The international negotiations in Busan, South Korea, to set up a legally binding treaty on plastic pollution are due to conclude on 1st December. 102 nations have banded together to demand that a cap on plastic production is included, in order to reduce at source the...
Campaign for a strong Global Plastics Treaty
A big reduction in plastic production is the only way we can start to tackle the plastic crisis. Last month, the UK took a major step forward in signing the Bridge to Busan declaration. This is a statement signed by 40 countries at the United Nations affirming the...
The hard truth about soft plastic
by Anne MacLennan A fascinating study by Everyday Plastic and the Environmental Investigation Agency tracked 40 bundles of soft plastic packaging deposited at English supermarket recycling collection points. The tracked bundles travelled more than 25,000 km through a...
Financing our own extinction
by Anne MacLennan Recent reports highlight the huge problem of perverse incentives with big corporations subsidised to persist in, and expand, destructive climate, environmental and social practices. At least £2 trillion a year (2.5% global GDP) is spent to support...
Why the online cloud is not benign
by Janet Ullman Highland Community Waste Partnership on Skye For many of us in the south Skye and Lochalsh area, we were incredibly depressed by a letter from the Bank of Scotland, where we were told that our branch in Kyle of Lochalsh was to close in January next...
Is it Food?
by Anne MacLennan A monolithic global industrial food system has emerged since the 1980s according to this paper. Western food culture is dominated by packaged, ready-to-consume products, which are now rapidly displacing traditional dietary patterns in lower income...
Food loss and waste
by Anne MacLennan Food loss happens from on-farm production through to processing. Food waste is what retailers and consumers throw out. Food loss and waste (FLW) depletes natural resources, contributes to climate change and hampers food security. About a fifth of...
Stoking the fires with fossil fuels
by Anne MacLennan Skye may not have been overly warm this summer, but the world hit its hottest day ever recorded, in July as we hear of yet more wildfires, heatwaves, floods and damaging storms. So we should be pulling out all the stops to stop the warming? Well,...
Climate: good news and bad news
by Anne MacLennan Global temperatures are predicted to reduce a little from later this year, possibly for a few years, but while that could bring some temporary relief, it doesn't mean we can relax efforts to bring down greenhouse gas emissions asap. The underlying...
What three degrees of gobal heating looks like
https://youtu.be/uynhvHZUOOo?feature=shared "There is still a one-in-20 chance that we end up with 3 degrees C. One wouldn't be entering a plane if there's a one-in-20 chance of the plane crashing." "Once you get to a three degree world, you are in real, bad...