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Nearly 5 years ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged New York City would send zero waste to landfills by 2030, in part by scaling up an aggressive composting program to turn food scraps into nutrient-rich soil. It’s now 2020 and the city is nowhere near meeting the mayor’s stated goals.
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The government of Canada announced this week that it will ban many single-use plastic items by 2021 and also plans to make companies that manufacture or sell plastic products take responsibility for recycling their plastic waste. According to CBC News, the government is likely to follow the European Union, which voted last March to ban plastic items for which market alternatives exist — such as single-use plastic cutlery and plates — and items made of oxo-degradable plastics, such as bags.
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An ambitious startup called Blueland launched two weeks ago with a simple concept, but the company is hoping to revolutionize the way we buy cleaning products. They are selling a set of durable, reusable plastic bottles along with tablets that dissolve in water that can be re-ordered, thus eliminating the need to buy household items in single-use plastic containers. Blueland is convinced that its customers over time can eliminate the need for 100 billion single-use plastic bottles in the U.S. alone.
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The Coca-Cola Company, in an effort to be more transparent and decrease its environmental footprint, reported that it produced more than 3 million tons of plastic packaging in 2017, and also announced that it will donate $5.4 million to a number of environmental organizations aimed at reducing plastic waste.
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Compostable cups, bags and cutlery were supposed to be the answer to single-use plastic products, but recent news reports say that instead they are causing problems for recycling plants and also ending up in landfills where the conditions are not right for them to decompose. According to The Wall Street Journal and the Daily Caller, in order to decompose, compostables need high heat and moisture — they were actually intended to be sent to specially designed disposal sites, where they will break down properly and can add nutrients to the soil.
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If 2018 was the year of the plastic straw ban then 2019 might shape out to be the year of balloon bans in coastal areas. Before you rush to judgment and say to yourself “these bans are going too far” just consider the fact that balloons filled with helium which are released into the air […]
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The FAO has also stated that food waste is a huge driver of climate change as 30 as all the global loss contributes to 8 % of total global greenhouse gas emissions. The Washington Post noted that, if food waste were a country, it would come in third after the United States and China in terms of impact on global warming. While we still have a long way to go to ensure that we waste less, some innovators are finding ways to get creative and reuse bits of food and animal products that typically get discarded.
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