Earth Day reality check

Happy Earth Day, friend.

This year’s theme is ‘Planet vs Plastics’.

Plastic is everywhere. It’s in our food and water. It’s in the air we breathe, the products we put on and in our bodies. But it’s killing us.

Plastic is no longer just an environmental concern. It’s a critical human health issue.

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague on this topic last week.

He has what could be an unpopular opinion on plastic, but it’s also genius: to reduce plastic pollution and avoid the emissions associated with recycling existing plastic, we should return it to the ground. It’s the fastest and safest way to “get rid” of it.

Buried plastic is captured carbon.

Recycling is expensive, inefficient, and produces more carbon emissions, which would need expensive technology to capture and shoot into the ground anyway.

Besides, recycling rates are dismal. Only 13% of plastic is recycled in Australia, with the rest ending up in landfills, waterways, and the ocean.

Bottom line? We can’t recycle our way out of this mess. It’s too late to think about a circular way to deal with plastic.

Not when this much ends up in the oceans every year…

We should bury all the sandwich and milk cartons, the cheap, shitty kids meal toys that get looked at once and tossed out, and the heaps of soft plastics we’ve accumulated out of guilt, hoping someone will find a solution. They won’t.

I’m not saying we should toss the plastic in landfills.

(Why landfills are methane-leaking time bombs👇.)

We’d have to find new holes that aren’t already full of decomposing food and organic waste. Like the tens of thousands of gaping mining holes all over the world, which could use some plastic polyfilla.

Out of sight, out of mind.

But just because we have thousands of gaping holes does not give us licence to continue to produce and use plastic as we always have.

The solution is to recycle and reuse what we can, bury what we can’t, and find alternatives for the rest.

This last point is crucial. The more plastic we use, the longer we keep fossil fuel companies in business. Plastic is a product of petrochemicals, and big companies plan to triple consumption by 2060.

We can’t stop them, but we can choose how much of it we buy. If one million people said no to just one item of single-use plastic a month, we’d collectively stop one million pieces of plastic entering the circular loop of pollution.

That’s every month. Multiplied by years. Multiplied by… you get the idea.

Our actions count. No matter how small they seem in the moment. Think of the million other people who are also having a moment.

Your seemingly insignificant choice can have a huge impact.

Tell your friends.

— Tarryn ✌️

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The good news

👏 Bloomberg Philanthropies, the nonprofit funded by former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, has launched the Youth Climate Action Fund, to help 100 cities worldwide better incorporate the voices and visions of young people into how they imagine and enact policies.

🛑 Zambia has stopped issuing permits for charcoal production in three districts in a bid to halt deforestation and fight climate change. The country is dealing with its worst drought on record that’s wiped out crops and could cut economic growth by more than half.

The bad news

🪸 The world is undergoing its fourth global coral bleaching event – the second time in the last decade. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Coral Reef Initiative have documented significant coral bleaching across every major ocean since early last year. The current bleaching event is caused by record ocean temperatures.

🌀 Wild weather:

• ⛈️ Torrential rain and floods in Dubai after the desert city is slammed with a year’s worth of rain in one day. The “worst storm on record” came days after the government seeded clouds. Meteorologists say it was “unlikely it had a significant impact on rainfall”. I’m not convinced 👇.

• ⛈️ Damaging storms in KZN, South Africa.

• 🌊 Months of relentless rainfall has displaced 100,000 in Burundi.

• 🌧️ Heavy rains kill 130 people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Business news

👗 Clothing brands H&M and Zara have been accused of working with suppliers that source cotton linked to illegal deforestation in Brazil. An in-depth report by non-profit Earthsight, titled ‘Fashion Crimes’, used satellite imagery, court rulings, shipment records, and even undercover operations at trade shows to trace nearly a million tonnes of cotton from some of Brazil’s estates to clothing manufacturers in Asia that supply H&M and Zara.

Small things you can do this Earth Day:

1️⃣ Reduce single-use: Take a water bottle whenever you leave the house.💧

2️⃣ Sign the Global Plastics Treaty to reduce plastic production ✍🏻.

3️⃣ Sort your trash. Compost your kitchen waste. Sort your recycling. ♻️

4️⃣ Reduce waste. Buy only what you can eat. Eat what you make. Send less to landfill.

Because lots of little actions combined add up to something remarkable.

I'll leave you on this happy note...

This turtle living its best skateboarding life.

kusa.kame.gunso

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