Scottish Government announces 20p deposit return scheme for cans and drink containers. Irn Bru return scheme run by A.G. Barr for over a century ended in 2015 New scheme part of plans to tackle climate change, and will include aluminium and steel cans as well as glass and plastic drinks containersSupermarkets and drinks manufacturers had lobbied the First Minister against the deposit return scheme last yearNew scheme hailed by environmental groups as a “game changer” and a “benchmark” for the rest of UKResearch has found that the scheme could divert around 140,000 empty cans and bottles from litter to recycling every day THE Scottish Government has announced a deposit return scheme (DRS) for drinks and containers as part of plans to tackle climate change. The new scheme evokes memories of a similar scheme by Scottish soft drink manufacturer A.G. Barr, most commonly associated with Irn Bru, which had been in operation for over 100 years but ended in 2015.
The Ferret reported earlier this year that major supermarket and drinks companies, including A.G. Biodegradable shopping bags buried for three years didn’t degrade. Microplastics are raining down from the sky, even in the mountains. London Marathon: How do you reduce the environmental impact? Image copyright Getty Images Tens of thousands of runners will take part in the London Marathon on Sunday - a gruelling 26.2-mile race around the capital. The iconic event raised £63m ($81m) for charity last year - but it's also known for generating lots of plastic waste, particularly plastic water bottles discarded by runners. Like concerts and other major events, the marathon also generates a massive carbon footprint with thousands travelling - some by plane - to the location.
Waste from food, packaging and goodie bags gets left behind by spectators and runners. After last year's marathon, Westminster City Council collected 5,200kg of rubbish and 3,500kg of recycling - including about 47,000 plastic bottles - from the streets. And the council has warned that the amount is likely to increase this year, if the weather remains hot. This year the London Marathon is making some big changes and trialling a number of ideas to try to make the event more green. The measures include: 97% Of Plastic Bottles Are Recycled Under Norway's Radical Environmental Scheme. Most of Britain's tea bags contain plastic — Quartzy. There are few things less controversial in Britain than a cup of tea, or a “cuppa” as it’s affectionately known.
Of the 60.2 billion cups Britons sip each year, 96% are brewed using tea bags, in a market that’s largely dominated by three brands: PG Tips, Tetley, and Yorkshire Tea. But recently, it came to the attention of Britons that a majority of these seemingly innocuous tea bags contain plastic. This means that depositing those steaming parcels into the compost or rubbish bin isn’t quite the innocent activity that many Britons thought it was. The plastic contained in tea bags is polypropylene, a sealant which helps the bag retain its shape in boiling water.
According to reporting from The Times of London (paywall), Unilever (which owns PG Tips), Yorkshire Tea, Tetley, as well as some bags from the higher-end brand Twinings all use some amount of single use plastic in their tea bags. “It was all a bit of a coincidence everything conspired at once,” Armitage said. Nestlé, Tim Hortons named Canada's top plastic polluters. Much of the plastic trash cleaned up from Canadian shorelines by volunteers in September could be traced back five companies: Nestlé, Tim Hortons, PepsiCo, the Coca-Cola Company and McDonald's, an audit led by Greenpeace Canada has found. Greenpeace and other environmental advocacy groups working on the international Break Free from Plastic campaign looked for branding on 10,000 litres of food wrappers, plastic bottles, plastic-lined coffee cups and other trash collected in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax during World Cleanup Day on Sept. 15 and counted the results as part of their first Canadian plastic polluters brand audit.
Sarah King, head of Greenpeace Canada's oceans and plastics campaign, said its first brand audit was in the Philippines last year because the group found that cleanups could only do so much. "You do a cleanup one day, and the next day the beach is filling up with plastic again," she said. According to King: Edf. Recent reporting on the discovery and enhancement of plastic-dissolving enzymes in bacteria made me stop and think about what this might mean for the plastic pollution problem that is plaguing oceans and choking the world’s coral reefs.
While this development is interesting and draws necessary focus to an immense environmental challenge, it is premature to guess whether these kinds of enzymes might provide an effective silver bullet for treating plastics floating in the five great gyres of the sea. There is so much more we need to understand about the complex relationships between plastics and marine ecosystems before we can take drastic action such as spraying the ocean with so-called plastic-eating bacteria. Unknown and potentially hazardous side effects First of all, it’s unclear whether this enzyme, or similar enzymes, are safe to use in widespread environmental remediation. Plastics could be even more deadly than we realize today, which should also give us pause. Get innovation updates. Starbucks Bans Plastic Straws, Winds Up Using More Plastic. Mario Anzuoni/REUTERS/Newscom2018 will forever be remembered as the year that hating plastic straws went mainstream. Once the lonely cause of environmental cranks, now everyone wants to eliminate these suckers from daily life.
In July, Seattle imposed America's first ban on plastic straws. Vancouver, British Columbia, passed a similar ban a few months earlier. There are active attempts to prohibit straws in New York City, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. A-list celebrities from Calvin Harris to Tom Brady have lectured us on giving up straws. Not to be outdone by busybody legislators, Starbucks, the nation's largest food and drink retailer, announced on Monday that it would be going strawless. "This is a significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways," said Starbucks Kevin Johnson CEO in a press release announcing the move. Straw banners have proven stubbornly resistant to this logic.
NPR Choice page. Jail time for using a plastic bag: Is Kenya's strict ban helping or hurting its people? Read Story Transcript Katoi Mange thought police officers were joking when they arrested him on the side of the road in Kenya last year. His offence? Using a plastic bag. But the police were serious. Mange, a fruit seller, was arrested for selling his produce in plastic bags. Kenya's sweeping ban on the single-use type — which came into effect on Aug. 28, 2017 — is the toughest of its kind in the world. Mange was held overnight in a police station, and taken to court the next day. Katoi Mange, a fruit seller, spent a night in jail after selling his produce in plastic bags. Mange, who speaks Swahili, told freelance journalist Caro Rolando through a translator that the government recommended using cloth bags or nets instead.
Rolando travelled to Kenya and has made a documentary about the ban — From The Frontlines: The War on Plastics — which aired Tuesday on The Current. Nine months after it took effect, opinions remain divided as to whether the measure is helping or hurting Kenyans. Sarah Wilson | 8 bits of plastic you can quit right now - Sarah Wilson. Skip to content 8 bits of plastic you can quit right now The Earth can’t digest plastic. Plastic things are bought and used and that’s it – the Earth is burdened further.
This issue has reached critical point. Can’t watch now? Earth can’t digest plastic. So. 1. Do this: Carry a splade in your purse/bag* (a spoon, fork and blade in one). 2. Do this: Sip your drink, only use if there are biodegradable ones available at your cafe or invest in a stainless steel reusable one. 3. Do this: Drink from a tap. 4. In Australia, takeaway coffee cups are the second biggest contributor to waste after plastic bottles. Do this: Use a JOCO Cup instead. 5. Do this: Use a bamboo toothbrush. 6. Do this: Keep reusable bags in your car. 7.
Do this: cover dishes with a plate (stop using plastic wrap, too!). 8. Do this: Buy toilet paper that’s wrapped in paper. Share this post Intelligence Squared: The Sceptic’s Guide to Self Help Read More » Overwhelmed? Care About the Ocean? Think Twice About Your Coffee Lid. Transforming Ottawa: How Jacques Gréber’s plan forever changed the capital, for better and worse. It’s difficult to imagine what Ottawa would look like today had city planner Jacques Gréber never set foot here.
We would most certainly not have the Greenbelt that rings the city, nor perhaps as many of the national museums, galleries and performance venues we now enjoy. Car traffic throughout downtown might have slowed to a crawl as scores of trains criss-crossed their way to and from Union Station on Rideau Street. The tall, gritty smokestacks of industry, meanwhile, might otherwise now be photo-bombing every tourist snapshot of the Peace Tower, chewing up our precious waterfront and blotting the skyline with their grey effluent clouds.
On the other hand, LeBreton Flats, left to its own devices, might well have evolved into an exciting and vibrant warehouse district similar to Toronto’s Distillery Historical District or Vancouver’s Yaletown, instead of being razed and left empty for 40 years, then handed over to developers to turn into mean towers of condominiums. Successes: Failures: An expert reveals why you've been recycling wrong this whole time. Most of us go to great lengths to recycle our products, and feel pretty good when we dump our old envelopes and coffee cups into the designated paper bin instead of the regular trash. But now an expert in waste management has filled Vicky Gan from City Lab in on what actually ends up being recycled, and what holds up the process, and it turns out we've been doing it wrong all along.
To encourage people to recycle, most cities around the world give homes and workplaces bins broken down by plastic, paper or glass recycling bins. In some suburbs, these have been replaced by 'catch-all' recycling bins that take all these materials. This has worked in one sense, because it gets people to recycle more and throw away less, but it's also led to much more contamination in the system. So what are the contaminants that are so detrimental to the system? Paper, cardboard and polystyrene food containers Any of these containers that have been contaminated with food are a big no-no for recycling. Worse than Bad. Return the rubbish. Posted by Marc van Gurp | 11-06-2011 22:19 | Category: Environment An action from Surfrider Foundation Brasil, called “Return”. The action has as purpose to raise awareness and alert people about the consequences of the garbage left on Rio’s beaches.
From a mailing list of surf shops and accredited NGOs, 10,000 boxes containing objects thrown on the sand were sent to people’s houses. Besides plastic cups, ice-cream packages, cans and water bottles, each box also contained a label with the following message: “The garbage thrown on the sea returns someday. For everybody.”
The action was also performed in bars in the city of Rio de Janeiro. See the Portuguese version after the break. Related Surfrider Foundation posts: - Refraction Action - We pollute for a long time - Surfrider Foundation: We are all in danger - Rise Above Plastics - Pollution babes - Catch of the day - The beach doesn’t clean itself - Behaviour and consequences - If Moses would live now - A small accident can ruin everything. Plastic State of Mind - Full Credits.