This post is a humble plea to help be part of the solution to a problem that is much bigger than any of us… the growing amount of plastic in the ocean. We’ve known for a while some of the health issues related to plastic use, and now the environmental concerns are becoming increasingly alarming.
Source: simplehealthcures.com
The Central Coast Council, north of Sydney, endorsed the draft Single Use Plastic Policy at a council meeting on Monday.
Even if your main mission isn’t environmental, the pressure is on all of us to combat the climate crisis. But it can be challenging to create a positive impact on the planet when you’re already stretched to deliver your primary purpose. In our next WISE Ways to Lead webinar on Tuesday 22 November from 1-2pm, we’ll be joined by Elaine Brown who is driving forward the concept of re-use and repair through her social enterprise, The Edinburgh Remakery. Elaine’s in-depth knowledge won her the Environmental Champion title in this year’s WISE100, and she will be sharing her tips and ideas for the small (and bigger) things that can help kick-start your business’s environmental journey. We’ll also hear from Alison Marjoram of P3 Charity, a social enterprise that supports vulnerable people in England.
LVMH has solidified a partnership between several of its fashion maisons and weturn, a company that offers an innovative recycling chain dedicated to unsold textiles from major fashion houses. Founded in 2020, weturn is the first recycling chain dedicated to unsold textiles, rolls of fabric and offcuts from major fashion houses, which are all protected by intellectual property. The company then transforms them into new quality yarns and fabrics that are 100 percent traceable and European-made.
LVMH to date has not named which of its designer brands is recycling textiles. The issue with upcycling recognisable fabrics is that they may end up back in the marketplace when used by a different brand. Companies such as Valentino have seen a branded V-print fabric, uniquely developed for the house, used by designers who found leftover fabric in a re-sale shop on the outskirts of Paris. LVMH will be keen for its repurposed textiles to not be recognisable in the marketplace.
Now that the European Commission has finally published its Plastics Strategy, the EU institutions should take inspiration from the best practices out there to make the upcoming legislation on single-use plastics work for citizens, the planet and the economy. Ariadna Rodrigo is product policy campaigner at Zero Waste Europe, part of the Rethink Plastic alliance.
Businesses that identify organizational strengths will be better positioned to weather the disruptions of COVID-19.
When devices such as computers, smart phones and batteries are sent for recycling, not all the materials are captured for use in new devices. Specialist coatings are often made with rare and expensive materials to enable our modern electronics to work. However, these coatings can cause problems when it comes to recycling and the materials are not always recovered but incinerated to produce ‘heat from waste’. This means that the expensive, highly engineered coating has been lost and its value not realised.” “adhesives often make our phones water tight and ensure longer lifetimes of electronic products, however when it comes to recycling these products the adhesives make it difficult to take the products apart, wavelength sensitive adhesives would make this more straightforward.