News from the Earth

Every year, EU citizens generate 26 million tonnes of plastic waste: 39% ends up in the incinerator, 31% in landfills and only 30% is collected for recycling. It is unlikely that the EU will be able to recycle 50% of plastic packaging by 2025 and 55% by 2030, as envisaged in the Commission’s 2018 strategy.

A young Kenyan engineer and entrepreneur has founded a company in Nairobi to turn plastic destined for the landfill into sustainable, strong building material, using the plastic waste of commercial facilities to create bricks that can withstand twice the weight threshold of concrete. The factory is only in its beginning stages, but it has already recycled 20 tons of plastic since 2017 and created 120 jobs in Nairobi. In addition, the bricks are also one of the more affordable options on the market.

A problem that not only concerns the health of the fauna, but also ours. Plastic, which ends up in the food chain, puts commercial fishing and aquaculture at risk. A significant risk for 1.4 billion people for which fish is one of the main sources of protein. 80% of the waste consists of plastic.

Since a century the anthropogenic mass doubles on average every 20 years. Since the '50s of the last century there has been a strong acceleration, which has become dizzying since the beginning of the third millennium. For each living human being, the mass of objects produced is more than its own body weight.

Sadly, it’s almost impossible to avoid plastic when shopping for groceries. Almost everything comes wrapped in it, and most of this packaging is unnecessary.

We can change that. Take the reusable container challenge and join the movement that is already transforming the way we shop for groceries! This could be the new normal!

Analyses indicate that homes and water treatment stations release microfibres that end up polluting the Arctic. There’s plastic all over our lives.

It is urgent to reduce the use of disposable options and rely on circular and safe materials. Given the ability of many of these chemicals (many of which are hazardous) to migrate from packaging and other materials to food, their continued use should be understood as a risk to human health.

There are many things to do against single-use plastic pollution, but the most important measure is reduction. The first step is to get rid of the delusion that any plastic consumed will simply disappear. Even when you throw it away, it doesn’t degrade. Not in our lifetime. 

In recent days, monsoon rains and winds blowing from west to east have brought huge amounts of marine plastic waste to Indonesia's main beaches.

The plastic pollution epidemic is due to a rise in single-use plastic and an expanding 'throw-away' culture. The waste-management systems simply can't deal with the onslaught of plastic, which is why so much of it ends up in the environment. We now know that only 9% of the plastic products we use actually get recycled.

Since 1950, more than 9 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced globally, of which only 9% is recycled, while almost a billion people live in slums. A Norwegian start-up's mission is to develop affordable housing from 100% recycled plastic. 

Would you live in a recycled plastic home?

The European Week for Waste Reduction represents the main and widest information and awareness campaign of European citizens about the impact of waste production on the environment.