Tagged: plastic

New plastic ban: Interview with Trisia Farrelly - Planetary Ecology

Robert McLachlan • Jul 01, 2021 •

• New Zealand stories,
• plastic,
• Pollution

On 27 June, the New Zealand Government announced the phase-out of some hard-to-recycle and some single-use plastics. Robert McLachlan talks to Massey University’s Trisia Farrelly, a tireless campaigner against plastic waste. Trisia: I’m an anthropologist at Massey University, I wear quite a few hats around New Zealand and internationally on plastic pollution, which I’ve been researching since … Read More

Plastic in the ocean kills more threatened albatrosses than we thought - Hot off the press

Guest Author • Feb 17, 2021 •

• albatross,
• ocean,
• plastic,
• Pollution,
• rubbish

Richelle Butcher, Massey University; Britta Denise Hardesty, CSIRO, and Lauren Roman, CSIRO Plastic in the ocean can be deadly for marine wildlife and seabirds around the globe, but our latest study shows single-use plastics are a bigger threat to endangered albatrosses in the southern hemisphere than we previously thought. You may have heard of the Great Pacific … Read More

Why municipal waste-to-energy incineration is not the answer to NZ’s plastic waste crisis - Guest Work

Guest Author • Nov 14, 2019 •

• plastic,
• waste,
• waste-to-energy incineration

Trisia Farrelly, Massey University New Zealand is ranked the third-most-wasteful country in the OECD. New Zealanders produce five times the global daily average of waste per person – and they are getting more wasteful, producing 35% more than a decade ago. These statistics are likely to get worse following China’s 2018 ban on imports of certain … Read More

Bioplastics – a major opportunity for New Zealand - Guest Work

Guest Author • Jul 26, 2019 •

• bioplastic,
• compostable plastics,
• packaging,
• plastic

Elspeth MacRae If you could name the packaging material that is close to being public enemy number one at the moment – it would have to be plastic. We’ve all seen the tragic images of marine life entangled in plastic – the dead whales with stomachs of plastic, the list goes on. As a result of this continuous … Read More

How should we manage the harm caused by tobacco product waste? - Public Health Expert

Public Health Expert • Jun 14, 2019 •

• cigarette butts,
• cigarettes,
• plastic,
• rubbish,
• Smoking,
• waste

Professor Janet Hoek and Emeritus Professor Philip Gendall Annual consumption of cigarettes now exceeds five trillion, with around four trillion butts littered every year. These cigarette butts cause major environmental damage and impose significant clean-up costs on local authorities. Although tobacco companies have framed smokers as responsible for butt litter, recent debate has focused on the tobacco industry’s role … Read More

The Dawn of the Age of Plastics - Guest Work

Guest Author • Feb 28, 2019 •

• consumer,
• history of science,
• plastic

David Taylor The 1939 World’s Fair was a testament to cork’s primacy in consumer packaging. But a little-known substance called plastic was waiting in the wings. In the closing months of World War II, Americans talked nonstop about how and when the war would end, and about how life was about to change. Germany would fall soon, people … Read More

Recycled rubbish - The Dismal Science

Michael Reddell • Sep 15, 2018 •

• landfill,
• plastic,
• plastic bags,
• waste

That’s the title of my former colleague Ian Harrison’s response to the government’s consultative document on getting rid of (some types of) plastic bags.  The consultation itself closed yesterday, but nobody supposes the consultation itself was remotely serious –  the irrational ban is going to happen anyway.  Having dug fairly deeply into the material used to support/underpin the consultative … Read More

A simple landfill calculation - The Dismal Science

Eric Crampton • Aug 21, 2018 •

• landfill,
• plastic,
• rubbish,
• waste

That this one comes up so often speaks poorly of our basic numeracy and sense of scale. There’s basically no chance that landfills expand to take up any substantial part of the country. This is the kind of back-of-the-envelope thing that everybody should be able to do in their head. Kate Valley services Christchurch. It has 1000 hectares … Read More

Plastic bags - The Dismal Science

Michael Reddell • Aug 13, 2018 •

• bags,
• compostable,
• Eugenie Sage,
• marine life,
• plastic,
• plastic bags

There is a reason why we do not let primary school children make policy or vote.  They are children, precious and growing but prone to all the enthusiasms of children, easily influenced, and not responsible (as taxpayers or anything else) for their expressed preferences.   And yet, as the Prime Minister was reported, it seemed that the fact that lots … Read More

Why compostable plastics may be no better for the environment - Guest Work

Guest Author • Aug 03, 2018 •

• compostable plastics,
• consumer action,
• Environment,
• plastic

Thomas Neitzert, Auckland University of Technology As companies move to get rid of single-use plastic bags and bans on microbeads are coming into force, new biodegradable or compostable plastic products seem to offer an alternative. But they may be no better for the environment. Recently, European scientists argued that existing international industry standards are insufficient and … Read More