The Global Carbon Project was formed to work with the international science community to establish a common and mutually agreed knowledge base to support policy debate and action to slow down and ultimately stop the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Replacing incandescent lights is becoming cheaper by the day. A LED is a light emitting diode, formed from 2 differently "doped" semiconductors (positive and negative) to create a PN junction that creates light in a circuit. LEDs are longer lasting (no burning) and less costly to run (more efficient conversion of electricity to light) than incandescent bulbs.
November 30, 2015Toronto Star
| Canada | RRR: conservation
One-third of food is wasted (1.3 billion tonnes or $1 trillion), while the energy to grow, harvest, store, transport, and package the waste produces over 3 billion tonnes of CO2. Most waste is by consumers buying more than they eat (first world) and inefficient farming and storage (developing world). The US throws out about 40% of its edible food.
After China banned imported plastic waste, the UK has been sending its recyclable plastic to Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand, all top-10 ocean-waste countries. Out of sight is not out of harm without essential new recycling infrastructure as single-use plastic continues increasing from unregulated industry practice, expected to quadruple by 2050.
October 17, 2018Dutch News
| The Netherlands | RRR: cycling
The Dutch like their 2-wheelers with 1.3 bicycles per capita, highest in the world, as more than 25% of all trips are by bike (only 2% in Britain), lowering obesity and raising life expectancy. Even the Dutch PM rides to work in the Hague, while the government wants companies to pay 19 cents/km for employees to cycle to work.
December 5, 2018The Guardian
| Luxembourg | RRR: conservation
Luxembourg's newly elected coalition prime minister announced free fares from 2020 on all public trains, trams, and buses, having prioritized the environment in the election. The small duchy capital numbers only 110,000 people (600,000 countrywide), but 400,000 more commute there to work, creating some of the worst congestion anywhere.
December 21, 2018USA Today
| United States | RRR: green
On December 24, 1968, the fourth day of a week-long mission, Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders took a photo of our blue planet from the moon's orbit, now known as "Earthrise." Having finally seen the fragility of earth from space, his iconic picture helped spark interest in green living and the environmental movement.
Poorly insulated homes are retrofitted with new walls, windows, and roofs built offsite (“a tea cosy around the building”). Add solar panels and efficient electric heating and a home can generate all the energy it uses to become a “net-zero” energy home, reducing CO2 emissions by 86%.
Longer lasting and using 80% less power, LEDS are lighting up our world, outselling all other bulb types for the first time in 2017. At the same time, household electricity use has declined. Halogen, CFC, and traditional incandescent bulbs are all losing out to highly efficient and cheap LEDs, a veritable lighting revolution.
Following Thailand, Vietnamese supermarkets are packaging vegetables in eco-friendly banana leaves instead of plastic. Vietnam generates 2,500 tons of plastic waste a day and is the world's 4th-highest ocean plastic dumper. Bans, corn-based bags, and better design help. China's plastic bag use dropped 66% after ultra-thin plastic bags were banned in 2008.
April 17, 2019Other Words
| Global | RRR: recycling
Changing the world requires more than just individual effort such as cutting down waste, not eating meat, growing one’s own food, avoiding planes and cars, especially since most of us in the West already consume more than 3 times the global average amount of resources per capita. Every bit helps, but better systems are needed to make the change.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) states that 40% of carbon reductions pledged in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement can come from already existing technologies, e.g., using energy efficient appliances, which not only saves money to the tune of tens of billions of dollars on electricity bills and stimulates the economy, but helps to slow global warming.
California announced a ban on the automatic supply of shampoo and conditioner bottles in all hotels from 2024 (more than 50 rooms by 2023), though such plastic items will be available on request (AB 1162). Hard to recycle because of their size and leftover gunk, California wastes up to half a billion per year. Refillable in-shower dispensers are better.
Our oceans are filling up with plastic waste. Over a third of U.K. plastic packaging comes from just 10 supermarket chains (more than 800,000 tonnes a year), while U.K. consumers purchase 8 million plastic bottles per year, each taking 450 years to decompose. Time to recycle more and say no to plastic.
June 22, 2019Which?
| United Kingdom | RRR: plastic
In a survey of 11 U.K. supermarkets, the consumer group Which? found that only 52% of packaging is easily recycled, while the quality of recycling labels varied widely – 42% incorrectly labelled or not at all. Some supermarkets even wrap bananas in plastic, while non-recyclable black plastic PET containers are still used.
Composting food waste in a circular economy turns food into fertilizer to grow more food, either with low-tech aerobic (with oxygen) or industrial anaerobic (without oxygen) digestion (AD), where micro-organisms break down biodegradable material into compost. Methane is also produced in an AD (60% of landfill gas, a.k.a. biogas).
August 30, 2023The Guardian
| United States | RRR: organic waste
Organic waste is turned into compost and biofuels, broken down by anaerobic digestion (AD) and microorganisms. The solid and liquid leftover AD matter is compost (digestate) and fuel (methane). Both are better than a landfill that would leak methane, but can also be flared. Rescuing surplus food, preventing waste, and composting is better than ADs.
Solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries need mined metals such as copper, zinc, nickel, lithium, and cobalt that impact ecosystems and communities. Recycling is essential as a record 62 million tonnes of electronics was thrown out in 2022. 1.6 Mt Al and 0.8 Mt Cu (40%) and 99% of rare earth metals went to dumps. As demand grows, e-waste can be reused.
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