Environment

Consumer goods giant Unilever has today (24 October) agreed a partnership with waste management Veolia, which will see the companies work together to develop innovative solutions to the plastic waste crisis. Through the partnership, the two companies will invest in recycling structure capacity and develop new, closed-loop processes and business models Under the new partnership, the firms will partner for a three-year period to develop emerging technologies that could create circular economy solutions for the world’s plastic waste streams. Starting in India and

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

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

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

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

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