Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great break and that you have started the new year with some sustainable resolutions. In 2018 several positive things happened around the world and I thought I´d share some of this good news with you to start the new year on a positive note.
Read MoreSister Dorothy Stang was born in Dayton, Ohio, one of nine children. She was raised on a farm in a traditional Catholic family and decided early on that she would give her life to God. She entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur community in 1948 and professed final vows in 1956.
Read MoreAs Christmas is coming closer you might be asking yourself which is a better option in terms of the impact on the environment: a real Christmas tree or a fake one? To be able to answer this question, there are a number of factors that need to be considered, such as how far the tree has traveled, how much energy went into producing it and how it is recycled.
Read MoreHoney bees (Apis Mellifera) have been in the news quite a lot recently. Honey bees are vanishing at an alarming rate and since the 1970´s already almost 60% of honey bee colonies have disappeared, mostly due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Nobody really knows what causes CCD, but many experts believe CCD can be attributed to a variety of factors: increased use of pesticides, a virus-harboring parasite, inadequate/poor nutrition and bee management stress.
Read MoreYou might be surprised by how much toilet paper is being used every year, but our need for fluffy, extra soft toilet tissue accounts for approximately 15% of our world’s deforestation. It is a single-use paper product that mostly comes from virgin wood. According to environmental research organization Worldwatch Institute, citing the World Wildlife Foundation, global toilet paper production uses about 27,000 trees per day, resulting in almost 9 million trees per year.
Read MoreAnne Marieke Eveleens, Saskia Studer and Francis Zoet (who became friends teaching sailing classes at the same sailing school) were continuously confronted with plastic debris while on the water. They wanted to come up with a solution to stop plastic from entering the oceans without blocking the continuous ship traffic or fish migration. The solutions that already existed only caught floating debris while a huge part of waste travels lower.
Read MoreAnti-fur protesters have had their impact on the world of fashion. The last London Fashion Week was the first main fashion week in which none of the designers used fur in their shows. This comes many years after fur farming was banned in the UK in 2003 (the import of animal fur remained and is still legal). During the past year big fashion names like Gucci, Versace, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo, Furla, John Galliano and Donna Karan have claimed to go fur-free.
Read MoreMuch of what we consider as trash and throw away in the bin can actually be recycled. Recycling is better for the environment by sending less waste to landfills and by providing materials for new products. Unfortunately, recycling rates are not as high as could be. In Europe recycling rates differ much between countries.
Read MoreAlthough balloon releases look beautiful, the effects are devastating to animals and the environment. When balloons land back on earth (sometimes after having traveled thousands of miles and reaching even the most remote places) they litter the land, oceans or rivers and it is basically the same as littering any other kind of trash. Balloons can be mistaken for food and eaten by animals, such as sea turtles, dolphins, whales, fish and birds, and ribbons and strings can lead to entanglement, causing death (all of these animals have been found with balloons in their stomachs).
Read MoreTeflon is a registered trademark and a brand name owned by Chemours (a spinoff of Dupont), and is best known for the Teflon pans and cookware, although it is used on a range of products. Its popularity is due to its characteristics like easy clean, nonstick, repellency and durablity.
Read MoreBoyan Slat, born in 1994 in the Netherlands, has devoted his time and energy to investigating how to clean up plastic pollution in the oceans since he was 16. He quit his Aerospace Engineering studies at TU Delft University to be able to work full-time on bringing his ideas to life. In 2013 he founded The Ocean Cleanup, a foundation that develops technologies to extract plastic pollution from the oceans and prevent more plastic debris from entering them.
Read MoreMillions of people start their day with a cup of coffee and many of those choose the convenience of coffee pods. In 2014, pods accounted for 34 % of all coffee sales, a massive growth of 133,710 % since 2000. Since coffee is globally the second most traded commodity (after crude oil), this translates into billions of pods consumed worldwide. Nespresso alone sold 28 billion pods in 2014.
Read MoreMost people don't think twice when buying their toothpaste, but it might be worth looking into the ingredients that most contain, since there could be some that are not so beneficial to your health. Even though you don't use much toothpaste and you don't normally swallow it, small amounts do end up in your body and bloodstream via absorption in your mouth.
Read MoreTires have a huge environmental impact, from production, to use to discarding them. Tires are made from natural rubber and synthetic rubber, produced from the polymers found in crude oil. The other primary ingredient in tire rubber is carbon black. Carbon black is a fine, soft powder created when crude oil or natural gas is burned with a limited amount of oxygen.
Read MoreSuzanne Lee is a fashion designer based in Brooklyn, New York. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the Director of The BioCouture Research Project, and Chief Creative Officer at Modern Meadow. The idea for these ventures came from the need to reconsider the approach to manufacturing in the fashion industry.
Read MoreSince conventional plastics are made from fossil fuels, are not biodegradable and are turning our oceans into huge plastic garbage dumps (plus they are entering our food chain), more and more companies and institutions are developing alternatives that are more environmentally friendly and are cost-competitive at the same time.
Read MoreThe problems with plastic pollution are getting worse by the day. The estimated 8 million tons (yes, really) of plastic that ends up in the ocean every year is expected to double by 2025 and is estimated to rise to 60 tons per minute by 2050 if today's plastic use and lack of adequate waste management continues. These vast amounts of plastic have increasing impact on the environment and marine life.
Read MoreRunning has a bigger environmental impact as one might imagine. As a study has found, a new pair of running shoes typically generates 30lbs of carbon dioxide emissions, 68% of which generated during the manufacturing process. The production of the materials involved, including leather, nylon, synthetic rubber, plastic and viscose, also takes an environmental toll.
Read MoreWith the summer around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to look at what sunscreens actually are and do. We are supposed to apply it over our whole body and multiple times a day, so the ingredients in sunscreen should not be irritating or cause skin allergies.
First let's look at the two kinds of sun blockers. The first one is the physical kind, like zinc and titanium dioxide, and the second is the chemical kind, like oxybenzone, avobenzone, octisalate, octocrylene, homosalate and octinoxate.
Read MoreMany mothers will receive a beautiful bouquet of flowers this coming Sunday. But have you ever considered the journey and the footprint of the flowers you buy for her? Over 80% of the flowers sold at grocery stores, florist shops and online are grown thousands of miles away, mostly in Colombia, Ecuador, Thailand, Africa or Israel. So there is a lot of environmental impact on transport from farm to port and then the fuel consumed via refrigerated trucking of flowers from port to florist.
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