March 4, 2024
Venezuela has undertaken the task of covering the remains of its last glacier, La Corona, on Humboldt Peak at 4,900 meters above sea level in the Andes mountains in the southwest of the country, with plastic "blankets" to slow the inevitable end of this icy patch of its mountain landscape and source of legends.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2024/03/venezuela-bids-farewell-last-glacier-wrapped-plastic/
December 5, 2023
Aditi Agarwal, a brilliant computer science engineer and Gold Medalist, once thrived in the tech world, contributing to innovations at Microsoft. However, she felt a calling to address real-world challenges, particularly those related to carbon emissions and plastic pollution. In pursuit of a nobler cause, she joined a company called Go Rewise, a youth-led initiative in India dedicated to recycling PET bottles through a circular economy approach.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/12/taking-charge-plastic-pollution-india/
October 20, 2023
They do not have a pension nor financial support from families or relatives, but they have themselves. Now they have become collectors of plastic waste, which they turn into products as they battle for survival - earning money from the growing plastic pollution in Zimbabwe.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/10/seniors-thriving-through-plastic-waste-in-zimbabwe/
October 12, 2023
Ijora Badia, a slum in Lagos, was swimming in plastic waste. Now children pay their school fees in plastic bottles, and these are used to build classrooms.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/10/turning-trash-education-lagos-children-benefit-plastic-waste-school/
July 24, 2023
Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have made progress towards partial regulations to reduce plastic pollution, but the problem is serious and environmental activists are calling for regulations in the entire chain of production, consumption and disposal of plastic waste.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/07/plastic-pollution-latin-america-must-regulate-entire-plastic-chain/
June 19, 2023
Plastic INC-2 finished up by laying out a roadmap for the time in between meetings leading to INC-3, requiring the creation of a “zero draft” of the new treaty for review at INC-3. Allocating a day to discuss the synthesis report of elements not thought of during INC-2 prior to the meeting. Representing Global Plastic INC-2, Dr. Shahriar Hossain, Secretary General of ESDO provided an overview of the meeting's results today (Thursday) in the media briefing, press briefing organized by Environment and Social Development Organization.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/06/plastic-inc-2-finished-roadmap-inc-3-global-plastic-treaty/
June 16, 2023
Plastic bags were a part and parcel of life in Kenya. More than 100 million plastic bags were used annually in Kenyan supermarkets alone, with at least 24 million plastic bags discarded every month. Kenya was choking under the weight of plastic bags.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/06/kenyas-hits-and-misses-on-journey-to-eliminating-plastic-waste/
June 5, 2023
It’s time to get together and celebrate the environment! June 5th is the 50th World Environment Day, where each year, the significance of transformative action from across the world is crucial to help people and the planet. This year’s World Environment Day is being hosted by
Côte d'Ivoire in partnership with the Netherlands with a theme of ‘
Finding Solutions for Plastic Pollution.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/06/world-environment-day-solutions-plastic-pollution/
May 31, 2023
Climate-crisis-fuelled storms have hit New Zealand hard this year. In January, we suffered unprecedented extreme weather and flooding, followed by Cyclone Gabrielle in February - the worst storm in 55 years—which triggered a
national state of emergency. In total, we had
5.5 times more rain than Auckland summers typically receive.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/05/global-plastics-treaty-can-end-age-plastic/
February 13, 2023
With
one in ten people in the world going hungry, food prices hitting
record highs, and the
worsening conditions of the environment and climate, it’s time for the world’s population of 8 billion to eat something that is available, abundant and inexpensive:
plastics. https://www.ipsnews.net/2023/02/lets-eat-plastics/
December 13, 2022
Experts agree that African economies need to develop innovative approaches to deal with plastic production, which is set to double in 20 years – adversely impacting rural communities.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/12/experts-seek-appropriate-circular-solutions-plastic-pollution-africa/
August 5, 2022
This spring, I taught a new undergraduate course in environmental sociology. Most of my students took the course because they were curious to see what their desire to live more sustainably had to do with sociology.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/08/plastic-crisis-deep-corporate-roots-protect-planet-need-exposed/
June 20, 2022
Have you ever watched the movie “Free Willy”? A young boy, Jesse, had an Orca whale friend named Willy. Jesse freed Willy into the wild ocean believing that it was the best decision to make for his friend. Well, that was a long time ago.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/06/plastics-will-kill-us/
March 21, 2022
Planet Earth is increasingly being transformed into planet Plastics. Approximately
400,000,000 metric tons of plastics are produced worldwide annually. Those plastics amount to about 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, every year for each of the
8 billion human inhabitants living on the unfolding planet Plastics.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/03/plastic-pollution-planet-earth-planet-plastics/
March 1, 2022
Environmental experts gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, have urged African governments to take advantage of ‘circular plastic opportunities’ to lower greenhouse gas emissions and stop environmental degradation. They were speaking to IPS on the sidelines of the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA).
https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/03/african-governments-urged-support-plastic-pollution-solutions/
February 8, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected plastic waste management, as the world saw a rise in single-use sanitary products, and many cities abandoned their recycling and waste management efforts in the first few months, Eirik Lindebjerg of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) told IPS.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/02/whole-life-cycle-plastics-approach-reduce-pollution-wwf-expert/
January 6, 2022
There are more under-reported consequences of human activities unmatching the rhythm of Mother Nature. Such is the case, among many others, of the growing salinisation and ‘plastification’ of the world's soils.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2022/01/harmful-march-salt-plastics-world-soils/
December 9, 2021
Plastic waste of all shapes and sizes permeates the world’s oceans. It shows up on
beaches, in
fish and even in
Arctic sea ice. And a
new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine makes clear that the U.S. is a big part of the problem.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2021/12/plastic-trash-ocean-global-problem-us-top-source/
July 1, 2021
Documented images of albatross chicks and marine turtles dying slow deaths from eating plastic bags and other waste are being seared into our consciences. And yet our mass pollution of Earth’s seas and oceans, fuelled by single-use plastics and throw-away consumerism, just gets worse.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2021/07/stopping-marine-plastic-pollution-key-iucn-congress-goal/
January 20, 2021
For decades, every time it rains heavily in Jamaica, a daunting deluge of plastic bottles and bags, styrofoam and other garbage trundles its way down a network of countless gullies and streams. If they don’t get snagged somewhere, they end up in the Kingston Harbour or close to the beaches ringing the tourist-heavy North coast.
https://www.ipsnews.net/2021/01/jamaica-failing-cope-plastic-waste/