Category: Environment EN

A first-ever study reveals the hard truths behind soft drinks' plastic bottles: The beverage industry supply chain of this common plastic, known as polyethylene terephthalate or PET, is riddled with carcinogens, emissions and contamination. Worldwide, the beverage industry buys more than 500 billion plastic bottles annually – nearly a million per minute. Making PET requires hundreds of...

Beat Plastic Pollution is the theme for this year’s World Environment Day.  The data put out by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) is staggering. Around the world, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. Plastic production keeps growing, with half of all plastic produced designed for...

Lydia Chai, a Malaysian lawyer based in Auckland, has been campaigning for New Zealand to stop sending plastic waste to Malaysia and other developing countries. Her campaign garnered a lot of media interest, including comments by then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 11,500 people signed Chai’s petition. On Thursday 8 June 2023 at 6:40am Malaysian time, Chai will be facing off against industry...

Research just published by the US Environment Protection Agency has found that recycled paper and construction materials “contained greater numbers of chemicals than virgin products”. Some 733 identified chemicals, including flame retardants, solvents and dyes, “had greater occurrence in recycled compared to virgin materials”. The authors of the paper, published in Environmental Science...

Batteries are the most expensive component of an electric vehicle. If the battery pack is damaged, defective or simply old, this can lead to the vehicle being written off prematurely. Increasingly scarce and valuable resources, such as lithium and water, are needed to make these batteries. Despite this, they are often not designed for ease of repair, reuse or recycling. This has significant...

Tune into a new episode of the Africa For Zero Waste Podcast. In this episode, Semia Gharbi (Chairperson of Tunisia’s Association of Environmental Education for Future Generations and coordinator of IPEN in the MENA region) and Mageswari Sangaralingam of the Consumers Association Penang - CAP and Sahabat Alam Malaysia - SAM talk to host Sureshnie Rieder about waste colonialism in the global...

SAM is extremely concerned by media reports today that revealed the discovery by the Negeri Sembilan and Melaka authorities of illegal rare earth mining activities in Kuala Pilah, following a complaint that was lodged with the Kuala Pilah Land and District Office on May 16. While we applaud the swift response and openness of all the state and federal agencies involved, we feel it is important...

A new Greenpeace report "Forever Toxic" shows that plastics pose health threats throughout the recycling stream. Recycling is not a fix for the plastics problem – we need to dramatically reduce plastic production. (IPEN) Some excerpts from the Greenpeace report: "Many consumer goods companies, including Nestlé, Unilever, and Coca-Cola, tout the use of recycled plastic in their packaging as an...

FALSE SOLUTIONS AHEAD OF GLOBAL PLASTICS TREATY Greenwashing tactics and false solutions to the plastic waste crisis continue to be spewed out that ignore the health and environmental effects of plastic pollution, ahead of the global Plastics Treaty. On 16 May 2023 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a controversial report (meant to help national governments negotiate a new,...