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Almost 50% of edible and healthy food gets wasted in EU households and supermarkets each year while 79 million EU citizens –out of 500 million Europeans- live beneath the poverty line and 16 million depend on food aid from charitable institutions.
Food waste is many times a waste; it is a waste of resources [...] Few years ago paper and cardboard recycling was regarded as a big step in closing the loop of materials, yet what back then was a big improvement now it has the potential of going further. Paper recycling is a no-brainer now but there are new alternatives that are a lot more enviromentally friendly.
Followig [...] Primary school students of Capannori, Italy, set up the Museum of Bad Industrial Design (Piccolo Museo degli orroridi progettazione). A museum of packaging and products that cannot be reused, repaired, recycled or composted and hence have to end up in the dump.
This experience allowed the students to observe their everyday life and pick [...] How to make getting rid of what we don’t need a fun experience? In Gothenburg, Sweden, they have designed a reuse and recycle park to look as an amusement park.
Results: they attract 300 to 400 visitors a day, sell for a value of 1,1 million euros, create 25 green jobs whilst [...] The shoe producer Puma in cooperation with the FuseProject has set itself in the path to minimise waste and is today a reference for other companies on greening production. As Puma says in a good understanding of waste hierarchy; they make better use of boxes by not using them. After 21 months of studying diferent [...] Are all single-use plastic bags the same? Do they have the same impact on the environment? Are biodegradable bags better than non-biodegradable? Are paper bags better than biodegradable plastic bags? First things first; before focusing on the material we have to focus on the product, i.e. the best is to avoid disposable bags whenever possible. [...] Can you imagine a Zero Waste world in which we continue to use single-use plastic bags? It is just not possible, right? There are several reasons why we should phase out single-use plastic bags in Europe. On July 3rd it will take place the third international Plastic Bag-Free Day organised by GAIA and the Fundació [...] Common kitchen and household products such as aluminium foil, baking paper, coffe filters or sandwich bags are the visible side of how sustainable and toxic-free our everyday life is. A Zero Waste approach to these kind of products is based on prevention: if products are toxic-free and biodegradable they will not become waste but compost, [...] Composting -specially home-composting- is one of the best waste prevention and recycling activities. The Barcelona based company compostadores.com has managed to create a Zero Waste business making composting even more sustainable: by using recycled materials to build the composters. One of the main principles of a zero waste company is that raw materials should be [...] Can an average person really create Zero Waste? The challenge was set and during the week 10-17 March 2008, one mother in Bury St Edmunds -UK- gave it a go. Not being the typical greeny in the beginning she was sceptical about being able to reduce the rubbish to 50% but she managed in only [...] In the last post we dealt with the worrying amounts of food waste in Europe. In this post we want to present an european fantastic and succesful initiative to reduce the food waste; the Last Minute Market. Last Minute Market (LMM) links shops and producers (processing industries, food shops, retail stores and the like) who [...] In Europe an estimated amount of 50% of the food produced is wasted. This changes from country to country and from sector to sector but in the best case not less than 20% of our food ends up as waste. At the same time more than 50 million of Europeans are at the risk of [...] In the last post we have explained why a society that manages to recycle 100% of its waste would not necessarily be sustainable. Our goal should be not only to recycle more, but to waste less. Europe imports 5 times more energy and resources than it exports, hence most of the trash that we bury [...] Recycling an aluminium can requires 5% of the energy & material flow than what is necessary to produce a can from virgin materials. Recycling is great! It keeps materials in use, reducing the demand for extracting and producing new materials and delaying the time before the materials become waste. Therefore it is and should be [...] The best waste is the waste that doesn’t exist. Prevention of unsolicited mail is one of many ways to prevent waste and many European countries have local prevention measures in place to stop unsolicited mail. Sometimes placing a “STOP unsolicited mail” sticker on your mailbox it is enough to save moving 40kg of paper per [...] “One litter of milk is produced somewhere, then it has to travel to be packed in often unsustainable packaging hundreds of km away then it needs to travel again to a supermarket so that the consumer can buy it. After short period of use the packaging ends up in the waste bin. Milk without taste, [...] |
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