The Plastic Crisis/Environment Thread | Page 19 | Vital Football

The Plastic Crisis/Environment Thread

Sainsbury's is set to introduce in-store recycling systems for flexible plastics packaging across all stores nationwide, following successful trials in the North East of England earlier this year

Earlier this year, the company started collecting hard-to-recycle flexible plastic film at 63 of its stores as part of the trial.

https://www.edie.net/news/5/Sainsbury-s-rolls-out-flexible-plastic-recycling-scheme-nationwide/

Sainsbury’s has also removed single-use plastic bags from loose products and has delivered a 70% reduction in plastics from its Taste the Difference and SO Organic lamb and steak packaging. Almost 300 tonnes of plastic waste has been removed by working with Prevented Ocean Plastic to repurpose ocean plastics waste into packaging.
 
I was reading about Brummie comedian Joe Lycett storming off a Channel 4 daytime programme, after the host (Steph McGovern I think her name is) called him out on a picture he had possessing a plastic bottle. Anyway, he’s now claim it was a stunt… perhaps his management team thought about the stunt idea retrospectivey?

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57699955
 
All a bit strange, if it was a pre-planned stunt then fair play for the coordination but planting a water bottle in a photo seems a bit false to me.

Anyway, here’s a great idea from watching countryfile and some kids going out litter picking, get it on the agenda once a year for all older primary school kids. Wouldn’t that be a great thing to get kids out picking up litter, before they become the next generation of litter droppers?!
 
All a bit strange, if it was a pre-planned stunt then fair play for the coordination but planting a water bottle in a photo seems a bit false to me.

Anyway, here’s a great idea from watching countryfile and some kids going out litter picking, get it on the agenda once a year for all older primary school kids. Wouldn’t that be a great thing to get kids out picking up litter, before they become the next generation of litter droppers?!

Yup, but also I think the key is to educate them from an early age, the damage that the litter does to the wildlife. Not the usual abstract pick up little and tidy up stuff, show (as gently as you can at an early age obviously) that the stuff thrown on the floor kills these lovely creatures.
 
I think, with so many links to articles, it is ok to put this up. Also some more links will be at the end.

Another week, another run of freakish and record-breaking extreme weather events. In the US, wildfires raced towards Yosemite National Park this week while people were "left swimming" in New York subway stations after Storm Elsa. London's underground system also flooded as parts of the city experienced a month’s worth of rainfall in just over an hour. "The flood water cascading down the steps of Sloane Square station last night shows that the reality of climate change isn’t in the future or far away – it’s right here, right now," Zack Polanski, Green Party London Assembly Member, told Environment Correspondent Harry Cockburn. Germany and Belgium were also hit by extreme floods. Later this month, The Independent is holding a free online event where experts will discuss the world's worsening extreme weather and how it's linked to the climate crisis. Details of how to sign up can be found here.

Also this week, the EU announced a raft of sweeping measures for how it will cut its emissions by more than half by the end of the decade. "The European Green Deal: Fit for 55 plan is an attempt to wean the continent off fossil fuels and will involve new national limits on emissions

The UK also saw the arrival of some long-awaited climate blueprints. First up was the government's much-delayed Transport Decarbonisation Plan, a strategy for how ministers will cut emissions from Britain's most polluting sector down to net zero by the middle of the century. The plan contains a new pledge to ban the sale of new petrol diesel trucks by 2040. It has been criticised, however, for failing to come up with new measures for cutting traffic or flight demand. Second was the National Food Strategy, the first major review of England's food system in more than 70 years. Among a host of eye-catching recommendations, the review called for a 30 per cent reduction in meat consumption within the next decade.



Meanwhile, new research published in Nature found that parts of the Amazon rainforest have started to emit more CO2 than they are able to absorb.


Free public transport and green home schemes needed to tackle climate crisis, says major citizens’ survey
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/free-public-transport-green-homes-b1883373.html


According to Greenpeace, around a third of our food directly relies on bees for pollination

https://www.independent.co.uk/clima...rdens-wild-lawns-bees-ecosystem-b1882680.html
 
All a bit strange, if it was a pre-planned stunt then fair play for the coordination but planting a water bottle in a photo seems a bit false to me.

Anyway, here’s a great idea from watching countryfile and some kids going out litter picking, get it on the agenda once a year for all older primary school kids. Wouldn’t that be a great thing to get kids out picking up litter, before they become the next generation of litter droppers?!

My little ones nursery takes her class litter picking every couple of weeks (weather permitting) and they're only 3 to 4 year olds, think there are quite a few doing this sort of thing now. They seem happy just to be out in nature and away from a class room, so more than happy to do it.
Although you wont get through to everyone. My other half decided to take our daughter litter picking as well a few weeks back with some of her friends. After spending an hour picking loads of crap up in the park, some chavvy little 13/14 year old girl walked over to where they had cleaned and threw some crisp packets on the grass. My Mrs tried to shout at her but they all just laughed and walked off!
 
The Co-op has started a reverse supply chain collection for plastic bags, crisp packets and food wrappings, in an effort to curb waste
Co-op has begun Europe’s most extensive in-store recycling scheme for plastic bags and product wrapping.
The rollout of the scheme makes the convenience retailer the first UK supermarket to have fully recyclable food packaging.

https://sustainabilitymag.com/suppl...ins-reverse-supply-chain-scheme-plastic-waste
 
My daughter, who lives in Canada (now in Calgery) was in the freak wave of heat the other week. It was hell for them at 50c

Max her dog was beside himself. They couldn't go outside
 
Britain’s last 30 years have been six per cent wetter and almost 1C hotter than the preceding three decades, the Met Office says. Its annual climate update also says that the country’s 10 hottest years have all occurred since 2002, with last year being the third warmest on record after 2014 and 2006.

2020 was 5th wettest as well.

Sea level rises were 1.5mm a year, now 3mm a year

Dr Mike Kendon, lead author of the research and Met Office senior climate scientist, said the findings reinforced that the UK is already reeling from the impacts of the climate crisis.
 
Californians were threatened with rolling blacks outs yesterday as temperatures soared again.

I feel like its going to take a major western and English-speaking city going underwater before it is undeniable. Or as is the case with Texas and California, your power grids getting absolutely fucked yearly by weather extremes. I would argue it's undeniable now but people are too easily able to point to isolated weather events in the past. I remember when Europe was hit by really bad summer flooding when I was 15 or 16. I think those were called 100 year floods and in recent weeks we hit another "100 year flood".

At what point does one make the connection that two "100 year floods" in a 20 year period might be an indicator of something?

The mini ice age is another one, yes some crazy weather event happened and it was entirely natural. How often has something like that happened though.