Fossil-Fuel Interests Try to Weaken Global Plastics Treaty – Scientific American
An international effort to rein in plastic pollution is running into resistance from China, Saudi Arabia and other nations that see a future in plastics amid declining demand for oil, gas and coal. That debate is playing out over the terms of a prospective global treaty that could set limits on plastic production and consumption. Environmentalists last year scored a landmark victory when 175 countries agreed to write a treaty designed to address the problems with plastic…
The problem with our dwindling sand reserves – UN Environment Programme
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has partnered with Kenyan spoken word poet Beatrice Kariuki to shed light on the problems associated with sand mining, part of a wider push towards a zero waste world.
“We must redouble our efforts to build a circular economy, and take rubble to build structures anew,” Kariuki says in a new video. “Because without new thinking, the sands of time will run out…”
Why Recycling Isn’t the Answer to the Plastic Pollution Problem – Scientific American
For many years, the transition to a circular plastic economy has been understood to require a combination of efforts… ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’. The principles are based on the top three levels of the waste hierarchy, whereby reducing is better than reusing, which is, in turn, more favourable than recycling. In practice, however…