Challenge: How do I eat a whole pineapple in two days? 🍍 😋
Pure luxury from the Zero Waste Box: a pineapple, lots of grapes and tens of mandarins. It's hard to believe that #supermarkets used to throw this away (which is now banned in France). A #ZeroWaste box in our #supermarket costs 3 EUR for 2 kg of "ugly" or overripe vegetables/fruits. The very ripe pineapple smells delicious!
Ancient woodland closed after years of illegal dumping of commercial waste, in Ashford
Illegally dumped commercial waste covers Hoad's Wood, a 199-acre site of protected ancient woodland that has seen industrial-scale illegal dumping since 2020 reaching heights of 12 feet and leading to its recent closure as campaigners continue their fight to have the site cleared, in Ashford, Britain. REUTERS/Chris J. Ratcliffe
A while back, in response to a horror story from @gcluley about an Amazon order that went badly wrong, I mentioned we were trying Temu for the first time. Some asked to report back about our experience.
The order process was smooth, with an expectation set of a delivery date of last Saturday, 6th. We could track the order at every step, and saw a week earlier that it had arrived in the UK and cleared customs. Then tracking went silent.
Three days later, a box appeared on the tracking page
2/...
This article addresses multiple reasons why it's a bad idea to toss apple cores, orange peels, nut, etc. into the wild. They don't biodegrade on their own (as many of us think), and cause harm to #wildlife in various ways.
28-MAR-2024
Study finds landfill point source #emissions have an outsized impact and opportunity to tackle U.S. waste #methane
Largest measurement-based landfill methane assessment to date identifies major emission sources missing from traditional accounting that can be prioritized for mitigation
Unlike other #nuclear#states , #France has chosen to reprocess its nuclear #waste on a massive scale, first at La Hague and then partly in... #Russia .While this saves 20% of #natural#uranium in #French nuclear #power#plants ,the #choice is politically highly questionable, since not only has it already accumulated 100 tonnes of #plutonium stored in France, which represents an enormous #risk , but it also contributes to financing the #Russian#state and, consequently, its #war in #Ukraine .
"Our world is increasingly plastic. Back in the 1950s, humanity produced just 5 million metric tons of plastic per year; today it’s 400 million metric tons."
@KnowableMag reports on the 175 nations that are working on an international agreement that would tackle the vast amounts of plastic waste in the environment.
Was it Nancy Meyers or HGTV that made Americans obsessed with decanting their groceries into matching clear containers? Whatever the cause, Jaya Saxena has had enough of it. "As you know by virtue of not being able to buy yogurt by the handful, most food is sold in containers," she writes. "But for many people, these containers are not good enough. So they have built a whole online world dedicated to the purpose of showing you what other types of containers to put your groceries in." Here's her story for Eater.
You can read/download the new UN Food Waste Index Report 2024 "Think Eat Save: Tracking Progress to Halve Global Food Waste" here: https://www.unep.org/resources/publication/food-waste-index-report-2024 "The “Solutions Focus” chapter explores effective approaches to food waste reduction around the world."
Proposal: We measure how good we are at being citizens of Earth by how we deal with our "rubbish". Do we consider it a valuable resource to be reused (mature approach, based on understanding planetary cycles), or do we just push it off to Away (childish denial). Current score: Could Do Better...
I have just discovered that those odd waste/recycling bins that are all over the oldest bits of Bergen, Norway, link to an UNDERGROUND PNEUMATIC WASTE TRANSPORT SYSTEM. The waste collects for a bit and then WHOOSH... it's off to the recycling centre. All underground. No bin lorries (garbage trucks), fewer road vehicles, less noise... amazing. @davidho says that my (considerable) excitement about this is entirely unreasonable. I disagree. https://www.envacgroup.com/how-it-works/the-envac-system/
I tried an extreme day trip to Barcelona and back — in 24 hours
Sun, sea, city and 38,000 steps: our writer sets out on social media’s latest phenomenon with a whirlwind visit to the Catalan capital that cost less than £150
Conspicuous carbon consumption at its glitziest most profligate worst. And yes I can ‘afford' to do it monetarily - the question is can I, we, the plant (as we know it) do so?
Really important article here about how big oil companies, including ExxonMobil, knew plastic recycling was BS since the'70s, but kept pushing the lie anyway.
"New research by the Center for Climate Integrity reveals that the plastics industry knew this plastic waste crisis was coming. And so petrochemical manufacturers worked hard to persuade the public that we could recycle our way out of the problem."
"Twenty petrochemical companies generate more than half of all the world’s single-use plastics. They include major oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil, the world’s leading producer of single-use plastic waste.
...
"Behind the scenes, however, they were admitting all along that such efforts were “virtually hopeless.” For more than 40 years, they knew that plastic recycling is not technically or economically feasible at scale. More than 90 percent of all plastic has ended up in landfills, ecosystems, or incinerators.
...
"Since the 1970s, these companies, their trade associations, and their front groups promoted recycling “solutions” using misleading advertising, inaccurate educational materials, performative investments, and commitments that they knew they were unlikely to meet.
...
"Internal documents reveal that the industry knew by 1986, for example, that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of.” In 1994, an Exxon employee warned staffers at the American Plastics Council that they did not “want paper floating around” saying they could not meet recycling goals, since the issue was “highly sensitive politically.” These compelling admissions and many more are grounds for a thorough investigation.
...
"Plastics are a product made from fossil fuels. As the world moves away from fossil fuels in a race to avert climate catastrophe, journalists have shined a light on how oil companies promote recycling, in part because plastics are their 'Plan B.'"
These days, the CEO of ExxonMobil likes to gaslight the public and blame activists:
"Frankly, society, and the activist—the dominant voice in this discussion—has tried to exclude the industry that has the most capacity and the highest potential for helping with some of the technologies."
Well, these same companies knew about the problems with toxic fossil fuel pollution since the 1970s. That's both greenhouse gas and microplastic pollution.
And they deliberately and knowingly lied to delay action.