Droughts, severe tropical storms, melting glaciers – the endless impact of climate change flashes before us every day on the news as the earth struggles to deal with the stresses of rising temperatures.

The UN says we have just 12 years to avoid catastrophic climate change – and however we try to address it personally, we’re still battling with governments dropping out of climate agreements, backing fossil fuels and refusing to accept there’s anything man-made about the risks facing our planet.

But words matter, and the way we speak about the issue influences our chances of finding solutions. Will we hit Net Zero by 2050? Or will we lose ourselves in dangerous melancholy about the whole mess?

Greta Thunberg has inspired schoolchildren to take to the streets to fight for their right to influence the future of their on planet. But the Swedish teen activist told the Guardian last month: “Before I started school striking, I was … so depressed and I didn’t want to do anything.” In an interview with Third Sector, Friends of the Earth chief executive Craig Bennett said, “What we don’t want is for the public to feel a sense of despair about climate change”.

And ecologist Joanna Macy wrote an essay on the very topic. Working Through Environmental Despair addresses the crippling fear that stops us from addressing the problems with the environment in a meaningful sense – even though we know the outcomes if we do nothing are likely to be cataclysmic.

The experts are all highlighting hopelessness as the enemy. But it all comes down to showing people that there are real solutions, says climate scientist Dr Kate Marvel – and leaving pessimism behind.

“I still have hope, because we can still make choices,” the Columbia University and Nasa researcher told The NTNU Big Challenge Science Festival in Trondheim. “It’s really empowering for citizens to fight the effects of climate change,” she explained to me later. “It boils down to values: what matters to you, what do you want to see changing.”

And climate change is “not just a scientific problem anymore,” she adds. “I get really annoyed when I see headlines like ‘Scientists worried about global warming’, and it’s like ‘where do the rest of you live, you all live on this planet too’.

“People should listen to me when I say ‘this is what carbon dioxide does when you put it in the atmosphere’. But my scientific training doesn’t give me any more expertise on what the desired political solution is compared to anybody else.”

So what should we do to maximise positive reactions – instead of losing ourselves to a terrified torpor?

Marvel is a strong supporter of Project Drawdown, the research organisation which is seeking to upend “doom and gloom” in favour of hope for the future.

“Project Drawdown has a ranking of solutions to decarbonise in order to draw down the carbon in the atmosphere. Number one – which is really incredible given all the debate about going vegan, stopping flying and so on – is to choose better chemical refrigerants.” Over thirty years, containing 87 per cent of refrigerants likely to be released could avoid emissions equivalent to a massive 89.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide.

There’s more: “Number four is about making changes to the agricultural system that lead to plant-based foods being more widely available.”

Adopting more efficient aeroplanes is only at number 43. “It’s not that that’s not important. Everything is part of the solution – but a lot of times the debate descends into shaming personal choices rather than choosing to focus on larger issues.”

The Extinction Rebellion way of highlighting what needs to be changed has merit to raise awareness of the climate crisis, but Dr Marvel is keen to make sure we know we all have options. “Addressing climate change is not just one choice. We have to choose to build new grid infrastructure, to stop subsidising fossil fuels, to adopt more plant-based diets – all of which mean not just making individual choices, but making that stuff available for everybody.”

So next time you’re watching dramatic footage of an iceberg breaking off an Arctic ice shelf and feeling that familiar sting of terror gluing you to the spot, you should think again.

“People always ask me what should I do as a person, and I think they want me to say ‘you should recycle’ or ‘you should stop doing this thing’. But actually, you should organise, you should vote – because these things require political transformation.

“There’s nothing scientific that says we can’t reach Net Zero in three decades.”

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If you’ve read anything about climate change over the past year, you’ve probably heard about the IPCC report that gives a 12-year deadline for limiting climate change catastrophe. But for many parts of the world, climate change already is a catastrophe.

The post Why the poor suffer most from climate change first appeared on BLOG Certified.

The moon couldn’t hold onto the precious stuff nearly as well.

We may now know why the moon has so much less bling than Earth.

Gold, platinum and other metals known as highly siderophile (“iron-loving”) elements are far more abundant in Earth’s crust than in that of its natural satellite.

That may seem odd, given the two worlds’ shared (and violent) history. About 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-size planet dubbed Theia slammed into the proto-Earth, blasting huge amounts of material from both bodies into space. Some of this liberated stuff was incorporated into the bruised and battered Earth, and some coalesced to form the moon.

But scientists don’t think that the highly siderophile elements (HSEs) were really part of that mix. These metals were likely delivered later by asteroid strikes; it has remained unclear why Earth got a larger share. For example, did Earth just happen to get clobbered by a few huge, HSE-rich rocks, whereas the moon managed to escape these catastrophic impacts? Or did a relatively steady stream of smaller HSE-bearing impactors preferentially hit Earth long ago, pulled in by our planet’s stronger gravity?

“This has been a major problem in terms of how we understand the moon’s accretion history,” Qing-zhu Yin, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis, said in a statement.

Yin is a member of a research team that looked into this question. The scientists — led by Meng-Hua Zhu, of the Macau University of Science and Technology in China — used computer simulations to model millions of impacts on the moon.

The results suggest that the moon, with its much weaker gravity compared to Earth’s pull, just hasn’t been very good at hanging on to impactor-delivered material, HSEs included; lots of the stuff gets lost to space. In fact, the moon’s “impactor-retention ratio” is about three times lower than previously believed, the team found.

The scientists further calculated that HSE retention in the lunar crust and mantle likely began later than previously estimated — 4.35 billion years ago, around the time the magma ocean covering the moon cooled and solidified. HSEs that arrived before that time probably sank and were incorporated into the moon’s core, the researchers said.

These two factors can explain the relative paucity of HSEs in the lunar crust and mantle, according to the team, which details the findings in a study published online today (July 10) in the journal Nature.

“The beauty of this work is such that all of these things are now coming together nicely,” Yin said. “We may have solved this problem, at least until someone finds new discrepancies!”

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United States: Thousands of universities around the world on Wednesday (Jul 10) declared a “climate emergency” and committed themselves with the United Nations to fighting climate change, in an effort to mobilise their students.

In a letter, the representatives of more than 7,000 educational institutions on six continents promised to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, or 2050 at the latest.

They also pledged more resources for “action-oriented” climate change research and skills development, and to develop environmental education both on campus and through outreach programs.

“What we teach is shaping the future,” said Inger Andersen, director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), in a statement welcoming the initiative, which was presented at a ministerial meeting at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.

“Young people are increasingly at the forefront of calls for more action on climate and environmental challenges, and initiatives directly involving young people in this critical work are a valuable contribution,” she added.

The initiative leaders – which include Strathmore University in Kenya, Tongji University in China, France’s KEDGE Business School, Glasgow University, California State University, Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates and Mexico’s University of Guadalajara – hope to have more than 10,000 academic institutions signed and committed to the plan by the end of the year.

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A quake, even one so far away that nobody in San Diego feels it, could cause an emergency and force mandatory water-use restrictions. That’s because most of San Diego’s water comes from hundreds of miles away through threads of metal and concrete that connect us to distant rivers and reservoirs.

Our biggest source of water is the Colorado River, which is diverted into Southern California from the Arizona border through a 242-mile water system that includes 92 miles of tunnels.

In one worst-case scenario identified by the system’s operator, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a tunnel near Palm Springs would collapse during a quake and cut off flows for six months.

San Diego’s other significant source of imported water comes from rivers drained in Northern California and sent 700 miles south through what’s known as the State Water Project. About 80 miles of the system’s canals run parallel to the San Andreas Fault. The risk isn’t just that the canal itself cracks but that a quake could change the landscape. Since some of the water flows south by gravity, a sudden uplift in the earth would screw up the system’s whole route. Repair estimates range from six months to two years.

There’s yet another danger to the State Water Project in the Central Valley, where the Northern California water is first siphoned south instead of emptying into San Francisco Bay as it would naturally. There, freshwater flows amid a series of levees that both channel the water and help to hold back salty water pulsing inland from the Pacific Ocean through the bay.

A Bay Area quake could be a nightmare scenario for most the state’s cities and farms if it caused levees to collapse. Then, salt water could spill inland, fouling up water used across the southern half of the state.

Of course, San Diego water officials know this. That’s why they’ve spent $1.5 billion on projectsmeant to increase the amount of water stored within Southern California in case of an emergency. There’s enough water on hand at all times for about two months in a local worst-case scenario.

A lot of these numbers seem squishy to me — who really knows, for instance, how long it would take to rebuild a tunnel or reroute a canal? There are some reasons for optimism. San Diego’s desalination plant, for instance, provides a water supply that doesn’t depend on distant rivers.

Still, disasters can be hard to model. Several old dams in San Diego aren’t considered much of a risk but could be during a forceful quake. One problem can feed another. Say there is an earthquake. Fires tend to follow earthquakes — chemicals spill, power lines topple over and spark — and a rupture of even a small water line in an area where firefighters need water could allow the fire to sprawl out of control.

Big Water Quality Concern Comes to Light

During two days in April, San Diego’s major water supplier failed to properly remove viruses and a nasty parasite known as Giardia from drinking water.

The San Diego County Water Authority on Monday disclosed that the problem occurred at its treatment plant near San Marcos back in April.

Because the water goes through several different treatment processes, state regulators said it was “likely” that the water eventually met state safety standards before it reached customers. But, nonetheless, the state’s Division of Drinking Water cited the Water Authority for failing to follow proper treatment techniques.

The Water Authority imports water into San Diego from Northern California and the Colorado River and then sells that water to cities across the county.

Because the failure wasn’t considered an emergency, the Water Authority didn’t have to immediately notify the public. Some cities, like San Diego, have their own treatment plants so they were not at much risk. The Water Authority released a map of the neighborhoods that did receive the at-risk water. They include large swaths of North County, including Carlsbad and Oceanside, parts of rural East County including Ramona and Alpine, and nearby suburbs including Eastlake and La Mesa.

The San Marcos plant, known as the Twin Oaks Valley Water Treatment Plant, is operated for the Water Authority by Jacobs, a private contractor. In a letter to state regulators, a Jacobs official said an employee did not visually monitor valves to ensure that the system was working, among other issues. The company said it is taking measures to prevent future problems. The citation is the first in the plant’s history.

The problem may have begun as early as 8:30 p.m. on April 21 but wasn’t discovered until 12:50 p.m. the next day.

It occurred as the plant was experiencing an increase in flows. In recent years, part of the plant has gone unused because of low demand.

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Balloons are fun. Kids love them. But when you plan your next big celebration, you may want to ditch them. A new report from the Detroit Free Press says the effects of releasing balloons into the world can hurt both the environment and local wildlife.

According to the report, volunteers for the Alliance for the Great Lakes removed between 4,400 and 7,200 balloons and balloon debris from their annual cleanup campaigns over the last three years. This means that from 2016 until now, the volunteers have cleared the Great Lake Shoreline of more than 18,000 balloons and balloon-debris that were strewn about the place — and that’s just items on the shore.

“Once the balloons have lost their air, they can fall into streams, rivers and the ocean, becoming choking hazards for animals like birds, fish, and turtles,” Dr. Rosanne Martyr-Koller, a former research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley told Parentology.

Martyr-Koller notes that balloons also pose a threat to different birds species. Conditions include:

• Starvation
  Seabirds like shearwater, petrels, and gannets can end up ingesting deflated balloons they find on the surface of the sea, mistaking them for squid or jellyfish. If a bird swallows a deflated balloon made of latex, it will obstruct its digestive system and, in some cases, choke the bird.
• Tangling Hazards
  Balloon strings get stuck in trees or shrubbery, which can entangle an unsuspecting bird flying into it. Birds using balloon strings and ribbons in their nests can be dangerous to freshly born hatchlings.
• Loss of Habitat
  Most balloons are made of latex, which comes from tropical rubber trees. With the demand for balloons on the rise, these tropical trees might be wiped out, leaving birds with no habitat to call their own.

At the very least, people are being urged to use biodegradable ribbons, cotton string, or crepe paper if they release balloons. That way, the material will eventually break down over time and not be a menace to nature forever. However, most environmental sites are noting that the balloons themselves — even those that claim to be biodegradable — either aren’t or don’t break down fast enough. This makes them a continued danger to wildlife.

Other Man-Made Risks

“In the air, [balloons] can get tangled in wires, causing disruptions to electricity systems,” Martyr-Koller notes. This is especially true for the metallic mylar balloons, which look great and last longer, but can cause lots of trouble beyond the regular environmental impact.

In California, a bill was signed into law in 2018 stating that mylar balloons must be properly labeled with a warning that they should be weighted down. Likewise, the law says they can never be released into the air.  Why is that?

Power company Southern California Edison stated that there were 1,128 balloon-related explosions and power outages in 2018 from balloons becoming entangled with electrical wires. Out of these explosions, 133 resulted in power lines being knocked down. This not only raises the risk of power outages and people being electrocuted, but it can cause dangerous sparks in this fire-prone state.

For these reasons, some people believe that balloons will suffer the same fate as plastic straws – eventual extinction. While that remains to be seen, states other than California have also banned releasing balloons into the atmosphere. These include Virginia, Connecticut, Tennessee, and Florida.

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Finding solutions to prevent harmful plastic waste is far from simple

New kinds of plant-based plastic are beginning to permeate our lives. Supermarkets stock biodegradable bags to carry our groceries home, cafes serve coffee in compostable cups, and this year London Marathon runners could refuel with seaweed-based edible bubbles filled with sports drink. But if we just replace one kind of throwaway packaging with another, are we really solving the bigger problem?

There’s no denying that we have a plastic crisis on our hands. A 2017 study found that, of the 8.3bn tonnes of plastic produced since 1950, 6.3bn tonnes has been thrown away. And whether it ends up in landfill or in the sea, that plastic – thanks to the stability and durability that it is prized for – is not going anywhere fast.

Next year, a ban on single-use plastics including plastic straws, drink stirrers and cotton buds will come into effect in the UK. Canada recently announced it will ban “harmful” single-use plastics by 2021, becoming the latest in a long list of countries and states to limit the use of disposable plastics. This year Glastonbury banned the sale of single-use plastic bottles on site by replacing them with aluminium cans and offering water refills to festivalgoers.

But ditching single-use plastics by replacing them with biodegradable or compostable versions could be causing more problems than it’s fixing. “What worries me is that this isn’t really a solution, it’s just swapping one polymer for another,” says Mark Miodownik, professor of materials and society at University College London. ”If they end up in the environment, then it really does depend on the conditions that they find themselves in as to whether they biodegrade in any reasonable time.”

“If you’re putting your nappies and your wipes in [your home compost bin], you’re going to be disappointed.”

Deciphering the many labels applied to these plastics is no easy task. Many products described as as “compostable” actually only break down in industrial composters that maintain high temperatures for weeks at a time. Some are certified for home composting, but how long that takes will depend on the conditions of your individual compost heap. Plastics that are labelled “biodegradable” typically can’t be composted, but can be broken down by microorganisms – though the exact method and timescale for this process varies. A recent study found that biodegradable carrier bags could still hold shopping after having been buried in soil or left in the sea for three years.

Biodegradable plastics can be made from fossil fuels like traditional plastics, but in recent years the focus has been on those made from plants or other renewable resources, collectively called bioplastics. Not all bioplastics are biodegradable – Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle is partially made from plants but otherwise acts like a typical PET (polyethylene terephthalate ie regular plastic) bottle. Blends of plant-based starches account for nearly half of bioplastics, but other starting materials include fungi, milk and even leftover lobster shells.

While making plastics out of renewable materials is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, it won’t stop plastic piling up in landfill sites and in our oceans. The problem, says Miodownik, is that there’s no such thing as a sustainable material – only a sustainable system. And in the UK we don’t have a sustainable system to deal with the increasing number of compostable plastics finding their way into our daily lives.

Take the compostable coffee cup made by companies like Edinburgh-based Vegware. They are lined with a bioplastic called polylactic acid – or PLA – made from corn starch. Their lids are made with CPLA, crystallised polylactic acid, designed to withstand high heat. And they are certified with the Seedling logo, showing they meet a European standard for compostability known as EN 13432. This means the packaging will break down within 12 weeks to water, CO2 and biomass, leaving no more than 10% of the original material in pieces bigger than 2mm – but only under industrial-scale composting conditions.

PLA makes up around a quarter of all compostable plastics sold worldwide, and is used for transparent cold drinks cups, clear windows on food packaging like sandwich boxes, drinking straws and more. A home compost heap won’t reach the high temperatures needed to break it down. You might be tempted to put it in the recycling but there, PLA is often indistinguishable from traditional PET plastic bottles and can contaminate the recycling process. Council waste collections vary across the UK but few if any accept PLA in anything other than general waste. Most people will be left with only one option: the bin.

Vegware argues that when they are sent to landfill, its products are still the better choice because they’re made from plants and use lower carbon, recyclable or renewable sources. “These sustainability benefits still apply no matter what happens to them after use,” says Lucy Frankel, the company’s communications director.

But if it ends up in the ocean, PLA is bad news. “PLA is basically nondegradable in sea water,” says Dr Frederik Wurm of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, which means if it goes into the sea, “it’s not better than any other plastic”.

In fact, Vegware’s website points out that compostables are not a solution to marine plastic pollution – but in the rush to replace plastic with more environmentally friendly packaging, it’s a caveat that seems to have got lost.

Plastics that are certified for home composting fare better. Those include the potato-based wrapping for the Saturday Guardian, and a starch-based material called Mater-Bi made by bioplastics company Novamont, which the Co-op uses for its compostable carrier bags.

For people who don’t have a compost bin, some councils that collect food waste will accept compostable bags. But when food waste is processed, the bag may be separated out and sent to landfill or incinerated before your leftovers are composted. That’s because, as things stand, compostable plastics can’t just be sent to any industrial composter. “In-vessel” composters are best suited to breaking down these plastics – but lots of food waste is sent to anaerobic digesters, most of which can’t process compostable plastics at all.

If they are discarded in the environment, research has shown that compostable bags can survive for two years in soil. In sea water they could disappear in as little as three months, although exactly what products they release into the marine environment is not yet clear.

There are some new materials that do claim to totally break down in the environment. Pods made from seaweed by London-based Skipping Rocks Lab are not just biodegradable or compostable, but edible. As well as using the bubbles to deliver hits of Lucozade Sport to marathon runners this year, the company has been trialling edible sauce sachets with takeaways from 10 restaurants in a partnership with Just Eat. If you choose not to eat the packaging after you’re done with the sauce inside, the company says it breaks down in six weeks without needing any special treatment.

“There probably are niche applications for those where it’s the right thing to do,” says Miodownik, but he doesn’t see the edible pods as a big part of the plastics solution. A cofounder of the company has said they are focusing on sports events, festivals and takeaways.

In proposals published earlier this year, Defra said that it was aware of the trend for compostable packaging but that “appropriate treatment infrastructure” needed to exist before it could add compostables to a core list of materials that every council must collect for recycling.

Frankel says Vegware would like to see compostables added to that list. In the meantime, it is working with the waste sector to set up composting collections for its clients, and says its products are now accepted by 27 industrial composting facilities around the UK covering 38% of postcodes. This summer, it’s also starting to offer collection by courier costing £10 for small cafes and individuals using Vegware at parties, in partnership with recycling company First Mile.

To make compostable collections available for everyone, though, as well as making in-vessel composters that can break down these plastics more widespread, helping the machines that sort our rubbish identify what is compostable plastic and what is not will be key. “We’re looking into the possibility of putting some sort of marker into biodegradable plastic that you could then have a detector for,” says Miodownik.

In the short term, it would also be helpful to make the labels we use for plastics clearer. Wurm says that the label “biodegradable” should come with a time limit and information on what environment the plastic will break down in, to help bust the myth that biodegradable littering is no big deal.

He’d also like to see manufacturers think about the life cycle of their products before they decide what to make them from – including how long they’re likely to be used for, and what would happen if they were discarded. If you think it’s likely your drinking straws will end up in the sea, for example, you should not make them out of PLA. “It’s something that in many cases is not considered,” says Wurm.

A more radical solution would be for companies to rethink products so that they don’t require plastic packaging in the first place. “What most companies are doing is saying, we don’t want to redesign our system, we’re going to swap out one material for another, and then it’s someone else’s problem to deal with this down the line,” says Miodownik. “And that’s a disaster.”

As consumers, we could go all-in on reusables, carrying around our own coffee cups and cutlery, and even taking containers to stock up on pasta and cereal at the supermarket. But there are some situations where demand for throwaway packaging will remain. “Even with a major shift to reusable containers, some disposables will always be needed, especially for serving food,” says Frankel.

In that case, unless your packaging is part of a closed loop system with a dedicated compostables collection – as exists at the Houses of Parliament, for example, which switched to compostable packaging last year – recyclable bioplastics could be the more sustainable choice.

“For millions of people in their everyday lives, the best thing is to have plastics that don’t biodegrade, that have long lives – that’s the whole brilliant point of them – and that get collected and recycled back into new things,” says Miodownik.

Until compostables are widely collected, encouraging companies to make more packaging recyclable, as well as reducing and reusing where you can, is the best way to make an impact on the future of plastics, he says: “Every time you choose not to buy something because the thing it’s wrapped in is not recyclable, you’ve made a difference.”

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The popular story about a clownfish that got lost at sea in the movie Finding Nemo could have a much darker sequel—as artificial light in coral reefs leaves the famous fish unable to reproduce offspring, according to a new study.

Results from a new study published in Biology Letters show an increasing amount of artificial light at night (ALAN) in coral reefs, even at relatively low levels, masks natural cues which trigger clownfish eggs to hatch after dusk.

Lead author Dr. Emily Fobert, Research Associate in biodiversity and conservation at Flinders University, says test eggs that were incubated in the presence of artificial light had a zero success rate of hatching, with no offspring surviving as a result.

“The overwhelming finding is that artificial light pollution can have a devastating effect on reproductive success of coral reef fish,” says Dr. Fobert

“When ALAN is present, no eggs hatched but when the light was removed during the recovery period, eggs from the ALAN exposure hatched like normal, so the presence of light is clearly interfering with an environmental cue that initiates hatching in clownfish.”

“The results indicate increasing amounts of light have the potential to significantly reduce the reproductive fitness of reef fish who settle in a habitat near shore lines.”

Dr. Fobert monitored 10 breeding pairs of clownfish exposed to an overhead LED light which imitated commercially available and widely used lights near coral reefs.

Coastlines near reefs are exposed to artificial light at night by increasing numbers of housing developments, promenades, ports, harbours and dockyards- which use LED lights that penetrate into seawater.

While tourists hotspots include floating accommodation above coral reefs, some of these fancy overwater bungalows even have glass floors with lights shining directly on the reefs below so guests can see the fish at night.

“These findings likely extend to other reef fish as many share similar reproductive behaviours, including the timing of hatching during early evening,” says Dr. Fobert.

Clownfish are at risk because they spawn around the time of a full moon and their eggs usuallyhatch a few hours after dusk. The presence of ALAN could compromise their natural reproductive cycle.

Senior author and founder of the Saving Nemo Conservation Fund, Professor Karen Burke da Silva, says improved understanding about the impact of ALAN on coral reefs can help develop solutions for stressed ecosystems.

“Artificial light at night is becoming a greater concern among ecologists, as light is spreading globally, and the impacts on organisms can be severe, but very little research has been done around ALAN in the marine environment.”

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OPINION: New Zealand this month banned the use of certain types of single-use plastic bags. The law change came as the world marked Plastic Free July, a global movement to reduce plastic pollution.

So what is the next plastic product New Zealand governments should be targeting to help save our environment?

An MP from each side of the house gives their views.

Dr Deborah Russell
Labour MP for New Lynn, Auckland

The ban on single use plastic shopping bags officially came into effect on 1 July, but as many of us had already changed our habit of relying on these, it feels like it has already been in place for a long time.

The ban was driven by public and consumer pressure and was supported by grassroots initiatives like one in my area called “Love Titirangi”, which motivated locals to start producing and using cloth bags that could be recycled via a bin at the supermarket door. These types of initiatives were followed by big supermarket chains phasing out single use plastic bags at the start of the year.

As an MP on the Environment Select Committee, I listened to numerous petitions from school students last year that asked us to ban plastic bags. It was inspiring to see young people getting on board and demanding that the government protect our oceans and waterways.

Whether inspired by the thought of protecting endangered sea turtles, or the simple realisation that we simply can’t go on polluting our earth, plenty of us were ready to make the change, and the government responded.

A major criticism of the ban is that it’s just empty symbolism, which won’t make a real difference because there is already so much other plastic in everyday use that ends up in our landfills and waterways. However, it does mark an important response to public pressure, and it also helps to set a basic environmental standard, encouraging us to keep on changing our attitudes towards using plastic.

The government’s commitment to dealing with the mountains of plastic waste we’ve accumulated is supported by projects funded by a $40 million allocation from the Provincial Growth Fund.

The funding will be used to turn plastics that previously went to landfill into materials and products useful to businesses and consumers. New Plymouth’s yoghurt pottle road is a great example of what can be done with a little bit of Kiwi ingenuity.

It’s worth remembering that recycling is not a new thing: our grandparents and great grandparents carried shopping bags and baskets, and retailers wrapped their products in paper. We can all do that again.

If there’s some plastic object you think we should focus on getting rid of next, let us know! You can do that by setting up a petition, or writing to MPs, or by running public events about the issue.

Stuart Smith
National MP Kaikōura

Given the overwhelming problems that plastic is causing to our environment, reducing our use of it is a very positive step forward.

 That step, however, is small. It has provided people with an impetus, if they choose to take it, to consider their impact on the world around them through the use of plastic, and how they could minimise this further in their daily lives.

Arguably the plastic bag ban, which follows the lead of several other countries, has done little more than make the public more aware of our use of plastic, rather than reduce the amount we go through.

I have spoken to people involved in recycling and waste disposal who were not enamoured with the ban.

For a lot of people, plastic bags were not single-use. They had a great number of other practical uses, including as bin liners which eventually went to landfill. What will people do now? They will buy readily available plastic bin liners and these will end up in exactly the same place.

Every living thing on this planet has an impact. As countries become wealthier, people become more concerned about the environment and this is positive – people should do what they can about minimising that impact.

But, there will always be an impact, right down to the multi-use woven bags that we now take to the supermarket.

These, too, come at a cost, from the way in which they were manufactured – perhaps offshore in circumstances less environmentally friendly than ours – to the day they are sent to the landfill with a tear in them.

Health concerns have also been raised, as raw foods such as meat or fish could leak into fabric reusable bags allowing bacteria to cross-contaminate other food products.

Of course, these bags are less likely to blow out to sea than single-use plastic bags, and this is certainly a change for the better.

Like Plastic Free July, reducing our overall use of plastic will always require a certain amount of goodwill, because there are a myriad of cases when it is convenient and even necessary in our daily lives.

Globally, plastic production is forecast to double in the next two decades.

To cut any notable swathe into our vast daily use of plastic will need the full commitment of not just individuals, but the corporations that make and sell us the plastic.

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“You have failed us all so terribly,” a 15-year-old Australian climate activist said in a speech earlier this year, addressing her comments to the world’s political leaders. “We deserve better. Young people can’t even vote but will have to live with the consequences of your inaction for decades.”

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