abhinav

About Abhinav Anand

This author Abhinav Anand has created 193 entries.

October 25, 2018

Single-use plastics ban approved by European Parliament

The European Parliament has voted for a complete ban on a range of single-use plastics across the union in a bid to stop pollution of the oceans. MEPs backed a ban on plastic cutlery and plates, cotton buds, straws, drink-stirrers and balloon sticks. The proposal also calls for a reduction in single-use plastic for food and drink containers like plastic cups. One MEP said, if no action was taken, “by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans”. The European Commission

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October 24, 2018

People are pooping plastic and pollution might be to blame, pilot study suggests

Small plastic pieces known as microplastics were found in stool samples of every participant in a small pilot study presented this week at a prestigious global gastroenterology conference. Researchers from the Environment Agency Austria and the Medical University of Vienna followed eight healthy volunteers from different parts of the world (Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, United Kingdom and Austria). The participants kept a diary of the food and drink they consumed for a week. Then, researchers tested their stool for 10

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October 23, 2018

Plastic Waste Recycling Can Pay

WHEN Gilbert Tan first heard that China was planning to ban the import of plastic waste into the country, he immediately got a bad feeling about how it was going to affect Malaysia and the recycling industry. “I had this fear that they would not follow the rules and regulations. This would mar the whole plastic recycling community,” he says. The managing director of Green Concept Technology Sdn Bhd, a company that recycles and manufactures plastic, was proven right by the recent

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October 18, 2018

Ocean plastic is a huge problem. Blockchain could be part of the solution.

The world’s oceans are awash in plastic, and the problem is only getting worse. Each year, 8 million metric tons of plastic debris ends up in the oceans, and that’s on top of the 150 million metric tons already in marine environments. The debris ensnares seabirds, starves whales and infiltrates the entire marine food chain — including humans, too, when we eat seafood. Recently, there have been some high-profile efforts to

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October 12, 2018

Food waste bioplastic

As the war on plastics continues to gather pace, a string of corporates including Reebok and Lego have moved to incorporate bioplastics into their products in a shift away from fossil fuel-based materials. But with critics citing the ethical and environmental pitfalls of using farmland to grow plants for plastics rather than produce, Canadian startup Genecis has developed a method that allows food waste – rather than fresh crops – to be

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October 10, 2018

Walkers to launch UK’s first crisp packet recycling scheme

The UK’s biggest crisp brand Walkers has unveiled plans to launch a nationwide crisp packet recycling scheme, following months of consumer protests against its hard-to-recycle packaging. Walkers currently produces more than 7,000 non-recyclable crisp packets every minute. image: Si Griffiths The company, which is a subsidiary of global food and beverage giant PepsiCo, has partnered with recycling firm TerraCycle to develop a method of recycling the packets. The method involves cleaning and shredding the metallised film, allowing it to be melted into small

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September 28, 2018

Inside Unilever’s plastics packaging strategy

Unilever’s chief R&D officer David Blanchard has outlined the company’s three-pillar approach to improving the recyclability of its product packaging, focusing on “less”, “better” and “no plastics” solutions. Unilever has committed to increasing the recycled plastic content in its packaging to at least 25% by 2025 In January 2017, corporate behemoth Unilever unveiled a new commitment to ensuring that all of its plastic packaging is fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. The commitment was built on a recognition that the global

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September 13, 2018

Plastic-eating fungus could help fight against waste

A fungus that can “eat” plastic in weeks rather than years could help fight the growing plastic waste problem, according to a report by Kew Gardens. It can take decades or sometimes hundreds of years for some plastics to properly degrade. But a study on a waste site in Islamabad, Pakistan, isolated a fungus in the soil that quickly broke down chemical bonds. It took just two months for the fungi – Aspergillus tubingensis – to biodegrade a type of plastic called polyester

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September 11, 2018

Plan to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch gets underway

An ambitious project to clean up the ocean’s plastic pollution got underway over the weekend as members of The Ocean Cleanup project began towing their system out to sea. If it works as expected, they’ll try to take a bite out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge collection of floating trash that’s three times the size of France, or about double the size of Texas. The Ocean Cleanup System 001 consists of a 2,000 foot (600

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September 5, 2018

The Salt In Your Food Might Have Plastic In It, Says IIT-B’s Recent Study

The fact that plastic is harming the environment is no secret. While steps are being taken to reduce the usage of plastic, it is already present in every aspect of our lives – even salt. According to a recent study by a team of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, the presence of microplastics has been detected in some table salt brands in the country. These microplastics are really tiny particles of plastic, that are less than 5 mm in diameter. A

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