Global Pollution

There are many forms of polluting the planet. Did you know that one in three of marine mammals have been found entangled in marine litter. As you can imagine, there are thousands of facts like these, and to be fair there are many organisations that exist solely to tackle global pollution in all of its forms. But it is like trying to solve world hunger; so many organisations trying to eliminate starvation, it could be done overnight if governments allowed it, yet here we remain with millions of humans starving to death each year, and indeed the numbers are staggering.

Here you will find:

Landfill Dumping

It is so easy to simply throw something away without thinking about the consequences. But waste finds its way to a landfill site eventually, literally a hole in the ground filled mostly with materials that could have been recycled.

According to Waste Watch, every household in the UK produces over a ton of rubbish each year, which is a total of 31 million tons. 34% of which is recycled. That seems pretty until compared with 64% in Germany.

Globally, if all rubbish was recycled it would save 58 million tons of CO2 a year being fed into the atmosphere.

Plastic Dumping

MSN news – i News 31-2-20

Four leading brands are behind half a million tons of plastic pollution a year, a report says.

Four of the world’s biggest brands are responsible for half a million tons of plastic pollution being burnt or dumped every year, research has suggested.

The study also found that plastic burnt creates emissions equivalent to 4.6 million tons of carbon dioxide – the same that would be produced annually by two million UK cars.

The development agency Tearfund looked at plastic pollution from Coca-Cola, Nestle, PepsiCo and Unilever across six developing countries – Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria and the Philippines.

Video: Half a million hermit crabs killed by plastic pollution on remote islands (The Independent)

Plastic Pollution

It said Coca-Cola was the worst of the four companies, with 200,000 tons of plastic pollution – or around eight billion bottles – burned or dumped each year.

PepsiCo was the second worst with an annual plastic pollution footprint of 137,000 tons.

Tearfund said it was the first NGO to quantify the link between climate change and the burning and dumping of plastic from multinational companies in developing countries.

It is now urging all four to switch to sustainable refillable and reusable packaging alternatives instead of single-use plastic packaging and sachets.

“These companies are selling plastic in the full knowledge that it will be burnt or dumped in developing countries: scarring landscapes, contributing to climate change and harming the health of the world’s poorest people,” said Dr Ruth Valerio, Tearfund director of global advocacy and influencing.

“At present, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever make little or no mention of emissions from the disposal of their products or packaging in their climate change commitments.

“These companies have a moral responsibility for the disposal of the products they continue to pump into developing countries without proper waste management systems.”

Sustainable packaging

According to Tearfund, nine out of 10 adults in the six countries said they would be likely to buy their products in refillable and reusable containers if it cost the same and helped reduce plastic pollution.

A spokesman for Coca-Cola said the firm wanted all its packaging to be recycled and that it was “committed” to ensuring it was created to be sustainable.

Gallery: Want to use less plastic in 2020? These companies can help (lovemoney)

“As part of a number of global commitments, we have committed to getting every bottle back for each one sold by 2030, with the aim to ensure that every plastic bottle contains at least 50 per cent recycled plastic by 2030,” a spokesman added.

A spokesman for PepsiCo said they were “working to reduce the amount of plastics we use and have set a target to, by 2025, decrease virgin plastic content across our beverage business by 35 per cent”.

Unilever said it believed plastic “has its place” in delivering products safely and efficiently but that its place was not in the environment and it was taking “radical action” to tackle the problem.

Nestle said it was “determined to look at every option to solve the complex challenges of packaging waste” and that its vision was none of its plastic ending up in landfill or the oceans.

Marine Pollution

Sorry, work in progress.

Toxic Dumping

According to Waste Watch, every household in the UK produces over a ton of rubbish each year, which is a total of 31 million tons. That’s a lot of land space needed to put it all in.

Working for the local authority cleansing department at Islington I saw multitudes of people carelessly throwing litter on the streets. I was utterly amazed that it was the majority. If only they taught these things at school instead of economics the world would be a safer place and much cleaner for it.

Rubbish will always find its way to a landfill site, literally a hole in the ground somewhere. When you look at the bigger picture, if so many humans don’t care for the planet then it stands to reason that so many industrial companies do not care either.

The dumping of toxic waste by big industry is a real problem. So laugh as you may about educating humans at school about being responsible in business, but ultimately those humans would contribute to a better world. Unfortunately for them all that effort studying economics was wasted on them and they are out there throwing down their litter without regard as we speak.

The government has so much money it can build schools, yet it has not learned to teach much of what matters in the real world.