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Earth A Live: Focus on environment
Shanghai charging shoppers for plastic bags
Supermarkets in China’s largest city will start charging shoppers for plastic bags next year in an attempt to reduce waste, a city environmental official and the official Xinhua News Agency reported recently.
“This idea will help save resources and protect the environment, but its practical application depends on the feedback from retailers and consumers,” said an official of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau. Implementation would begin early next year at selected supermarkets. How much customers would be charged, and other details on the plan are still being finalized.
The bag fees were part of a three-year campaign to clean up pollution.
Supermarket chains in the city give away more than 1 million bags per day. That produces massive amounts of solid waste for the city’s garbage processing plants. While some bags end up as wastebasket liners, many others are simply cast away. Hundreds of bags flying over the city are a common sight in Shanghai on a windy day.
Eco-friendly replacement for cotton
Fabric made from stinging nettles could be the next big thing in eco-friendly fashion.
The process of growing nettles is much gentler on the Earth than growing cotton, which generally entails high use of water and pesticides. (Almost a quarter of the world’s pesticides are sprayed on cotton plants.) In contrast, nettles don’t need much water or protection from pests, and they provide habitat for many insect species and small birds. While hemp and flax are also eco-friendly replacements for cotton, they produce rough fabric, whereas nettles, strangely enough, can be made into soft and silky fabrics.
One Italian fashion house has perfected a nettle fabric, designed a line of nettle-fabric clothes, and lined up willing retailers around the world. Its biggest problem: finding enough farmers to grow the nettles it needs.
Japan to sell tons of whale meat
Thousands of tons of meat from whales hunted under a government-backed research programme will arrive in Japanese markets and canneries in an annual sale expected to raise 3.36 billion yen ($33.3 million) to help fund the programme, long denounced by environmentalists as a front for commercial whaling.
Commercial whaling was banned in 1986 to protect the endangered mammals, but the International Whaling Commission approved restricted hauls by Japan a year later for research purposes. Whaling expeditions organized by a government- affiliated Japanese research institute bring back hundreds of minke whales and other species every year. Japan, which is one of the world’s largest consumers of whale meat, says it is gathering data to build a case that whale numbers have recovered enough to sustain limited commercial hunts.
Threatened animal species nearly double in Brazil
The number of animal species in Brazil known to be endangered has nearly doubled since 1989, reaching 398, according to a three-year study conducted by the Brazilian government and released recently. Tropical wolves, rare parrots, and exotic frogs and turtles are among the many threatened creatures.
The comprehensive survey of animal and plant life in the country found that natural habitats were increasingly threatened, from the nation’s famed Amazon rainforest to the enormous Pantanal wetlands to the highland Cerrado savanna. And Brazil could be on the verge of losing many more animal and plant species than it knows; only about 200,000 species have been identified in the country, but scientists estimate that some 2 million species exist in Brazil, making it one of the world’s richest spots for biodiversity.
New erasable ink could be boon to office recycling
Invisible ink was once the province of spies, then of children — and now of environmentalists? Beginning this month, tech industry giant Toshiba will sell a new, disappearing ink in Japan that is designed to enable easier reuse and recycling. The ink, called “e-blue,” can be used in ordinary laser printers as well as in pens, and disappears when heated. The ink is made of three chemicals, two of which combine to give it its colour, while the third, when heated, makes the ink turn transparent. i
The writer works in Communications for IUCN-The World Conservation Union, Pakistan
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