Michael Reddell • Sep 15, 2018 •
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
Eric Crampton • Aug 21, 2018 •
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
Jean Balchin • Apr 24, 2018 •
I don’t know about you, but whenever I think of the United States and food, I imagine a heaped plate of chips, burgers and salad. Perhaps there’s a milkshake beside the plate too. I have a tremendous appetite, but even I know that I can’t eat everything. Huge plates of food leave behind huge piles of waste. US consumers … Read More
Guest Author • Nov 09, 2017 •
By Alison Browne, University of Manchester and Mike Foden, Keele University. Fatbergs – enormous solid masses of oil, grease, wet wipes and other hygiene products that congeal together to cause major blockages – are wreaking havoc on the sewers of cities around the world. A 130 tonne specimen described as a “monster” recently caused backups … Read More
Guest Author • Jul 20, 2017 •
Jennifer Lavers, University of Tasmania and Alexander Bond, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds A few weeks ago, the world woke to the story of Henderson Island, the “South Pacific island of rubbish”. Our research revealed it as a place littered with plastic garbage, washed there by ocean currents. This was a story we … Read More