Each Friday we’ll bring you a round-up of the week’s green news from around the web. Please drop us a line if you know of a story we should include in the next round-up.
Plastic bag use falls by 26 per cent in two years
From The Telegraph
Figures from the waste reduction agency WRAP showed the number of carrier bags handed out by the major supermarkets and shops has fallen from 13.4 billion to 9.9 billion since 2006. The amount of plastic used has also been reduced by 40 per cent in the same period by using less plastic for each bag and recycled materials. [full article]
Fairtrade Fortnight: smallholders farm a route out of poverty
From The Guardian
Times are tough for people in the UK right now. But across the developing world, times are desperate for smallholders, caught between rising food and fuel prices and a credit crunch that sees orders falling and access to loans becoming harder than ever. Yet these smallholders, too often overlooked by companies and policymakers alike, could hold the key to helping solve the food crisis and tackle poverty. [full article]
Polar Year hailed as a success
From BBC News
Scientists and policymakers marked the official end of the International Polar Year (IPY) on Wednesday at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva. The 60-country, $1.2bn (£830m) effort has seen knowledge about the poles – and their influence on the rest of the planet – increase hugely. That knowledge is not just about ice and polar bears, but also about Arctic peoples and global climate systems. [full article]
Ministers get close look at Antarctic ice threat
From Yahoo! Green
A parka-clad band of environment ministers landed in this remote corner of the icy continent on Monday, in the final days of an intense season of climate research, to learn more about how a melting Antarctica may endanger the planet. The visitors will gain “hands-on experience” of the colossal magnitude of the Antarctic continent and its role in global climate change. [full article]
Polar regions found warming fast, raising sea levels
From Reuters
The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday. New evidence of the trend was uncovered by wide-ranging research in the two areas over the past two years in a United Nations-backed programme dubbed the International Polar Year (IPY), they said. [full article]
Obama focuses on green economy in speech before Congress
From The Guardian
Barack Obama raised the development of a green economy to the top of America’s agenda tonight, calling on Congress to pass a law cutting the carbon emissions that cause global warming. The president, in a rousing speech to both houses of Congress, tried to put to rest fears that the economic recession would force him to scale back ambitious plans for energy reforms. [full article]
Hacking the planet: The only climate solution left?
From New Scientist
In a room in London late last year, a group of British politicians were grilling a selection of climate scientists on geoengineering – the notion that to save the planet from climate change, we must artificially tweak its thermostat by firing fine dust into the atmosphere to deflect the sun’s rays, for instance, or perhaps even by launching clouds of mirrors into space. [full article]
Global seed vault marks anniversary with four-ton shipment
From Science Daily
Four tons of seeds – almost 90,000 samples of hundreds of crop species – from food crop collections maintained by Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, USA, and three international agricultural research centers in Syria, Mexico and Colombia, were delivered today to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault as it celebrated its one-year anniversary. [full article]
Sustainable clothing action plan launched at London Fashion Week
From The Sikh Times
A new action plan to make fashion more sustainable and less environmentally damaging was launched today at the start of London Fashion Week, by Defra Minister Lord Hunt. The Sustainable Clothing Roadmap has brought together over 300 organisations, from high street retailers, to designers and textile manufacturers to battle the environmental impacts of ‘throw away fashion’. [full article]
Co-op banking and investment group to fund oil sands fight
From Yahoo! Finance
The Co-op banking and investment group is paying £50,000 ($71,000) to fund a legal action in Canada that could block the development of the country’s oil sands by companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP. The money will be used to fund evidence-gathering for the case being brought by the Beaver Lake Cree nation, an aboriginal community in Alberta, the province where the oil sands industry is based. [full article]
Don’t forget to drop us a line if you know of a story we should include in the next round-up of green news.
