing witnesses also outlined measures that can help ensure the sustainable economic growth of an American battery-powered future, including conservation of limited resources and advanced battery recycling.
Adam Muellerweiss, President of the Responsible Battery Coalition and Chief Sustainability Officer of Clarios, stressed in his written and verbal testimony the need to “create a sustainable, domestic battery economy to decrease emissions, reduce our reliance on foreign supply chains, and increase manufacturing in the United States,” and urged Congress to embrace a lifecycle approach that creates opportunities for domestic job creation.
He also shared important details about the Responsible Battery Coalition’s development of ‘Green Principles,’ an effort to help guide environmentally responsible EV battery manufacturing, use and end-of-life management through its research partnership with University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability.

Maria Nikolopoulou is a member of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) from the Workers’ Group, representing the Spanish trade union Comisiones Obreras. She is currently one of the Vice Presidents of the NAT Bureau and member of the Steering Group of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform. What drives you to be an active and engaged EESC and NAT Section Member? How do you make the link with your work (and your life) back home? I believe that if you want to improve things in life, instead of complaining with your friends and family or debating on social media, you should tell your opinion to those who have the power to take decisions and activate change. And this is precisely the role of the EESC, to give civil society a loud voice, so why not grasp the opportunity?  The core issues of the NAT section, especially the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are very close to my heart and the demands of my trade union. Every single one of the SDGs is what we’ve always fought for. Now we have the opportunity to put the SDGs high on the agenda and to push for their implementation.

Old milk containers, juice jugs and toy cups are not the type of products usually associated with high-concept furniture, but two designers in Hong Kong have taken these and other items and upcycled them into stylish pieces of public furniture. Tasked with creating a collection of 12 benches for the town hall in Sha Tin, in Hong Kong’s New Territories, the co-founders and design principals of HIR Studio, Howard Chung and Irene Cheng, turned to the Shing Mun River for inspiration. “The Shing Mun River is the soul of Sha Tin,” says Chung, who grew up in the area. “But even though the river quality has improved over the years it is still quite polluted, so we really wanted to do something to help alleviate the problem of plastic pollution in the water.”

I was born in the year 2000. Thus, for my entire life, human-caused climate change has been an ever-present, intensifying threat. Throughout my early education, I learned that we all just needed to “do our part” to combat climate change. “Do your part” lessons always culminated in the sentiment that you too could save the cute polar bears by following the motto “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and these were words I took to heart. As an introduction to sustainable practices, this formula isn’t entirely false, but as a greater climate crisis looms on the horizon, we need to rethink our blind faith in this three-step model, particularly recycling. The current practice of recycling (and the industry at large) reflects the flaws of contemporary climate strategy. Assessing the failures of the recycling process can guide us in the direction of a truly sustainable future.