A round-up of this week’s environmental, green and ecofriendly news and updates.
We all know that plastic pollution is a huge problem – but now, there may be a solution. UK researchers modified an enzyme so that it breaks down the plastic used for soft drink bottles (PET) – and the creation was a happy accident! They’re hoping to further improve it, moving us closer to a recycling solution for the ever-growing mountain of discarded plastics.
Plastic takes more than 400 years to degrade – yet over 1 million bottles are bought every minute around the world. Just 9 percent of all the plastic ever made, has been recycled.
And there’s another interesting development. Do you remember the Dutch high-school student who said he wanted to use a kind of boom structure to clean up the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? He was laughed at, but some people took him seriously. And after a few years of planning and tests, it’s about to happen! The first boom will leave shortly, travel to the Patch and is expected to be operational by late summer.
The booms will sit on top of the water and act like a mini-coastline – just like plastic washes up on beaches, so the boom will passively gather plastic waste. Then boats come past once a month, collect the plastic, and have it recycled. Plastic must be removed from the sea as it breaks down into microplastic, which is much more difficult to collect. See last week’s newsletter on how to avoid microplastic.
We still need to reduce our use of plastic, but it’s good to know that science is making progress in trying to end the waste problem.
Do you enjoy fresh smoothies? What about yummy smoothies for breakfast?
If your mornings are rushed (or even if they aren’t!), I’ve got 5 delicious recipes for a different smoothie every weekday. And they’re incredibly quick to prepare.
Get some morning goodness – the easy way – with these great ideas here.
Utility bills. Of course you need to pay your electricity, gas and other utility bills each month. But I bet you can think of other ways of spending – or saving – your hard-earned money.
So here are 6 quick tips that will help you to significantly reduce your utility bills – read them here and start saving money!
Global Green News:
Hooray! Two new studies published in April show that eating dark chocolate reduces stress. I‘ve written before about why you SHOULD eat chocolate, and it’s great to have further confirmation. Not any old chocolate of course, it needs to be at least 70% cacao. A small amount of dark chocolate every day was found to have a positive “impact on cognition, memory, mood, immunity and other beneficial effects.” And some more justifications (as if you needed them!):- chocolate eaters tend to be slimmer, and more Nobel Prize winners come from chocolate-eating populations.
We know that bees are struggling – and that they’re very important to our food supply. Well, the good news is that the European Commission has voted to ban the use of all insecticides that pose a risk to the pollinators. All neonicotinoids will be banned throughout Europe due to harm to bees and water and soil contamination. Hooray! (The EU banned neonicotinoids on flowering crops in 2013, but this new ban goes much further). Naturally enough, pesticide manufacturing companies and some farming groups greeted the news less warmly.
U.S. Green News:
LeeAnne Walters was a stay-at-home mother living in Flint, Michigan, when she and her children began noticing troubling health problems in 2014. I’m sure you know about Flint’s lead-contaminated water debacle. But did you know that it was Walters who worked relentlessly to expose the problem? For galvanizing her community to fight for clean water, she was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize along with six other grassroots environmental heroes around the world. I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. One “ordinary” person CAN make a difference!
A wintertime “megaflood” in California could turn out to be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history by far, and we are making it much more likely, according to an alarming new report. There will probably be such a flood in the next 40 years – and the report says it will be worse than the 1906 earthquake, worse than eight Hurricane Katrinas (yikes), and worse than every wildfire in California history, combined.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
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It will be the young people that come up with solutions. I always thought they should drop every bit of trash and plastic into active volcanoes as it’s perfect for incineration. So many of us are working hard to use less plastic and reuse what we do. There are still so many that stay ignorant of the issue. Everyone pays for their ignorance. I’m hoping for better changes/
It’s a very interesting thought about volcanoes! The downside I THINK would be that the carbon currently trapped in the waste (especially plastic waste) would be released when incinerated, so it might not be ideal – but then again, we don’t have any good alternatives, so maybe!
I certainly hope that young people find solutions – they’re the ones who will be living with worse effects of climate change thanks to our inaction. As you say, a few people do what we can – but the vast majority do not. I’m also hoping for better changes, thanks Marlene!
[…] week I wrote about a young Dutch man who is working to remove plastic waste from our oceans. But it’s easy to forget about space and the rubbish we have left up there too. There’s a […]