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5 Mins Read Our planet is suffering from the deluge of plastics polluting our ocean and environment, harming biodiversity, animals and fuelling climate change. Even if we slashed plastic consumption by 80%, we’re still looking at dealing with an astonishing 710 million tonnes of waste littered across the Earth. Simply put, the planet is running out of time […]
3 Mins Read Picup has launched its plantable paper cups in Poland, the first-of-its-kind in the country and across Europe. The Poznan-based startup’s 100% biodegradable cups of tea or coffee contain seeds at the bottom of the filter, allowing a tree to grow after the drink is consumed. Polish sustainable packaging startup Picup has introduced Europe’s first-ever plantable […]
12 Mins Read In 2013, when she was just twelve years old, Melati Wijsen and her sister Isabel started Bye Bye Plastic Bags, the Bali-based movement that became a global youth-driven sensation to eliminate the use of plastic bags in Bali and elsewhere. Since then, youths all over the world have been refusing single-use plastics in order to […]
4 Mins Read The rise of food takeaways during the pandemic is fuelling the use of more than 100 million disposable plastic items every single week in Hong Kong during the pandemic, a study has found. From plastic cutlery, food containers, bags and straws, the number of single-use tableware being consumed by the city’s residents more than doubled […]
3 Mins Read By: Rachel Pang This article originally appeared on Water For Free, a project launched by Hong Kong non-profit Go Green. Read the original article here. I read the opinion piece “Why a 5 cent bottle recycling rebate makes more sense for Hong Kong” (published on 6 March 2021) on SCMP with great amusement. With the […]
4 Mins Read French grocery chains will have to begin switching to food refill stations as part of a new environmental bill. The law, which has been passed by the French parliament, will require retailers to phase out disposable plastic packaging and dedicate a fifth of their store to allow customers to buy dry food products using their […]
4 Mins Read Major brands from a cross-section of industries are set to come together for an upcoming summit focused on sustainable innovation in plastics and packaging. Taking place in May 19-20, the two-day virtual Rethinking Materials conference will see the likes of Unilever, PepsiCo and Colgate-Palmolive join sustainable startups and biotechs such as LanzaTech and Modern Meadow […]
3 Mins Read Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever has put forward a US$15 million investment into the Closed Loop Leadership Fund, which will help recover more than half of its plastic packaging footprint. The firm also says that the investment will mean that by 2025, its North America operations will be collecting more plastic than it sells. Unilever […]
4 Mins Read There is a microplastics crisis. Tiny fragments of plastic – particles smaller than 5 millimetres – can be found almost everywhere, from the ocean, sea spray, marine life and even in our food chain, where we’re unknowingly ingesting thousands of these nano-sized particles on the daily. For many of us, the first culprit that comes […]
5 Mins Read In his latest episode of Last Week Tonight, the award-winning late-night talk show on HBO, host John Oliver delved into one topic often buried by everyday health and political crisis news headlines, but is on every level just as catastrophic: plastic pollution. The world has never seen more plastics littered in the ocean, piling up […]
3 Mins Read Lia, the women-founded startup developing eco-friendly reproductive health and wellness products, has just launched the world’s first biodegradable and flushable pregnancy test. After years of research and development, the much-anticipated 100% plastic-free product that takes aim at the 20 million pregnancy tests thrown away annually in the U.S. alone, is now available to consumers. Lia […]
5 Mins Read Declining sperm counts and changing reproductive development is leading to a fertility crisis that could endanger human life, says leading epidemiologist Dr. Shanna Swan. Driving the trend is our growing exposure to “everywhere chemicals” and environmental toxins found in everything from plastic containers to beauty products, which are damaging the planet as well as the […]
3 Mins Read Watsons Hong Kong, the health, beauty and pharmacy chain, has rolled out a new territory-wide plastic container recycling campaign. Partnering with multinational CPG industry giant P&G, Watsons will provide convenient collection points across the city and work with Hong Kong-based circular economy service The Loops to send plastic personal care containers to a local recycling […]
5 Mins Read Hong Kong-based independent face mask brand Maskology has announced a new partnership with environmental nonprofit A Plastic Ocean Foundation to begin developing biodegradable disposable face masks. While anti-plastic campaigners have long called for a switch to reusable options, high-risk populations and personal preferences may still be a barrier to adopting more sustainable face coverings. By […]
4 Mins Read Coca-Cola has announced an upcoming trial of its new paper-based bottles in Hungary, marking the first time the beverage giant has launched bottles of its kind on the market. No doubt a bid to shed away the criticism the corporation has received after being named the worst plastic polluter for the third consecutive year, the […]
3 Mins Read Founded by three female scientists, this biotech believes that we can take a problem that environmentalists see as a problem into an opportunity, and potentially, even a solution. Based in California, Mango Materials has come up with a way to turn methane from biogas waste into a biodegradable biopolymer called PHA, which can then be […]
4 Mins Read According to World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) Singapore, since the plastic bag fee came into effect in the country, each month, retailers are saving over 300,000 bags thus contributing to lesser waste and taking the citizens further towards a circular economy. Led by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Singapore, The Plastic ACTion (PACT) […]
3 Mins Read A new study conducted by Kering, the luxury fashion giant that owns the likes of Gucci, Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, has found that the majority of Chinese consumers are keeping their luxury products for just one to three years. The results reveal how our current throwaway culture and consumption habits are contributing to disastrous […]
2 Mins Read Hong Kong-based environmental nonprofit EcoDrive has teamed up with Pinkfong, the South Korean children’s entertainment brand most famous for its song “Baby Shark”, to release a new video featuring the iconic shark cartoon to raise awareness about plastic pollution. The learn-from-home campaign seeks to educate the younger generation about the impact that single-use plastics are […]
3 Mins Read Suez, the French waste and water management multinational company, has opened its first plastic recycling plant in Asia. Located in Thailand, the plant will be able to convert 30,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste into post-consumer recycled plastics. It marks a significant development in the region’s recycling infrastructure to tackle the increasingly severe plastic pollution […]
3 Mins Read TIPA, an Israeli startup developing sustainable packaging solutions, has just raised US$4 million from the Millennium Food-Tech, a Tel Aviv-listed investment vehicle. The company’s breakthrough material innovation technology offers a compostable packaging solution for food that can replace existing difficult-to-recycle flexible plastic films on the market. Securing US$4 million from Millennium Food-Tech, which came shortly […]