If Vanuatu Can Ban Single-Use Plastics, so Can the Other Commonwealth Countries

Melodea Ltd. has developed MelOx, a plant-sourced barrier coating that protects packaged products from oxygen, as well as from oil and grease transmission. The company has also developed Melodea VBcoat, which protects packaged goods from water vapor, as well as from oil and grease transmission. The products are made from wood pulp, and do not contribute to plastic waste pollution.

Governments and companies worldwide are pledging to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases. What would it take to fulfill that ambition?  In a new report, we look at the economic transformation that a transition to net-zero emissions would entail—a transformation that would affect all countries and all sectors of the economy, either directly or indirectly. We estimate the changes in demand, capital spending, costs, and jobs, to 2050, for sectors that produce about 85 percent of overall emissions and assess economic shifts for 69 countries.  Each of the six articles highlighted on this page provides a detailed look at aspects of the net-zero transition. The full report, The net-zero transition: What it would cost, what it could bring, as well as a PDF summary, can be downloaded for free here…

Starving manatees will soon be fed by hand in Florida, a rare wildfire intervention to save the marine mammals whose natural food is vanishing from the effects of pollution, state officials told Reuters. “Unified Command does have approval to move forward on a limited feeding trial,” said Carly Jones of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in an email to Reuters ahead of a formal announcement later this week. The move, authorized by the federal government, is highly unusual in conservation, which tends to favor leaving wild animals to their own foraging and hunting lest they become dependent on human handouts.

Intelligent re-use of hundreds of mammoth end-of-life turbine blades got a boost today, as European wind engineers Vestas spun into recycling. The Aarhus -headquartered engineer has fabricated over 1,000 blades at its UK base on the Isle of Wight, and recently hinted it may soon confirm up to 2,000 new jobs in the North East.    It supplies blades of up to 110 metres to projects worldwide, including SSE Renewables’ 1GW Seagreen park off the Angus coast. The company announced today a breakthrough in technique for recovering for second use the epoxy materials used to fabricate the giant structures.  Vestas leads CETEC – Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites – , a circle of chemical engineers, academics and manufacturers.