Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle.
Our Daily Planet is a daily morning email (M-F) to keep you informed of the stories shaping our environment. If these issues matter to you, we’d like to be the best ten minutes of your morning.
Our world is drowning in plastic yet we’re so dependent on it, that despite the urgency to avoid it, we don’t have very many alternatives. For food packaging especially, plastic is king and Americans are using a lot of plastic every day probably without realizing it. While biodegradable plastic does exist, it’s often far more expensive, uses food crops for production, and sometimes even contains petroleum-based plastic due to misleading claims. That’s why a Mexican startup decided to make better bioplastics and found an innovative way to deal with the tons of avocado pits that producers discard every day. As Eco Watch reported, Michoacan-based Biofase, located in the heart of Mexico’s avocado industry, is transforming the dense seeds into disposable drinking straws and cutlery that are said to be 100 percent biodegradable.
The company was founded in 2013 by biochemical engineer Scott Munguia, who patented a process to turn discarded avocado pits into bioplastics that reportedly degrade after 240 days. As Mexico Daily News explained, Munguia figured out how to extract a molecular compound from a pit to obtain a biopolymer that could be molded into any shape. Today, the operation goes through 15 metric tons of avocado seeds a day to make the items and the technology is a win-win that tackles agricultural waste as well as the mounting volumes of plastic waste accumulating in landfills, oceans and other bodies of water.
Why This Matters: Since many cities have started to ban straws and other single-use plastics, we need alternatives as it’s unrealistic to expect all people to carry a reusable straw and fork with them at all time. However with bioplastics, we have to ensure that we don’t just adopt them and call it a day as in order for them to biodegrade, they must be sent to a commercial composting facility which few American municipalities offer to their customers. In order to truly wean our addiction of plastic, we must think about the infrastructure necessary to achieve this. As in the case of Oregon’s bottle recovery program, local and state governments can see a lot of success if they invest in closed-loop systems and get the buy-in of their citizens.
Go Deeper: Avocados are one of the thirstiest crops and unfortunately, they tend to grow in warm, drought-prone parts of the world. This is a PSA to eat your avocados and not let them go to waste, here are some tips to help keep them from ripening too quickly.
Spooky season is almost over, how does your everyday werewolf or vampire keep it green this Halloween? While the holiday can easily be filled with candy wrappers, disposable decorations, and costumes your kid will likely never wear again, the internet has some “tricks” to keep your celebrations environmentally friendly. EcoWatch’s list of best methods […]
By Ashira Morris, ODP Staff Writer If climate change keeps temperatures rising, staple crops in eight East and Southern African countries could decrease by up to 80% by midcentury. According to a new report by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a 2-degree Celsius increase in temperature (which the world is currently on […]
This past July, all eyes were on Tokyo when over 10,000 Olympians from 206 nations descended on the city to make history. Despite a decrease in carbon emissions due to COVID-19 and fewer traveling spectators, the games still produced 2.3 million tons of CO2. In 2021, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) pledged to reduce […]
Subscribe to the email that top lawmakers, renowned scientists, and thousands of concerned citizens turn to each morning for the latest environmental news and analysis.
Want the lastest climate news summarized for you each morning?
Our Daily Planet is your daily dose of the stories shaping our world and the ways that you can take action. From the climate crisis to the protection of biodiversity, if these issues matter to you then please subscribe & stay informed!
Your privacy is Important! We promise never to use your email address to send you spam or advertisements.