European budget airline easyjet’s new cabin crew uniforms have been unveiled, and it has gone down a very “green” route with the fabric.
Each uniform has been created from about 45 recycled plastic bottles.
Linking up with Northern Irish manufacturer Tailored Image, it is estimated the new uniforms will prevent up to half a million plastic bottles from ending up as plastic waste each year.
The new threads have already been trialled, so presumably have passed the comfort test as well.
Director of Cabin Services, Tina Milton, said the airline is looking at ways to be more sustainable.
Each uniform has been created from about 45 recycled plastic bottles.
“It is a priority for us to continue work on reducing our carbon footprint in the short term, coupled with long-term work to support the development of new technology, including zero-emission planes which aspire to reduce the carbon footprint of aviation radically,” said Milton.
“We continue to work with innovative technology partners Wright Electric and Airbus. Each of them has set out its ambitious timetables for bringing zero-emission aircraft into commercial service to become a reality.”
Certainly, easyjet will be hoping the uniforms will not cause their crew discomfort or illness.
Staff at US airlines Delta and American ended up suing their companies saying the clothes were making them sick.
Textiles have a large global environmental footprint second only to the extractive oil and gas industries, and businesses and manufacturers have been trying various ways to make clothing more sustainable.
The world’s biggest shipping company is investing $1.4bn (£1bn) to speed up its switch to carbon neutral operations, ordering eight container vessels that can be fuelled by traditional bunker fuel and methanol.
The Danish shipping business Maersk said the investment in new vessels would help to ship goods from companies including H&M Group and Unilever, while saving more than 1m tonnes of carbon emissions a year by replacing older fossil fuel-driven ships.
The vessel order, placed with South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries, is the single largest step taken so far to decarbonise the global shipping industry, which is responsible for almost 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Søren Skou, the Maersk chief executive, said: “The time to act is now, if we are to solve shipping’s climate challenge.
“This order proves that carbon neutral solutions are available today across container vessel segments and that Maersk stands committed to the growing number of our customers who look to decarbonise their supply chains.
“Further, this is a firm signal to fuel producers that sizeable market demand for the green fuels of the future is emerging at speed.”
The eight vessels, which will each have capacity for 16,000 containers, are expected to be delivered by early 2024. They will be 10-15% more expensive than bunker fuel container ships, each costing $175m.
The Danish company aims to only order new vessels that can use carbon neutral fuel as it seeks to deliver net zero emissions by 2050.
Maersk said more than half of its 200 largest customers – including Amazon, Disney and Microsoft – had set or were in the process of setting targets to cut emissions in their supply chains.
Maersk plans to run the vessels on methanol, rather than fossil fuels, as soon as possible but admitted this would be challenging because it would require a significant increase in the production of “proper carbon neutral methanol”.
The company set out plans last week to produce green fuel for its first vessel to operate on carbon neutral methanol alongside REintegrate, a subsidiary of the Danish renewable energy company European Energy.
The Danish facility is expected to produce about 10,000 tonnes of carbon neutral e-methanol, using green hydrogen combined with carbon emissions captured from burning bioenergy such as biomass.
Henriette Hallberg Thygesen, the chief executive of Maersk’s fleet and strategic brands, said the green methanol partnership could “become a blueprint for how to scale green fuel production” and “decarbonise our customers’ supply chains”.
The new additions to Maersk’s fleet are “the ideal large vessel type to enable sustainable, global trade on the high seas in the coming decades”, she said, and “will offer our customers unique access to carbon neutral transport on the high seas while balancing their needs for competitive slot costs and flexible operations”.
Leyla Ertur, the head of sustainability at H&M Group, said Maersk’s investment in large vessels operating on green methanol was “an important innovative step supporting the retailer’s climate goals” to become climate neutral by 2030 and climate positive by 2040.
China will plant 36,000 sq km of new forest a year – more than the total area of Belgium – from this year to 2025 as it bids to combat climate change and better protect natural habitats, a senior forestry official said on Friday (Aug 20).
Tree planting has been at the heart of China’s environmental efforts for decades and is a major part of plans to bring carbon emissions down to net zero by 2060.
Li Chunliang, vice-chairman of the State Forestry and Grasslands Commission, told a press briefing large-scale “land greening” programmes would complete 36,000 sq km of afforestation every year through 2025.
“By 2035, the quality and stability of national forest, grassland, wetland and desert ecosystems will have been comprehensively upgraded,” Li added.
China aims to raise its overall forest coverage rate to 24.1 per cent by the end of 2025 from 23.04 per cent at the end of last year, according to its forest and grassland five-year plan published this week.
The plan warned that China’s forest and grass resources were inadequate, especially in drought-prone regions in the north and west. Li did not say what type of trees would be planted but the document said the strategy would rely in part on “natural reforestation”, implying different types of tree would be planted according to the local environment.
Following the destruction of major ecosystems by decades of breakneck economic growth, China has promised to create “ecological security barriers” and protect as much as a quarter of its total territory from human encroachment.
Over the next five years, China will also expand its national park system, create corridors to alleviate habitat fragmentation, and crack down further on illegal wildlife trade, said Chen Jiawen, an official in charge of drafting the new plan.
Separately, market research group comparethemarket.com said on Friday that the city of Beijing alone would need to plant more than 15 million trees a year in order to offset annual emissions.
Singapore and Hong Kong would each have to plant more than 9 million trees a year, while London would need to plant just over 4 million, it said.
This year’s Ricoh Eco Action Day Forum will gather leaders from the worlds of business, government and civil society to explore ways to drive inclusive growth while sustaining the environment for generations to come.
The Covid-19 pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to the world of work. As nations continue to grapple with the short-term impacts of the economic slowdown, many have yet to grasp the imprint that the crisis may have left on the future of labour markets.
Lockdowns have sped up existing trends in remote work, e-commerce, and automation, upending forecasts of what tomorrow’s economy will look like. In the years ahead, it is estimated that 25 per cent more workers will potentially need to switch occupations than previously thought.
With such dramatic change come challenges, particularly for the world’s most vulnerable. Last year’s economic crash left more than 114 million people without jobs, but the United Nations (UN) estimates that a staggering 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy risk losing their livelihoods.
As the pandemic-induced inequality gap keeps widening, this underlines the importance for countries to build back better as they emerge from the worst recession facing the world since the great depression.
If governments are to create a fairer future, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 8, focused on achieving decent work and economic growth, will need to be front and centre of the global economic recovery. The question is, what’s the role of businesses in realising this vision?
This year’s Ricoh Eco Action Day Forum will seek answers to this question. Themed ‘The Future of Work’, the event will explore how companies can help policymakers make economic growth sustainable and inclusive, and offer productive employment and decent work for all.
Taking place on 26 August, the event will bring together business leaders, sustainability experts and government representatives to discuss the business models that firms can adopt to build better and safer workplaces while driving sustainability outcomes.
The gathering, which is co-organised by Japanese multinational digital services company Ricoh and Eco-Business, also ties in with Singapore’s wider push towards sustainability as the new engine for jobs and growth, encouraging more entrepreneurs, banks and industry to transition towards greener ways of doing business.
Coming on the heels of the recently unveiled Singapore Green Plan 2030, which charts a new course for Singapore’s sustainability agenda, the event will delve into the ways firms can create green jobs, buildings, and infrastructure to help transform how people live and work in support of the city-state’s sustainability commitments.
It is important for business, government and sustainability experts to come together and discuss how we can achieve a sustainable and inclusive recovery post-Covid, and create decent, inclusive and sustainable work for all. – Ben Chong, managing director, Ricoh Singapore
“The pandemic has disproportionately impacted those with limited digital access, lower skills and education, and who are of lower income. As countries enforced lockdowns and shuttered economies, these communities have been less able to continue studying and working from home, thus widening the social and economic inequality gaps,” said Ben Chong, managing director at Ricoh Singapore.
“As such, it is important for business, government and sustainability experts to come together and discuss how we can achieve a sustainable and inclusive recovery post-Covid, and create decent, inclusive and sustainable work for all,” he said.
“While it takes collaborative efforts to overcome inequity, the onus is on companies to ensure safe and fair work conditions for their employees,” he continued. Besides putting measures in place to curb the spread of the virus, this means using technology to remove barriers and ensure fair treatment and equal access to opportunities for everyone, he added.
Covid-19 has highlighted how dependent the global economy has become on digital technology. As the world emerges from the crisis, the shift in work patterns is likely to keep driving the surge in demand for digital services, said Chong.
“As the world recovers from the pandemic, we are slowly but surely returning to the office. However, the next generation of workers will require more flexibility in terms of working hours and ways of working,” he observed.
“As a digital services company, we are empowering businesses and their employees to work better and smarter with secure, innovative digital office tools and technologies so they can work seamlessly wherever they are,” he said.
The Ricoh Eco Action Day Forum is one of Singapore’s key sustainability gatherings. It is part of Ricoh’s larger Eco Action Day Campaign, which encourages individuals and organisations in Singapore to embrace a greener future.
UAE waste management company Bee’ah and Greek sustainability firm Polygreen has launched a new company that will offer marine and environmental management solutions.
The joint venture, EvoGreen, will provide advanced maritime waste management services to preserve the region’s oceans, the UAE state news agency has reported.
“Evogreen will take the lead in promoting best practices in the maritime waste management industry and achieve remarkable outcomes for the UAE and wider region,” Salim bin Mohamed Al-Owais, Bee’ah chairman, said.
The new company has already established an alternative raw material facility in Bee’ah’s Sharjah complex. It processes maritime waste and marine-related hazardous waste to produce alternative materials for industrial use.
EvoGreen is currently building another facility that can process waste streams and convert materials into alternative fuel.
Both facilities will collect, recycle and recover hazardous and non-hazardous waste from ships visiting ports in the UAE.
“The launch of Evogreen is a milestone regarding the global effort to protect the environment and address the challenge of climate change,” Polygreen chief, Athanasios Polychronopoulos, said.
The company will also offer oil spill response services and management of distressed vessels, as well as recycling and recovery solutions.
Dealing with the climate crisis involves the overhauling of many facets of life, but few of these changes will feel as tangible and personal as the transformation required within the home.
The 128m households that dot America gobble up energy for heating, cooling and lighting, generating around 20% of all the planet-heating emissions produced in the US. Americans typically live in larger, more energy hungry dwellings than people in other countries, using more than double the energy of the average Briton and 10 times that of the average Chinese person.
This sizable contribution is now coming under the scrutiny of Joe Biden’s administration, which recently put forward a raft of measures to build and upgrade 2m low-emissions homes. “Decarbonizing buildings is a big task but it’s an essential task,” said Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Rapid change will be needed to avoid disastrous climate change. To get to zero emissions by the middle of the century, the sale of fossil fuel boilers will have to end within five years, all new buildings will have to run on clean electricity by 2030 and half of all existing buildings will have to be fully retrofitted by 2040, a recent landmark International Energy Agency report warned.
“The appliances we use at home have tended to be overlooked but they are contributing a significant amount to climate change and we need to address that,” said Mike Henchen, an expert in carbon-free buildings at RMI. “That will touch people’s lives – our homes are our refuges, the places we know best. But hopefully the change will also make people’s homes more comfortable, safer and healthier, as well as reduce the climate impact.”
So what will the climate-adapted homes of the future look like?
Designing the home to use less – and cleaner – energy
Changes on both the outside and inside of our structures will shape the future of climate-proof homes. According to Alejandra Mejia Cunningham, building decarbonization advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, homes will have to follow three interlocking mantras: “using the least energy possible from the cleanest sources at the right time”.
Source: The Guardian
Solar panels on roofs will become more common while, in rented or apartment accommodation, community solar schemes could provide an alternative. Solar panels can also be married with home batteries to help store excess energy which, along with proper insulation, will help keep a house functioning even during the sort of lengthy power blackouts Texas experienced earlier this year.
Such a scenario opens up the possibility of utility companies operating an automated network of homes, as is the case in parts of Vermont, to manage demand and supply, rather than rely on hulking centralized infrastructure. “Having solar panels, batteries and water heaters all orchestrated and distributed makes the home a part of the energy system and can provide a lot of savings,” said Henchen.
Power use will become smarter and more automated, with technology helping spread energy use throughout the day to work in tandem with a grid powered by variable wind and solar, rather than cause big surges in demand that require the burning of gas or coal.
New tools for heating and cooling the home
Another energy efficient move will be to properly insulate homes. In fact new homes could be pre-fabricated in factories and fitted on site to reduce gaps where heat can escape.
Source: The Guardian
Deep reductions in emissions will involve revamping the major appliances in the home, such as the water heater, furnace and air conditioning unit. As these items become older, they become wasteful and they will need to be replaced by more efficient appliances that run off clean electricity.
Some of these replacements will be relatively innocuous, such as the installation of heat pumps, which will be in the basement or on the side of the house. Heat pumps work on principles similar to a refrigerator, shifting heat from outdoors indoors and vice versa. They can heat and cool your home and can also heat your water with an efficiency rate four times greater than a gas-powered version.
The changes you’ll notice in everyday life
Other changes will be more obvious in day-to-day life, such as replacing incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs, installing low-flow shower heads and phasing out gas stoves in favor of electric induction stovetops.
Source: The Guardian
Such a change may be unnerving to dedicated home cooks but proponents point to the swifter heat-up time, reduced indoor air pollution and negated risk of injuries to the hands of curious children.
“People will get used to technology like induction cooktops. There are already top chefs out there giving out the message that they don’t have a worse performance than gas,” said Rohini Srivastava, a buildings expert at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
The phase-out of gas will also remove the need for a carbon monoxide detector in the home, although in the western US, air purifiers may become a standard feature in an age of growing wildfire smoke.
At what cost?
All of this will cost money – about $70,000 for the average American household to decarbonize, according to Rewiring America. And broader, systemic changes will need to take place to make housing denser and centered around transit lines and walkable communities to reduce car use, as well as a concerted effort to make homes resilient to the storms and fires spurred by the climate crisis.
Climate advocates are calling for a slate of government support to aid this transition – San Francisco is currently working out how to make the $5.9bn switch to electrify all its homes currently powered by gas – but stress that the public will need to view the changes as painless.
“The only way we will be able to do this is if the home feels just as comfortable and user-friendly as it has always been” said Cunningham. “You need to be able to take hot showers, be cool in summer and warm in winter and not know the difference in terms of how that is all powered.”
Scientists in Singapore are working on a “crystal ball” to help fine-tune and localise for the region the global climate projections in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
This work on the regional climate model is being led by the Centre for Climate Research Singapore, a unit under the National Environment Agency’s Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS).
“The centre has started work on the third national climate change study for Singapore, called V3, which provides localised and high-resolution climate projections derived from the latest climate models used by the IPCC,” said an MSS spokesman.
Localised projections are important as different regions will experience climate change differently.
For example, even though the IPCC said global warming would cause more heat waves and higher temperatures in general, the extent to which each region will be affected varies.
The Arctic is expected to warm up twice as fast as the global average, since the loss of reflective sea ice there would worsen the warming trend, as darker land and ocean surfaces absorb more heat. As for Singapore, the heat problem is exacerbated by its highly urbanised environment since concrete traps heat.
With projections tailored to the local context, governments can respond better to the climate change threat – such as deciding how much to invest to improve drainage systems to withstand bouts of heavier rain, or determining the height of seawalls to keep out the rising tides.
Still, the IPCC was clear on one thing: No matter what the symptoms experienced by each locality are, they will get worse with every degree of warming.
The Straits Times explains the science of climate change projections.
How does the IPCC come up with climate projections?
Climate projections used in the IPCC reports are made by global climate models – a climate scientist’s “crystal ball” for seeing into the future.
These models simulate the physics, chemistry and biogeochemistry of the atmosphere, land and oceans in great detail.
In such models, the earth’s surface is represented by a series of tiny grid cells.
There are multiple layers of grid cells to represent the depths of the oceans and the heights of the atmosphere. Visually, then, a climate model resembles a globe made out of Lego bricks.
These models simulate the physics, chemistry and biogeochemistry of the atmosphere, land and oceans in great detail.
In such models, the earth’s surface is represented by a series of tiny grid cells.
There are multiple layers of grid cells to represent the depths of the oceans and the heights of the atmosphere. Visually, then, a climate model resembles a globe made out of Lego bricks.
Why don’t the global models provide more localised projections?
This boils down to the resolution of the model, which is defined by the size of each grid cell.
Similar to how smaller “nano bricks” can build out more detailed 3D models than larger Lego bricks, smaller grid cells allow higher levels of detail in the model.
Models with more grid cells need more computing power.
In global models, each grid cell usually spans between 70km and 250km. These are useful for studying global climate and large-scale drivers and processes.
But Singapore is only about 45km across at its widest.
As a result, the Republic appears as just one grid point or not at all in these models.
With just one grid point or less, it is not possible to model certain localised processes, such as storms that develop within Singapore island.
How is Singapore planning to fine-tune these projections?
The Straits Times had earlier reported that the Centre for Climate Research Singapore is working with the National Supercomputing Centre to downscale the global climate models to produce grid cells spanning from about 2km to 8km.
With more grid cells covering Singapore, the model would aid researchers in coming up with finer, more accurate predictions of how the island will experience climate change in the future.
But even as the work to build the regional model is ongoing, observational data on variables such as rainfall and temperature and sea level changes will continue to be collected.
This information is crucial to seeing how well the models simulate reality.
When a climate model is built, researchers can use it to go back in time, introduce changes that have already been seen, and see whether the output from the model corresponds with the observations of today.
There is no doubt that in the post-Covid-19 world, we have entered a new era for business, and sustainability is now a key component of any company’s competitive advantage.
In essence, sustainability today should be on any leader’s radar, as the most powerful opportunities for profitable innovation are embedded in their ability to understand the challenges it presents, and to accurately address them.
Many businesses are already discovering this, through what can be referred to as the ‘Sustainable Business Model Innovation’ (SBM-I).
They are innovating business models – building on and expanding beyond their core assets and capabilities – to address significant environmental and societal challenges in their local contexts. In this way, they create new sources of value and competitive advantage for their business.
Among the numerous examples of this is a Northern European oil and gas producer which has transformed to become one of the largest offshore wind developer cleaning products manufacturer and has sought to own the whole cycle by scaling up its in-house plastic recycling to create distinctive, greener packaging at a stable cost.
Businesses also cast their net wise when it comes to stakeholder engagement, partnering with non-profits, governments and other corporates including their competitors. The Maersk McKinney Moller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, offers a good case study, bringing together different stakeholders in the shipping industry to come up with sustainable solutions to reduce the environmental impact of the global shipping industry.
Link to drivers of value and competitive advantage
Any new business model must be tested, improved and refined to ensure that it yields environmental and social benefits, as well as creating value and business advantage for the company.
Business advantage can come in many forms:
differentiating your brand and making it more competitive
reducing the risk of commoditisation by making your product or service hard to imitate
attracting new customers and leveraging network effects; and harnessing wider business ecosystems
increasing returns to shareholders while not sacrificing environmental/societal benefits
Scale the business model innovation
Realising the full potential of a new sustainable business model only comes when it is rolled out at scale, across your own operations, your suppliers, customers and your broader stakeholder networks.
There are three key ways to drive scale:
Join forces with other organisations, within and across sectors, to pool resources, plug capability gaps and unlock new markets. One global cosmetic brand shared its learnings and methodology on sustainable packaging across its sector, thereby driving industry-wide transformation.
Harness digital technologies to create new, more cost-effective distribution channels to customers that were previously underserved or not able to buy your products at all
Develop a culture that attracts and engages new people to your organisation and your products
The best response to the challenges of sustainability issues is to seize the opportunities it presents to your business to turn them into sources of competitive advantage. The race to sustainability is on and it will take a rigorous innovation approach.
All Samsung phones are to feature recycled materials from 2025, the company has pledged as part of a new set of wide-ranging sustainability targets.
The mobile technology giant said that through the new strategy it is aiming to integrate sustainable practices across each stage of production to minimise it environmental impact and build “a better future for communities around the world and the next generation of innovators”.
The commitments from part of ‘Galaxy for the Planet’, a sustainability platform designed to deliver tangible climate actions across Samsung’s business. The initial set of targets have a deadline of 2025 and together aim to reduce the environmental footprint and lessen resource depletion that results from the production and disposal of Galaxy products.
The new goals include eliminating all plastic packaging, achieving zero waste to landfill across the company’s operations, and reducing standby power consumption of all smartphone chargers to below 0.005W by 2025.
“We believe that everyone has a role to play in providing innovative solutions that protect the planet for generations to come. Samsung understands our efforts need to match our scale, our influence and the magnitude of the entire Galaxy ecosystem around the world,” said TM Roh, president and head of mobile communications business at Samsung Electronics. “Galaxy for the Planet is an important step in our journey toward creating a more sustainable world, and we will do so with the openness, transparency and collaboration that drives everything we do.”
Samsung’s products are already “thoughtfully designed” to minimise the impact on the environment during their entire lifecycle, the company said, including through the use of power-efficient semiconductor chips, sustainable packaging, energy-saving technology, and the ability to upcycle old devices.
