Environmental Sustainability: How Growers Tell Their Stories

Several beauty and personal care majors have joined 100+ businesses in signing a statement from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation calling for recycling costs and responsibilities to be extended to industry. The public statement​​ said that without Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) – where supply chain members were mandated to take on certain costs and joint responsibility – packaging collection and recycling was “unlikely to be meaningfully scaled” ​in the future. Among the 100+ signatories, including a raft of food and beverage players like Coca-Cola and Nestlé, non-profit WWF and the European Investment Bank, several leading beauty players had aligned their support, including Beiersdorf, Henkel, L’Oréal, Schwarz Group and Unilever, among others. “For a circular economy, packaging that can’t be eliminated or reused must be collected, sorted and recycled or composted after use. But currently, the economics do not stack up: collection, sorting and recycling or processing packaging costs more than the revenues made from selling the recycled materials. We need dedicated, ongoing and sufficient funding to make the economics of recycling work,”​ the Ellen MacArthur Foundation said.

Two-thirds (66 percent) of Pennsylvanians agree state lawmakers should place a high priority on funding for state parks and forests, according to a recent state poll of likely voters.  The agreement was broad-based and bipartisan, including majorities of voters regardless of their party affiliation, age, gender, geography, or ethnicity.  “Pennsylvanians – no matter who they are, where they live, or what political views they hold – support investing in our state parks and forests and protecting our precious natural resources,” said Brad Mallory, Board Chair of the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation, which commissioned the scientific statewide poll.  In addition, the poll shows that 67 percent of Pennsylvania likely voters support using as much as $125 million of the state’s share of the federal American Rescue Plan’s funding on the maintenance and repair of state parks and forests. 

A nationwide post-lockdown buying spree for electrical goods has seen the country’s largest recycling scheme record the biggest month in its 15-year history. WEEE Ireland recovered 3,763 tonnes of electrical waste in July – the equivalent of 12,800 fridges or 1.7 million small appliances – resulting in a new national monthly e-waste record. 58% (2,200 tonnes) of large and small items came back through free collection points at retailers, which saw an 18% annual increase on last year, attributed mainly to a rapid rise in sales of electrical goods.