plastic waste

When The Mermaids Cry – THE CONSENSUS

THE CONSENSUS Undeniably a culture of behavioural changes, now in its infancy, need to further blossom and be implemented/prompted at all levels: individual, associative, governmental, legislative, industrial, technological, educational, philosophical, national, and international. It simply starts with individual choices. That is the enormous task, yet the enormous power as well because it resides within each and every one of us. Indeed, thanks to an increased awareness of the plastic pollution spread, local, national, individual, and associative actions have taken place…

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WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY: THE GREAT PLASTIC TIDE – INTRODUCTION

By Claire Le Guern Last updated in March 2018. INTRODUCTION The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced. Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world’s oceans, yet mostly originating from where we…

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China plastic waste ban throws global recycling into chaos

In 2018, China n 2018, China stopped accepting foreign plastics for recycling, causing the trade to divert to South East Asia where cowboy firms are dumping and burning waste. From grubby packaging engulfing small Southeast Asian communities to waste piling up in plants from the US to Australia, China's ban on accepting the world's used plastic has plunged global recycling into turmoil. For many years, China received the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world, processing much of it into…

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Is your phone or laptop destined to become a ‘technofossil’?

Forty-four million tonnes of e-waste was generated last year. Activists want big tech to start dealing with the problem. by Sanjana Varghese 27 Aug 2019   Because worldwide annual e-waste is worth $62.5bn – more than the gross domestic product of many countries – environmental advocates are encouraging reclamation efforts like this mobile-phone recycling workshop in Lima, Peru [File: Guadalupe Pardo/Reuters] Janet Gunter was working at an international nongovermental organisation (NGO) when she noticed an alarming trend. She had grown…

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