At the fourth – and penultimate – round of talks, negotiators did not agree to continue formal discussions on how to cut plastic production before a final session in the Korean city of Busan set for November, making it less likely that curbs will be included in the pact.

Peru’s negotiator said his country was “disappointed”, while the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law said governments had sacrificed “ambition for compromise”.

“The pathway to reaching a successful outcome in Busan looks increasingly perilous,” said Christina Dixon, ocean campaign leader at the Environmental Investigation Agency.

Big Oil’s plan B

While some governments led by a self-described “High-Ambition Coalition” have pushed for measures to reduce plastic production – which is expected to nearly double in G20 countries by mid-century – major oil and gas-producing states like the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran have favoured an emphasis on recycling over producing less.

The members of the self-described “High-Ambition Coalition” are in light blue (Photo credit: CREDIT)

Plastics are made from oil and gas, and their production accounts for 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel companies are betting that as demand for oil and gas for energy use falls, they can compensate by selling more of their products to plastic manufacturers.

The Ottawa talks were marred by complaints from scientists and campaigners that plastics industry delegates were harassing and intimidating them, while secretively-funded, pro-plastics adverts were placed around the venue by a right-wing Canadian lobby group.

‘Unsustainable’ plastic use

The governments of Rwanda and Peru have been leading the push for a strong global deal to rein in plastic pollution, winning international approval for the talks to craft a treaty at the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2022.

In Ottawa last month, they asked governments to give their backing to formal negotiations on how to reduce the production and use of plastics, with support from the 65 member states of the High-Ambition Coalition.

While recognising that “this is an issue characterised by divergent views”, Rwanda’s negotiator told delegates “there is at least a convergence on the desire to develop an instrument that is fit for purpose guided by science – and to do so, the question we must ask is what are sustainable levels of production and consumption?”

“Science tells us that current and projected levels of plastic consumption and production are unsustainable and far exceed our waste management and recycling capacities. Moreover, these levels of production are also inconsistent with the goal of ending plastic pollution and limiting global warming to 1.5C,” she added.

‘More than a number’: Global plastic talks need community experts

But governments including Russia, Saudi Arabia and India are opposed to focusing on production curbs. The Ecuadorian chair of the talks, Ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso, did not include production in the list of topics to be officially discussed further before the final negotiations in South Korea.

Instead, he proposed expert groups on how to fund efforts to tackle plastic pollution and on criteria for identifying types of plastic product “of concern”. Governments accepted this, finishing their discussions at 3am on Tuesday.

Compromise welcomed

Peru expressed disappointment at the decision not to focus on production – but Russia’s negotiator welcomed it, saying that issues like the design of plastics and recycling are the “cornerstone of the future agreement” and so the talks should focus on them.

India’s delegate said the negotiations should be conducted in “a realistic manner and with consensus”, adding that “plastics have played an important role in development of our societies”.

Saudi Arabia’s negotiator praised the talks’ chair for “looking into those topics that bring convergence”, while many countries including China, the US and the European Union said the Ottawa outcome was a good compromise.

Southern Africa drought flags dilemma for loss and damage fund

Late on the last night of the talks, the EU had proposed holding another full session of negotiations before Busan, but that was blocked by Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

David Azoulay, an observer for the Center for International Environmental Law, accused developed countries that style themselves as leaders on plastics of giving up the fight “as soon as the biggest polluters look sideways at them”.

In response to the lack of progress on production curbs, a group of countries led by the Pacific island nation of Micronesia put out a statement promising to continue talking informally about the issue and to keep it on the agenda. Thirty-two countries signed the “Bridge to Busan” initiative, including Nigeria, France and Australia, and more are expected to join later.

Micronesian negotiator Dennis Clare told Climate Home that its signatories “recognise that we cannot achieve our climate goals, or our goal of ending plastic pollution, without limiting plastic production to sustainable levels”.

Delays, intimidation and harassment

The four rounds of talks held since 2022 have been marked by delays, which some observers say are deliberate tactics by countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

At the second session in Paris last May, negotiators spent two days discussing voting rules, an issue which many thought had already been resolved.

And the third round in Nairobi in November failed to agree on intersessional work leading to Ottawa, after opposition from Russia and Saudi Arabia.

In Ottawa, the meeting was marred by complaints of intimidation and harassment from campaigners and scientists against some of the 196 lobbyists from the plastic and fossil fuel industry present in the halls.

Tensions rise over who will contribute to new climate finance goal

Bethanie Carney Almroth, a ecotoxicology professor at the University of Gothenburg who co-chairs the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, wrote a formal complaint to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the body that organises the talks.

She said she had been “verbally harassed, yelled at and subjected to unfounded accusations” by a male delegate from a plastics company, who interrupted her remarks to criticise an aspect of scientific research on plastics which he falsely said she was involved in.

In a separate complaint to UNEP, Almroth said plastics industry delegates had eavesdropped on scientists’ conversations, aggressively surrounded them and criticised their work, and “harassed and badgered several of our younger scientists”.

Marcos Orellana, the UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, said on X that it was “extremely worrying to hear about intimidation and harassment of scientists by industry”, adding “there should be zero tolerance for industry misconduct”.

Pro-plastic ads

Almroth told Climate Home that delegates were also faced with pro-plastic adverts at Ottawa airport, as well as on buses and taxis. “The entire city of Ottawa has been completely blanket-wallpapered in propaganda and pro-plastic and anti-UN campaigns,” she said.

Photos of these adverts seen by Climate Home show that some do not declare who paid for them, while others say they are sponsored by a right-wing lobby group called the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada (CCMBC).

I’m at #INC4 in Ottawa, reporting on the #PlasticsTreaty. The conference itself is plastic-free (food sold at the venue is wrapped in paper), but these ads are plastered in the hotel next door where events are being held pic.twitter.com/Bu8b6jawqG

— Lisa Song is @lisalsong.bsky.social (@lisalsong) April 24, 2024

The CCMBC’s president, political activist Catherine Swift, drove a van around the conference centre with pro-plastics adverts on it. In an interview next to the van with Rebel News, she claimed that plastics are “almost infinitely recyclable” and that recycling is the solution to plastic pollution. Passers-by tell Swift and Rebel News in the online clip that the adverts are “kind of weird” and that “plastic is killing the planet”.

The CCMBC does not systematically declare its donors. But videos from its 2023 gala dinner reveal that its sponsors include oil and gas companies like NuVista, TC Energy and plastics company Husky, whose CEO John Galt has appeared on the CCMBC’s Youtube channel.

“This is big money. This is high stakes,” said Almroth. “Plastics is the fossil fuel and the petro-chemical industry’s plan B. As we shift away from fossil fuels as an energy source, they’re putting their bets on plastics and we’re a threat to them.”

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post Hopes fade for production curbs in new global pact on plastic pollution appeared first on Climate Home News.

Burning rubbish means less goes to landfill, but could encourage more waste as a result, say campaigners (Pic: Flickr/James)

By Mariel Vilella 

As its name implies, the Green Climate Fund was created to help transform developing country economies by supporting high quality investments in clean energy and climate resilience.

Exactly what the fund would pay for in order to meet this lofty goal is still not clear.

When members of the fund’s board meet in Korea to hammer out guidelines for deciding which projects to finance, they will be considering, in large part, how to prioritize investments with the greatest potential to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

A draft of the investment framework now publicly available includes “low-carbon strategies” for improving the way governments and companies manage waste.

That could be a good thing as long as those strategies are recycling, composting and waste prevention, not dumping and burning.

Garbage in, garbage out 

In an attempt to capitalize on the increasing demand for sources of energy that emit less carbon than fossil fuel combustion, the incineration, plastic, and cement industries are working hard to paint “waste-to-energy” as green as wind, solar, and other renewable technologies.

But dressing up the name doesn’t change the fact that burning trash is amongst the most polluting, expensive, and inefficient forms of energy production available today.

Incinerator companies like Covanta, Plasco, and Veolia claim they can safely, cost-effectively and sustainably turn waste into electricity and fuels. Some companies go so far as to claim that the technology is “zero emissions” or “pollution-free” and not incineration at all.

The industry uses all kinds of terms: gasification, pyrolysis, plasma arc, waste-to-energy.

But all of these ways of burning trash — even if they’re called something else — release dioxins and a panoply of other toxic pollutants into the air, soil and water; emit unsustainable amounts of carbon; and are, in fact, treated as incineration by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Union.

Risk 

Simply put, incinerators are a bad investment. Burning waste remains the most expensive form of electricity generation. In the U.S., the capital costs more than 2 times that of coal, and operating costs nearly 10 times as high.

Because of the exorbitant price of building burn facilities, most private financiers are reluctant to take on such a risky investment alone. To make incineration viable, the cash-strapped public sector has to step in with taxpayer subsidies.

In addition, city governments are generally required to sign multi-decade contracts that lock them into burning trash for decades. This discourages recycling, composting and other waste- and cost-reducing measures.

In some places, notably Europe, local governments have actually been forced to import trash from other towns to meet their quota. Cities in the U.S., like Harrisburg and Detroit, have even gone bankrupt trying to make good on their contracts with incinerator companies.

Despite being such a massive investment, incinerators produce very little energy and a lot of pollution. To make the same amount of electricity as a coal plant, the average trash incinerator in the U.S. releases 28 times as much dioxin and 2.5 times as much carbon.

Experimental technologies that once looked promising to the industry, such as gasification pyrolysis and plasma arc, have failed to prove capable of commercial-scale operation.

In Europe, cities are increasingly decommissioning incinerators and moving instead toward zero waste. And in places where pollution rules are not enforced, like in the Indian community of Okhla, residents are shutting down facilities in protest.

To top it all off, incinerators feed climate change. The average trash incinerator in the U.S. directly emits an average of 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide per MWh and 2.8 tonnes of nitrous oxide per MWh—both greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

That means incinerators emit more CO₂ per megawatt-hour than any fossil fuel-based power source, including coal-fired power plants.

Meanwhile, removing material from the waste stream through cheap, low-tech measures like composting and applying it to the soil could increase forage production by 50% and pull a ton of carbon out of the atmosphere per hectare.

Role for waste 

The waste sector does have a significant role to play in reducing carbon emissions and protecting the climate, and should be prioritized by the Green Climate Fund.

In cities around the world, local recycling workers, visionary community leaders, and innovative practitioners are showing that zero waste solutions —including composting, biogas, recycling, and, production and consumption shifts—could be implemented today, using existing technologies, with immediate results.

Recycling and composting alone save 3 to 5 times as much energy as incinerators can recover.

Biogas plants that run on organic waste are used for energy generation at the residential level in Mumbai where informal recyclers run their own biogas plants. Much larger facilities in the UK, Flanders, and Germany are generating heat, power or both.

Today, nearly 1 million people are employed in the recycling sector in the United States, and studies show that an aggressive pursuit of recycling could produce a total of 2.3 million jobs while reducing pollution and mitigating climate change.

Recycling generates millions of dollars in economic activity annually and shows great promise of growth.

Some cities, like San Francisco, have even shown that zero waste can be achieved through cooperation with unions, community groups and employee-owned companies.

These are the kinds of economic, employment and environmental gains that developing countries deserve to benefit from, and the Green Climate Fund could help make happen.

Given the urgency of the climate crisis, the shrinking pool of public money, the health risks of incineration, and the availability of sound alternatives, waste-to-energy would be a bad investment for the Green Climate Fund.

When it comes to considering incineration, members of the fund’s board would be wise to remember the adage “garbage in, garbage out”.

Mariel Vilella is the Associate Director and Climate Policy Specialist at Zero Waste Europe, the regional branch of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. Follow her on twitter @marielvilella

The post Should the Green Climate Fund back waste to energy plants? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Matt0513/Flickr

By Gerard Wynn

Three energy companies have proposed cleaner burning systems in waste to electricity generation, under a UK-funded competition.

Waste offers the potential for an unlimited renewable energy resource, and is already used in simple power generation.

For example, methane derived from decomposing manure or municipal rubbish can be burned in a gas engine. But that only makes an incomplete use of the biomass, most of which is left as compost.

Solid biomass can also be burned in incinerators, to drive a steam turbine, but most energy is lost as heat to generate steam.

The use of waste in more advanced, efficient power generation has suffered difficulties from the production of heavy tars in the production process.

“The presence of tars in the product gas is a big problem in the commercial utilisation of biomass product gas as source of sustainable energy,” said a research note published by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), one of the technology providers in the UK competition

“Tar is formed in the gasifier and comprises a wide spectrum of organic compounds. Heavy tars condense out as the gas temperature drops and causes major fouling, efficiency loss and unscheduled plant stops.”

Gasify

The aim of gasification is to reduce any form of biomass, ranging from wood to waste, into a high energy gas comprising hydrogen and carbon monoxide, also called syngas.

That is achieved by heating the biomass under restricted oxygen.

In theory, the syngas can be burned in a gas turbine or reciprocating engine, generating electricity without the wasteful step of steam generation. Alternatively, it can be converted into renewable diesel fuels including jet fuel, through a well established Fischer Tropsch process already applied to coal and natural gas.

The trouble is the removal of impurities produced from heating the biomass, and especially dust, charcoal and heavy tars which otherwise clog the power generation and plant machinery.

The British competition, run by the publicly and privately funded Energy Technologies Institute, will choose between three companies which have submitted designs to demonstrate syngas cleaning.

The three companies are Advanced Plasma Power, Royal Dahlman and Broadcrown.

The Advanced Plasma Power process uses an electric torch called a plasma arc to zap the impurities, cracking them into smaller molecules such as methane.

“The intense heat from the plasma arc – in excess of 8,000C – and the strong ultraviolet light of the plasma result in the complete cracking of tar substances and the breakdown of char materials. The cracking creates a clean syngas,” the company said.

“It is the presence of these contaminants in waste gasification processes which has, hitherto, been the major obstacle in deploying the gas engines and turbines necessary to achieve higher electrical generating efficiencies.”

The second company, Royal Dahlman, is a technology supplier in the petrochemical and gas turbine industry, and is using an entirely different syngas cleaning approach, developed by Netherlands-based ECN.

The cleaning process is based on exploiting the dew point of tars, using special oils to condense out the tars as the syngas is cooled, in a multi-step process.

The third company, Broadcrown, was more coy about its technology approach.

The ETI will decide in the next few months the winning project design, which will then be built, tested and in operation by 2016, with an electricity generating capacity of between 5 and 20 megawatts.

The post Waste could provide UK with unlimited energy resource appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Bigstock)

By Tim Radford

Human waste production has multiplied tenfold in the last century.

Rubbish – plastic bags, pizza boxes, empty beer cans, tinfoil, bubble wrap, old mattresses, rusty machinery, broken bottles, spent batteries, stale sandwiches, wilting salads and abandoned newsprint – is being generated faster than any other environmental pollutants, including greenhouse gases.

And the problem will go on getting bigger until some time in the next century.

Daniel Hoornweg of the University of Ontario and Chris Kennedy of the University of Toronto in Canada and Perinaz Bhada-Tata of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates argue in Nature that the combination of urban growth and material affluence is creating a throwaway problem that won’t go away.

The average person in the US throws away his (or her) own body weight in rubbish every month. The detritus linked to modern living has not only grown tenfold in a century; by 2025 it will double again.

UN: food waste emissions larger than UN transport sector

Solid waste disposal has become one of any modern city’s biggest costs. Landfill sites near Shanghai, in Rio de Janeiro, and in Mexico City typically receive 10,000 tonnes of waste a day.  The world now has more than 2,000 waste incinerators, some able to burn 5,000 tonnes a day, creating attendant problems of ash and air-polluting fumes.

Landfill waste is of course also a notorious source of methane – a potent greenhouse gas – but the authors are primarily concerned with the simple problems posed by the increasing volume of affluent society’s rejected stuff.

It’s a city thing, they say. Country dwellers don’t buy so much packaged food, don’t have factories and don’t throw so much food away. City dwellers on average generate twice as much waste; the more affluent urbanites throw away four times as much.

The three researchers – an expert in energy systems, a civil engineer and an urban waste consultant – say that in 1900 there were 220 million people in the cities. That was 13% of the planet’s population, and these townsfolk produced 300,000 tonnes of discarded stuff every day.

By 2000, there were 2.9 billion people in cities – 49% of the world’s population – creating more than three million tonnes of solid waste per day. By 2025, it will be twice that = enough to fill a line of rubbish trucks 5,000 kilometres long every day.

Idiosyncrasies

Some countries are more profligate than others. Japan’s citizens produce about one third less, per person, than US citizens, even though the gross domestic product per capita is about the same. China’s solid waste generation is expected to go from 520,550 tonnes per day to 1.4 million by 2025.

“As a country becomes richer, the composition of its waste changes,” the authors say. “With more money comes more packaging, imports, electronic waste and broken toys and appliances. The wealth of a country can readily be measured, for example, by how many mobile phones it discards.”

Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata are the authors of a 2012 World Bank report in which they projected a world dustbin collection of 6 million tonnes a day by 2025.

They calculate that under a business-as-usual scenario waste will grow with population and affluence as the century wears on, with increasing growth in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and by 2100 it will exceed 11 million tonnes a day and peak sometime in the next century. But this scenario is not inevitable.

“With lower populations, denser, more resource-efficient cities and less consumption (along with higher affluence) the peak could come forward to 2075 and reduce in intensity by more than 25%,” they say. This would save around 2.6 million tonnes per day.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

The post Rising waste levels driving global methane threat appeared first on Climate Home News.

228 million tonnes of waste in landfills generated every year in England. (Pic: Gary Miller)

By Nilima Choudhury

As anti-fracking protests continue throughout the UK, one company claims its biofuel technology could offer a viable alternative to shale gas amidst the protests raging across the UK today.

National Grid, Advanced Plasma Power and Progressive Energy have been developing the technology in Swindon for the last eight years using waste to produce bio-substitute natural gas (bio-SNG)

Rolf Stein, chief executive, Advanced Plasma Power told RTCC that the 228 million tonnes of waste in landfills generated every year in England alone is used by his company to produce bio-SNG.

“The main advantages [of using] the UK’s biggest source of biomass – residual waste – rather than letting it decompose producing methane, which then goes into the atmosphere [is to] produce useful products,” said Stein.

Bio-SNG could play a crucial role in the decarbonisation of heating and help reach the UK’s binding carbon reduction targets.

As part of its work on future energy scenarios, National Grid has forecast that renewable gas could be a vital part of the energy mix in the coming decades.

Dr. Jeremy Woods, lecturer in bioenergy at Imperial College London, agrees that it would be possible to replace bio-SNG for shale very soon, “but it’s part of a complete systemic rethink that’s required around bioenergy and biofuels and in particular the NGOs need to rethink their stance on bioenergy and biofuels.”

Last week, ActionAid accused the government of exacerbating world hunger and increasing costs to motorists for wanting to incorporate more biofuels in the UK’s energy mix.

Woods believes public opinion will be instrumental in determining whether biogas is a success in the UK. If the population believe they can use their waste to produce cheap energy at a low environmental cost, the uptake of bio-SNG could be swift.

Viability

The UK’s Committee on Climate Change, an independent body that advises parliament, says that one in 20 of the UK’s homes could be supplied with gas from biomass and waste by 2020.

The Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association, the industry trade body, argues this could be doubled, and says the potential exists for biogas to suply 10% of the UK’s needs.

This would also help cut UK carbon dioxide emissions by 7.5m tonnes a year, because waste sent to landfill generates high levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

“This project is a great opportunity to look at the potential of bio-SNG from both a technical and commercial perspective,” said Marcus Stewart, future distribution networks manager for National Grid, working on the bio-SNG plant in Swindon.

“The project underlines our commitment to seeking economic and innovative ways to decarbonise energy, while making the best use of the existing network. ”

However, Dr Woods argues that we will only see the benefits of this technology once it is on a “level-playing field” with traditional sources of energy, which already enjoy considerable support in the form of subsidies from government.

“The European Union and the US renewable fuel standard have allowed the situation to develop where frack-gas has emerged as a potential contender and the idea that it’s in some way a transition towards renewables which is entirely wrong is just a way of exploiting more fossil carbon without us really addressing the fundamental causes of climate changem,” he said.

“We’ve allowed this potential future to emerge where shale gas is really a flag bearer for the continued exploitation of fossil fuels and we’re not willing to take on the consequences.”

The post Green ‘biogas’ has potential to quash UK fracking debate appeared first on Climate Home News.

The US Department of Agriculture has warned that food prices in 2013 could increase at nearly twice the rate of inflation due the severity of the drought currently gripping 31 of the country’s states.

Price rises are also expected globally next year, as other big exporters hold onto their own supplies, further decreasing availability in the market. Among the worst affected are the most vulnerable countries that are heavily reliant on imports.

The global ‘futures’ market means that crops are often sold before they are even picked – affecting prices for years to come. For instance, in 2010 a Russian drought sent prices of wheat and barley soaring the following year.

This hybrid corn crop in Kenya has been bred to resist drought. (Source: Flickr/CIMMYT)

The weather affecting crops is nothing new – a famous example is the series of droughts in the 1930s that left parts of America and Canada resembling a ‘dust bowl’.

But these severe types of weather event are predicted to occur with increasing frequency, if last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the ‘Risks of Extreme Events’ is to be believed. And given the way the world economy is interconnected – an impact on one continent will reverberate around the globe for years to come.

Some, including the US Department of Defense, the Maplecroft consultancy and IISS researcher Jeffrey Mazo have even suggested that climate-induced food shortages played a role in the Arab Spring.

Cash crops like coffee and cocoa, which are grown across relatively small areas can be severely affected. Starbucks has sought to protect its own supply by helping its growers “climate proof” their crops.

The challenges facing farmers have been described as the “perfect storm”, so what are the big issues and what can be done to limit the reverberations?

Many of the tools and technologies required to reduce the impact of erratic weather are available now. A great many more are under development or waiting for the right policies to catalyse them.

A number of factors contributed to wheat prices jumping from $700 on the 25 June 2012 to $940 in late July. (Source: Forex)

Population

“The current world population of 7 billion is projected to reach 9.3 billion by 2050,” explains Dr Darren Hughes, head of communications at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research centre in the UK.

“Coupled with other factors, particularly people moving from rural livelihoods to cities, rising global temperatures and extreme weather events becoming more frequent, an enormous stress will be placed on our natural resources and therefore our ability to provide adequate nutritious food and to safeguard our environment through clean air, soil and water.”

Population is clearly a huge challenge facing food security, but there is an argument that the fault lies not with the earth’s future inhabitants, instead the problem is with how we, the current population, produce inefficiently and consume so wastefully.

Waste

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a global research partnership focusing on food security.

A report by its Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change in March 2012 makes a painful read. A stand-out stat is that while in 2008 1.5 billion adults were overweight, in 2010, 925 million people were undernourished.

Here’s another one: the UK wastes 22% of its food (the global average is estimated at 33% by the FAO).

VIDEO: Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change – How to feed the world in 2050

Behaviour

Diet changes and cuts in waste at home, at the farm and along the supply chain can make a huge difference.

One of the major contributors to the strain on agricultural supplies is the growing volume of meat consumed. According to Cornell University, the grain used to feed livestock in the US could feed 800 million.

Some campaign groups – notably the US Department of Agriculture – have called for a “Meatless Monday” as a way for the west to cut its protein input.

Cutting meat intake in emerging economies could be even more crucial however as China’s total annual meat consumption is now double that of the US, although the latter is still way out in front in the per capita stakes.

Making the supply chain smarter and enabling farmers to make better decisions could have a big impact too. Improving storage throughout the chain, cutting superficial quality control standards and upgrading processing facilities in developing countries could cut masses of waste before the food hits the shelf.

Land degradation

It’s not just waste we should be concerned about – poor land management also contributes to the problem. Writing for RTCC, the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, Luc Gnacadja, said that every year land degradation removes an area of agricultural land capable of growing 20 billion tons of grain.

Desertification is not an unstoppable process. Land can and has been restored to agricultural standards.

The Great Green Wall project in Africa will see a 4300 mile long and 9 mile wide line of trees planted to cut soil erosion by the wind, reduce dust storms and create rural economies. South Korea is undergoing a huge project in Mongolia to limit the effect of wind-blown dust from its degraded lands.

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Information

Information for all farmers, no matter how small, is a key weapon.

“In the short term we are looking at how better climate information can help farmers plan for the upcoming season,” says Vanessa Meadu, communications manager at CGIAR. “Information could be delivered by mobile phone, community radio or through local information centres.”

Gallup suggests 57% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa has a mobile phone providing a widescale platform for data to help farmers adapt. In many cases, longer term adaption is needed, and this requires finance.

A number of development banks including the European Investment Bank, NGOs and even enterprising entrepreneurs are helping support small scale agriculture. Micro insurance schemes can ensure that if a farmer suffers a bad harvest, it needn’t be their last.

Technology

Technology also has a role to play but implementation is again tied to policy.

“Crops can be adapted to future conditions through breeding,” says Meadu. “Researchers are working on identifying important genetic traits, including drought tolerance and pest resistance, which will be critical for helping farmers adapt to new growing conditions. However, much more investment and policy support is needed for this kind of research.”

Hughes agrees adding that the nature of the problem requires policy from health, environment, agriculture, food and energy departments. These decisions however, must be well informed.

“There is increasing concern within the science and farming community that policy decisions, notably in the EU, are based on pure politics and not sound science,” says Hughes.

Biofuels

We really want to keep burning corn in our gas tanks, even as drought withers supply? fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2012/…

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) July 30, 2012

Biofuels policies have also been handled poorly in many countries with food unnecessarily displaced in the pursuit of alternative fuels.

“Right now, the US is suffering from extreme drought, making corn crop yields uncertain. The diversion of land that could be used to grow corn for food versus corn for fuel plays a more important role when certain areas of the US are having difficulty harvesting due to the drought,” ActionAid USA told RTCC in a written statement.

Population is clearly the greatest challenge facing food security, but the fault is not with the future inhabitants that could number nine billion by 2050, the problem is with how we, the current population, produce inefficiently and consume so wastefully.

Business as usual

The UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser has said: “The challenge for global agriculture is to grow more food on not much more land, using less water, fertiliser and pesticides than we have historically done.”

The challenges are clearly numerous, but so are the available solutions. Doing nothing is not one of them.

What do you think? What are the biggest threats to food security and what should we be doing (if anything) about trying to deal with it? Is it high enough up the political agenda? Tweet us via @RTCCnewswire or email the author.

The post The price of climate change: How to temper volatile food prices appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Circular Economy uses biological materials that once exhausted can be returned safely to the natural world. It exploits technological materials that can be kept within the system at high quality and used again. And again. And again.

So far this week, we have described the major principles which make up the Circular Economy (CE) and suggested how we could go about putting this concept into action.

– Circular Economy #1: Why it’s time to ditch our linear vision of growth

– Circular Economy #2: How can we plan to re-use waste?

We now understand a major transformation is needed in the way we think about design, both in terms of products and systems.

In the final part of our series on the CE, we bring these principles together and suggest a way to deliver change on an industrial level.

We need to imagine the design and manufacturing process as part of an ecosystem.

In the same way insects, plants and larger mammals provide vital services to each other, so businesses in the CE should work more closely – sharing and exchanging resources.

No company can work in isolation – and one man’s waste can be another’s raw materials.

Just as in nature, all aspects of the circular economy will be reliant on one another (Source: Gary Robson/Creative Commons)

The complexity of our production systems mean that multiple players feed into each widget and service that we use. Each of these players will be involved in ensuring the success of the CE.

Effective cross-chain and cross-sector collaboration are imperative for the establishment of a circular system.

Transparency and the establishment of industry-wide standards will help fuel the product development and infrastructure management needed.

Supply line clarity is also key, so that those companies who trade goods can be fully aware of every component and material which goes into the products they sell.

To an extent all these criteria are already being implemented around the world. On RTCC we have recently covered the importance of environmental reporting and worldwide standardisation.

But they are vital – and here’s why. Take the device you are reading this article on.

Various companies will be responsible for the plastic covering, screen, software, electronics and the online or wifi connection to the internet.

Each provider must take into account the requirements of the others contributing to the appliance.

And this does not simply apply to electronics. For example the One Planet Architecture Institute’s latest project is a Town Hall that will be leased on the performance basis.

The complexity of the Town Hall – as with any building – means many players will feed into the system.

The building itself, the office furniture, the computer systems, the carpets, the lighting and the energy, to name just a few, will all come from different companies across a range of industries.

If just one aspect of this does not live up to the quality controls and the sustainability standards expected by the customer then the whole building will fail.

With just one company having ownership of this building, and being responsible if anything goes wrong – it’s in their best interests to make sure that all their suppliers and contractors are working to the same standards.

Here’s what Douwe Jan Joustra from One Planet Architecture Institute says about their project:

“Many of our products are so complex that a lot of producers are involved. So we and they have to get it organised.

“We are working now on a building to be built on a service contract. So the community will not buy the New City Hall but they have a service contract which says they will get good working places provided by one of the building manufacturers.

“But a building in the most part is a complex process of a lot of different contractors. So what you will see is there a whole new range of contracting between all these providers to get, as much as possible, the responsibility of the product and of the materials in the right place. So we will need a new set of arrangements between companies.”

On a micro level it’s obvious. So why not try and implement this on a macro level?

Five points to take away

– The CE is not about small changes. It is about the major transformation and it will involve innovation and transformation in all aspects of the economy.

– The CE is not about designing with waste, but it is about designing out waste. We need to begin to design for disassembly so valuable materials do not end up in landfill. They must be used again – and again and again.

– The CE will need to be fuelled by renewable energy. It will need abundant energy to ensure that materials can be kept to high quality to be used again, and the way to ensure a reliant and safe supply is through using natural, solar energy to drive the change.

– The move to the CE will have to include cross industry collaboration. With such a large transformation, no company can work in isolation, and one company’s waste could in the CE become another’s resource.

– We must learn from nature for the CE – both about working within closed loops, giving real value to our goods and services and the resilience of the abundance.

The post Circular Economy #3: Why we need to look at the production cycle as an ecosystem that requires constant replenishment appeared first on Climate Home News.

– The day’s top climate change stories as chosen by RTCC
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– Updated at 0900, 1300, 1700 BST (GMT+1)

Thursday 12 July

Last updated: 1700 BST

Latest news

Africa’s answer to climate change is taking root, quite literally. The project will see 50,000 acres of trees planted, creating a 4,000-mile, nine-foot wide wall of trees which will stretch from Senegal to Djibouti. The aim of the project is to stop encroaching desertification, and similar projects have already been undertaken in China.

Coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region, including the Great Barrier Reef could recover faster from major stresses than their Caribbean counterparts say marine scientists.

The European Commission say up to €1.5 billion could be available by the end of the year to fund renewable energy and carbon capture and storage projects across the EU coming from a programme that auctions EU carbon permits to market participants from the regional cap-and-trade scheme.

David Attenborough has warned that butterfly populations could crash as a result of the record-breaking wet weather being seen in the UK this spring and summer. This comes as the charity Butterfly Conservation launches its annual survey – amid concerns that the wet weather could have hit their breeding season.

UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey has said he will embark on a new diplomatic push to encourage Poland to adopt the EU’s proposed 30% emissions target. Speaking at Chatham House Davey said the move would make economic sense.

Brazil’s oil regulator says it expects to release a report next week looking at the cause of the November oil spill in an offshore field operated by Chevron Corp. It is expected to provide the official government explanation of the accident that led to criminal charges and civil suits seeking nearly $20 billion in damages.

The droughts currently being experienced in the US – the worst in nearly 25 years – could drive food prices up around the world as the hot weather dries up corn fields. The rises in the price of corn could in turn be transferred to foods including hamburgers, steak and bread.

An expedition looking to document any debris from the Japan tsunami being pushed along by the current in the western half of the North Pacific has found a huge plume – including half a fishing boat – expected to wash up on the US Pacific coast in October.

Top Tweets

A couple of updates from the ResPublica event last night about community and cooperative energy…

#Energycoops @res_publica Becky Willis suggests community energy projects must throw off counter-cultural/cuddly image to be taken seriously

— Hannah Butt (@hannah_butt) July 11, 2012

Rebecca Willis 3.5 Gigawatts out there potentially for community energy to generate @res_publica #energycoops — Phillip Blond (@Phillip_Blond) July 11, 2012

#energycoops Gareth Thomas MP in USenergy coops have 12% of market 42 million members @Res_publica

— Phillip Blond (@Phillip_Blond) July 11, 2012

Stat of the day

Almost three-quarters of UK butterfly species have declined in number in the last 10 years. In last year’s Butterfly Survey, the UK public counted 320,000 butterflies – figures showing number were down 11% compared to the previous year.

Video of the day

Liberate Tate – a group protesting against the sponsorship of UK art galleries (specifically Tate) from oil companies – delivered a ‘gift’ to the Tate Modern last week…

The post Climate Live: Davey to push for 30% EU emissions targets, US drought to hit food prices and Tsunami debris in the Pacific Ocean appeared first on Climate Home News.

The sun has finally emerged in the UK and as June comes our attention is turning to summer, and even more importantly to festival season.

Today the choice of musical events is endless. In the UK alone over 6 million tickets are sold each year for almost 500 different festivals. But this unfortunately means the environmental impact of our favourite summer past time is also huge and growing.

Julie’s Bicycle – a non-profit company aimed at limiting the environmental impact of cultural events – estimates that a larger music festival, with 40,000 people or more will produce around 2,000 tonnes of CO2e – that’s 500 return flights from the UK to Australia.

That includes the emissions generated on site, and that transporting the audience to the site.

Back in 2008, Thom Yorke of Radiohead told a Friends of the Earth press conference that the band would not play Glastonbury that year as the festival lacked a public transport infrastructure – a sentiment I can sympathise with having made the journey myself by train, no easy task.

Known for its iconic pyramid stage and muddy weather, Glastonbury is one of the UK's biggest festivals - which means it also has a big environmental footprint (© Jaswooduk/Creative Commons)

And the carbon emissions are not the only environmental impact of a festival. Let’s take Glastonbury again as an example. With around 150,000 people descending on the festival – requiring over 3,000 toilets – two thousand tonnes of waste are produced over the weekend.

This includes that going into bins but also waste from traders and food stalls and the tent pegs, tents and clothes that festival-goers leave behind – in 2007 the festival says it collected 20 tonnes left items.

The site also needs 1.5 million gallons of water each day of the festival and two hundred generators supply 30 megawatts of energy over the weekend.

And Glastonbury is in no way unique, similar figures are collected for festivals across the world.

There is a lot that festival organisers could do and are doing to limit the impact of these events, however. If you are looking for a festival this year, but one which will not cost the Earth, here’s a few suggestions to get you started.

Bestival, Isle of Wight, UK

If you are looking for somewhere to go in the UK, you can’t go wrong with Bestival. This year’s line up includes Stevie Wonder, New Order, Florence and the Machine and Two Door Cinema Club, and the yearly theme (this year being Wildlife) offers some great fun and prizes to be won for the best fancy dress outfits.

As for the festival’s green credentials, alongside the usual Green Teams, and recycling initiatives – you can get a free cup of tea for bagging up your litter – the festival has a host of more unusual environmental options.

Bestival's green credentials include solar powered stages, recycling teams, and some unusual low carbon transport options (© prusakolep/Creative Commons)

If you are feeling particularly daring why not try ‘Go Green to Bestival’ by either swimming, kayaking or cycling across to the island for charity. Don’t forget to visit the site’s Tomorrow’s World Field while at Bestival for a host of sustainable food choices, great bands at the solar powered band stand, interesting workshops at the Science Museum tent, and while you’re there carbon cutters 10:10 will charge your mobile phone with cycle and solar power.

Shambala, Northamptonshire, UK

For something a little different, why not give Northamptonshire’s Shambala festival. Taking place the same weekend as Reading and Leeds Festival, Shambala has been voted the UK’s best alternative festival by Student Guide and received an Outstanding ‘Greener Festival Award’ 2011.

Visitors of Shambala will be treated to musical performances from Billy Bragg, DJ Yoda & the Trans Siberian Marching Band and the Boxettes as well as a sustainability plan which includes 98% of the festival powered by wind, sun and waste vegetable oil, free biofuel shuttle buses from local transport links, recycling at every turn, compost loos, and strict rules for traders and food suppliers.

The festival also completes an annual carbon audit to keep on top of their emissions.

Øya Festival, Norway

If you are looking for a European Festival this summer why not give Øya a go. Also a winner of an Outstanding ‘Greener Festival Award’ 2011, acts for this year’s festival will include Björk, the Stone Roses and Black Keys.

Øya also won Europe’s Greenest Festival at the European Festival Awards 2010 with a impressive sustainability plan which includes the four main stages all being 100% powered by renewables – mostly coming from a hydro-electric dam an hour away from the site – run through the site through underground cables to ensure the site’s ancient ruins are not damaged.

Other green actions include staff whizzing around on hydrogen and electric cars and sourcing all food organically and locally.

Roskilde, Denmark

With a line up including Björk, the Cure, Jack White and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Roskilde holds the title of North Europe’s biggest festival. As well as being brilliantly positioned, with public transport links and local buses aplenty for 55% of visitors, the festival also aims to engage its audience in sustainability issues.

The festivals ‘Green Camps’ aim to teach festival goers about sustainability and caring for environment. Those staying in or hosting a ‘Green Camp’ must minimise their waste and CO2 emissions, create fun activities to inspire others and document their green weekend.

‘Green Footsteps’ is another initiative by the festival, this time encouraging visitors to monitor and record their festival footprint. Those that do this prior to the festival can get themselves central camping spots as an incentive.

Bonnaroo, Tennessee

If you’re in the USA this summer, why not join Radiohead, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and the Beach Boys at this year’s Bonnaroo festival. Awarded Highly Commended at the ‘Greener Festival Awards’ 2011, Bonnaroo has worked with waste company, Clean Vibes to divert three million pound of recyclable and compostable waste from landfill.

Bonnaroo festival has been awarded the Greenest Festival in America (© Jason Ankinsen/Creative Commons)

This year, hand your rubbish back into the Clean Vibes trading post and trade them in for festival currency. The person who trades the most will also get two tickets to next year’s festival.

Or explore the festival’s Planet Roo, where you’ll find non-profits and charities dealing with the promotion of a healthy planet, learn about issues including water, waste and your carbon footprint, watch short films and documentaries and listen to some great bands of the festival’s Solar Stage.

Lightning in a Bottle, California

Or why not head over to the Greenest Festival in America – the only US festival to get an Outstanding in the ‘Greener Festival Awards’ – and rub shoulders with the likes of Bassnectar, the Glitch Mob and Shpongle.

At this festival you can expect free water for everyone who brings reusable containers and strict policies ensuring all vendors – and encouraging all visitors – to recycle and compost their waste.

The festival also aims to produce as much energy as possible from renewable energy and purchase certified carbon offsets for all remaining emissions, as well as offering incentives for visitors to offset their travel emissions.

The festival organisers also do what they can to protect the wildlife surrounding the festival site, including ground, water and environmental maintenance on the site, planting trees to restore native habitats and turning off amplified sounds at times each night in care of wildlife and neighbours.

The post Bestival, Roskilde, Øya, Bonnaroo: We rate the most sustainable festivals appeared first on Climate Home News.

Swishing has gone global with swaps being organised in the US, Canada, Malaysia, Australia and Brazil (© The Swap Team/Creative Commons)

It is the eco-fashion phenomena which has now gone global. Great for the planet, your wardrobe and even your wallet. Guessed what I am talking about? Swishing of course!

For those of you who are still not acquainted with this latest past-time amongst the eco-conscious fashionista; swishing simply put is the swaping of clothes, shoes and accessorize.

The fashion industry is big business, worth £20.9 billion annually to the UK alone. But it also has huge environmental impacts in terms of waste, water use and energy use.

Swishing is a great way of getting the most out of the clothes that you buy, while still allowing you to refresh your wardrobe.

Re-branded and christened ‘Swishing’ by Chief Executive of Sustainability Communication Agency Futerra, Lucy Shea the craze has been described as the “future of fashion” by fashion journalist Jess Cartner-Morley.

The company’s Swishing Website now gets thousands of visitors per month from all around the world including  the US, Europe, Australia, South Africa, China, Malaysia and Brazil.

In the UK alone thousands of women now attend swishing events and are swapping tens of thousands of items every year.

Why Swish?

While clothes swamping in not a new idea – it has been taken on by Futerra as a way of combating the reliance on a damaging clothing industry.

In the UK alone, people buy around two million tonnes of clothes every year, and then we throw away around a million tonnes. This not only generates significant waste to landfill sites but also equates to a huge footprint in terms of energy and water embedded in our garments.

And yet fast fashion continues to grow, with more people looking for a bargain when purchasing items of clothing which we only ever plan to wear for a season.

With most of us also feeling the pinch of the credit crunch, people are beginning to look for ways to refresh their wardrobes without spending huge amounts of money.

Swishing offers this alternative.

Swaps can take place anywhere from public gardens, halls and gyms, shops, bars and offices (© The Swap Team/Creative Commons)

What is swishing?

While traditionally clothes swaps were something you did amongst friends – and many still do – the publicity the concept has got in recent years has moved it on to a whole other level.

From public gardens, to shops, bars and workplaces you can find a swishing party in nearly every town and city across the UK every week. There has even been an event held in the Houses of Parliament.

I got my first taste of swishing at Mrs Bears’ event at the Britannia Pub in Hackney. At this monthly event the rules are simple. Costing £5 to attend (free to browse) you can take up to seven items to swap. For each one you get a token – red or blue depending on whether your items are designer or high street – which you can then use to purchase other people’s items.

Making the most of the sunshine outdoors and with some extra bunting for the Jubilee the shoppers consisted of a huge mix of people from mothers and daughters to friends to lone shoppers.

The idea of the swap can be a little daunting at first, and I certainly did not know what to expect. If you are getting yourself ready for your first Swishing experiences, I have come up with a few points to consider…

1. Get ready to rummage

In the same way you shop sales or charity shops, Swishing is all about rummaging to find your hidden gem. This was the hardest part for me. I have never been a good sale shopper and would probably label myself a lazy shopper (I often rely on friends to dig out what clothes would suit me).

However, with such a wide variety of clothes to choose from at these events I am sure most people will find at least one (if not several) items of clothing which would suit your needs. Just be ready to dig around a little to find them (and maybe fight for them amongst fellow Swishers).

If your ready to rummage you can find some great items at clothes swaps (© The Swap Team/Creative Commons)

2. Attend with friends

This takes me to number two on my list. If like me you are a lazy shopper or sometimes find it hard to imagine what things will look like on, take your friends along with you. It is a great idea to have a second eye at these events, and a great way to pool your resources and make sure you all go home with a least one item to refresh your wardrobe, while having a great day out to boot.

3. Organise your own event

If you are still feeling a little daunted by the idea of attending a swishing event why not organise your own. Get together with a group of friends – and friends of friends to boost the stock – and make a day of it with cake and tea or an evening of it with cocktails. with you and your friends having lots in common your sure to find something they are giving away that you want to take home.

4. Be open minded

Let’s face it; second-hand clothes are never going to have the same look as something new in a shop. While swishing parties will have rules on what you can and cannot swap – you will not find anything torn, stained or too worn on the racks – you should still not expect a swishing party to be like walking into a store on the highstreet.

If you can get over this however, there will be plenty of great choices to pick from, from the more conventional to the whacky. And if you happen to be more on the creative side, keep an eye out for great fabrics – while the clothing may not be your style, there could be great opportunities to turn it into something that is.

5. Keep others in mind

And if on the off chance you don’t find something you would like to take home, there could to loads on offer which your mum, your sister or your friends would like. Why not also keep them in mind while you search and take home some free goodies for the whole family.

Have your say: Are you a swisher? Have you got an experience of a great swishing event from anywhere around the world? Let RTCC know below, on Facebook, Tweet us @RTCCNewswire or by emailing info@rtcc.org.

Interested in sustainable fashion? Why not check out:

– RTCC’s introduction to sustainable fashion.

– Eco-fashion guru Elizabeth Laskar’s six step to sustainable fashion.

– Green is the new black for Swedish clothing company H&M.

The post Swishing: The eco-fashion phenomena taking over the world appeared first on Climate Home News.

Fashion is big business for the UK. In a recent report from the UK Fashion Council, it was estimated that in 2009, the fashion industry directly contributed £20.9 billion to the UK economy – that’s 1.7% of its GDP.

In the same year, the UK fashion industry was responsible for directly employing 816,000 people and supporting around 1.31 million jobs, around 4.5% of the country’s employment.

But the industry also has a huge impact on our environment. Around 1.5 million tonnes of unwanted items – clothes, shoes and accessorises – are thrown away every year, ending up in landfill.

Meanwhile the production of a cotton t-shirt takes around 60 litres of water plus the significant amount of energy, transportation and water used to get the product to the store and washing it throughout its lifecycle.

However, a new industry is growing up in the UK, and has gained significant momentum over the last decade: Sustainable Fashion.

What is Sustainable Fashion?

The Ethical Fashion Forum describes sustainable fashion as “an approach to the design, sourcing and manufacture of clothing which maximises benefits to people and communities while minimising impact on the environment.”

RTCC caught up with Elizabeth Laskar, an ethical fashion consultant and co-founder of the eco-jewellery company Crumple Design, which aims to create biodegradable fashion while tells shoppers a story about the environment.

Co-founder of the Ethical Fashion Forum in 2004, Laskar says she has seen real growth in the idea of sustainable fashion over the last decade and particularly in the last three years.

“We have seen this elevation of eco-fashion which has been rising on the coattails of the climate change press coverage,” she explains. “That was something that we could link into and say ‘well we’re actually already doing this and this is why.’”

The profile of such designers has risen in recent years. For example this year saw the sixth Estethica showcase at London Fashion Week.

The brainchild of ethical designers Orsola de Castro and Filippo Ricci, creators of fashion label From Somewhere – which focuses on recycled textiles – the show aims to highlight the up and coming stars of the eco-fashion world.

Designers showcased at this year’s show include the likes of Junky Styling, which deconstructs and transforms second-hand clothing, Ada Zanditon, which uses organic and or natural fabrics and Henrietta Ludgate using locally produced materials.

The real meaning of throw away fashion

Elizabeth Laskar and Jezella Pigott launched Crumple Designs earlier this year (© Crumple)

For Laskar’s latest range, produced with fine artist Jezella Pigott, she wanted to explore the idea of throw away fashion. For jewellery in particular, she explains, you can buy statement pieces which you can spend a little more money on and that can last a lifetime, but people still want new items which can help them feel fresh.

“You want to wear something for a season which fits in but then if you get fed up with it you want to feel secure that if you think ‘I don’t want this anymore and I am going to throw it away or discard it that it is not going to harm the environment,” she says.

Inspired by the concept of the 1960s paper dress, and Pigott’s love or origami, the range aims to be the ultimate throw away fashion. Made from eco, recycled card, none toxic solvents and paints and sterling silver rings, each of the designs comes with their own story on climate change and biodiversity.

“I think sometimes we get really serious – climate change is a serious issue, biodiversity is a serious issue, if you start taking it apart it is very very serious,” says Laskar.  “And I think people can get really lost in that. What we’ve tried to do with this range and with this brand is tried to simplify the stories which are out there and tried to make them inspirational.

“I think fashion, accessorises, anything we buy whether it is a piece of furniture, anything that we buy, should carry a story which inspires people about what’s happening around them and their environment.”

The earrings are made from eco-card and non-toxic paints and are biodegradable (© Crumple)

The bright colours and interesting shapes and design of the earrings make them vibrant, fun and very on trend. And while many would think that cardboard earrings would not be built to last, Laskar says she has had hers on now for eight months and they are still going strong.

Making a mass market

Crumple Design has been warmly received by the fashion market, particularly by eco-fashion experts and bloggers, but Laskar says she understands there is still a long way to go before all fashion is eco-fashion.

Each design comes along with a story about the environment and biodiversity (© Crumple)

“It has got to be a three pronged effect,” Laskar says. “It has got to come through legislation, it has to come through retailers – making initiatives and stuff – and also it has got to come through consumers, consumers also have to start changing their habits by saying ‘actually I don’t like that’ and having a voice.”

There are already great signs of companies moving the direction of eco-fashion – both as a way of climate proofing their businesses for the future and as a way of building a relationship and trust with consumers.

For example, fashion retailers H&M recently announced their Conscious Collection using recycled polyesters, linens and cottons to create a spring/summer look which is on trend, sustainable and still affordable for their customers.

RELATED AUDIO: H&M’s head of Fashion & Sustainability communication Catarina Midby talks to RTCC’S Ed King about the role the clothes industry can play in cutting emissions and how our consumer culture can be harnessed to sustain a greener production line…

Meanwhile Marks & Spencer’s latest venture ‘Shwopping’ encourages customers to recycle their old clothing. You can now take your old clothes – of any brand – to one of over 1200 ‘shwop’ points across the UK.

The aim is for customers to hand in an item of clothing every time they buy a new one.

It is an extension of their Plan A Programme set up with Oxfam launched back in January 2008 where donors handing M&S clothes into Oxfam could get a £5 voucher for the story.

Jeans company Levis have also joined the group of big retailers going ethical with their Waterless jeans collection – reducing the water footprint of jeans by at least 20%.

The new Waterless jeans can be purchased in a variety of Levis styles, including your traditional 501s and also include a label encouraging customers to wash their jeans less regularly.

But it is not all down to the retailers, says Laskar, consumers will also have to do their bit, and over the last few years they have been helping to drive this change and demand more from the retailers they shop with.

A lot of this, according to Laskar is thanks to the big names now also getting behind the campaign. For example actress and model Lily Cole and high profile eco-campaigner Livia Firth (wife of British actor Colin Firth).

“You have people like Livia Firth going out in some really amazing eco-garments on the red carpet,” says Laskar, referring to the Green Carpet challenge which has been running now for the last few years.

“And when you have an amazing amount of the population watching the Oscars seeing this amazing lady and thinking what is Valentino doing or what is Armani doing.”

The post An introduction to sustainable fashion appeared first on Climate Home News.

Composting plants help avoid methane emissions, reduce waste and generate incomes (© Julio Alberto Pavese/0268 Lages Methane Avoidance Project)

With rapidly increasing population, many areas in Uganda – particularly urban areas – are realising that more people means more waste.

For the Ugandan municipality of Bally, considered the cleanest in East Africa in the 1970s and early 80s, this has meant a growing mountain of waste filling the region.

But this could soon be a thing of the past as a compost processing plant – funded through the World Bank – is helping the region to reduce waste, capture methane and increase food production.

Not only can the scheme benefit from carbon credits through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), but local farmers are feeling the financial benefits too.

While one kilo of fertiliser would cost a farmer around $2, the new manure produced by the plant will cost just 100 Ugandan Shillings – the equivalent of $0.10.

In the ninth in the series of UNFCCC CDM Radio Club reports RTCC is hosting, Wambi Michael, a radio journalist from Uganda, finds out how a compost plant could be a solution not just for Bally, but in other municipalities across Uganda.

Wambi Michael was one of the finalists in the 2011 UNFCCC/CDM African Radio Contest.

The radio club aims to spread the word about the CDM in Africa and extend the benefits of the mechanism to communities that have not yet benefited from the scheme.

The post PODCAST: Solving multiple problems with composting in Uganda appeared first on Climate Home News.