When people think about ways to help the environment, encourage biodiversity and decrease greenhouse gases, they don’t usually think about the impact of food waste. And yet food waste is responsible for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Producing food for a growing global population is a complex challenge with a lot of negative environmental consequences, so food waste creates unnecessary strain on our fragile environment.
I was part of a recent research project with the UK Global Food Security programme, which explores ways to cut food waste. Our key findings and suggestions address waste throughout the food system – that includes all the processes, people and infrastructure involved in getting food from farm to fork. We found that cutting food waste needs cooperative action from all of us – businesses, policymakers and individuals. The most commonly wasted foods are fresh fruit and vegetables, bread and baked goods, and leftovers. Products with short shelf lives, such as meat and dairy, are also prone to be wasted.
Domestic food waste declined in the UK dramatically during the early pandemic lockdowns, with 30% using up more leftovers, but waste levels are increasing again as people go out more and have less time to cook.
Here are five things you can do:
1) Set your fridge to below 5℃: This can help increase the shelf life of many of the most commonly wasted foods, including fruit, vegetables and dairy products. About 90% of milk waste happens in the home – this adds up to nearly 500 million pints annually in the UK. Setting your fridge to the right temperature can save 50,000 tonnes of milk waste every year. Yet many of us don’t know how to adjust our fridge temperature, or how best to store food.
WRAP, a charity working on cutting waste, has guidance on understanding and adjusting fridge temperatures, and the best ways to stop milk and dairy products being wasted.
2) Single-use plastics: Many of us are seeking to decrease the amount of single-use plastics in our lives, and in our shopping baskets. This is good – but often these plastics and packaging keep food fresh for longer. Fortunately, there are significant developments towards a post-plastic world. Scientists are working on developing methods of treating and storing food that can extend its shelf life. For now, if you’re going to ditch the plastic wrap, make sure you store food in reusable containers in the fridge to maintain freshness.
3) Dish up smaller portions: This results in up to 20% less food waste If you have leftovers, make sure you enjoy them, and don’t forget about them.
The reasons behind domestic food waste are complex. Many of us put our leftovers in the fridge, then forget about them. Fortunately, there are many ways to manage our fridge contents effectively and decrease food waste. These range from apps, to the humble Post-it note, or pen. Labelling leftovers reminds us when they went in – and when they need to be eaten by. Try and freeze meat, dairy and bread if they are close to spoiling – this will extend their life.
4) Buy directly from local suppliers: Our food systems and supply chains are incredibly complex. This complexity, as well as contracts which tend to favour larger suppliers, leads to high levels of food loss and waste. In contrast, buying directly from local suppliers results in less waste and keeps money in the local economy. It’s possible to buy almost anything – fruit, veg, bread, meat, dairy – directly from suppliers. Support a local business, eat quality food, and decrease waste.
Dairy products are high on the list of foods that are often wasted. gbellphotos/Shutterstock
5) Help out at your local food bank: Suppliers often have awkward quantities of fresh food that is damaged and can’t be sold. They are more than happy to get this to a local group that prepares meals or distributes extra food surplus directly to the public – and apps like Too Good To Go are helping restaurants in the UK to do this.
But logistical challenges – and costs – mean that this food often still goes to waste. Food banks often have an excess of tinned and processed food – and a limited amount of fresh food available for people who need it. Let your local redistribution hub know that you’re available to help pick up some spare food and transport it to a nearby redistribution centre.
Food waste is a complex problem that won’t be solved by individual actions alone. Supermarkets are rising to the challenge of shrinking their environmental footprint. But we all need to do what we can to decrease food loss and waste, at the household level and beyond.
Morocco has positioned itself as a global leader in the fight against climate change, with one of the highest-rated national action plans. But though the north African country intends to generate half its electricity from renewables by 2030, its plans show that much of this energy will come from wind and solar farms in occupied land in neighbouring Western Sahara. Indeed, in my research I have looked at how Morocco has exploited renewable energy developments to entrench the occupation.
Western Sahara, a sparsely-populated desert territory bordering the Atlantic Ocean, is Africa’s last colony. In 1975, its coloniser Spain sold it to Morocco and Mauritania in exchange for continued access to Western Sahara’s rich fisheries and a share of the profits from a lucrative phosphates mine.
According to Morocco, Western Sahara formed part of the Moroccan sultanate before Spanish colonisation in the 1880s. However, that year the International Court of Justice disagreed, and urged a self-determination referendum on independence for the indigenous Saharawis. Nevertheless, Morocco invaded and used napalm against fleeing Saharawi refugees.
Western Sahara is about the size of the UK with 1% the population. All the territory east of the red line is controlled by the Polisario, everything west of the line is controlled by Morocco. The government-in-exile is in Tindouf, southwest Algeria. kmusser / wiki, CC BY-SA
Tens of thousands of Saharawis fled to neighbouring Algeria, where the Saharawi liberation front, the Polisario, established a state-in-exile, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Other Saharawis remained under Moroccan occupation.
Today a sandy wall, or berm, runs the length of the country and everything to the east of the berm remains under the control of the Polisario. Numerous landmines deter a large-scale return of refugees, though some Saharawi nomads do live there.
Morocco and Polisario were at war until 1991, when the UN brokered a ceasefire on the promise of a referendum on independence for Saharawis. This referendum has been continuously blocked by Morocco, which considers Western Sahara part of its “southern provinces”.
Since the 1940s the UN and its special committee on decolonisation has maintained a list of non-self governing territories. As territories gained independence, they have gradually been ticked off the list, and those that remain are almost all small Pacific or Caribbean island nations.
In each case, an “administering power” (usually the UK) is officially noted. Western Sahara is the only African territory remaining on the list. It’s also the only territory where the administering power column is left blank – a footnote explains the UN considers it a “question of decolonisation which remained to be completed by the people of Western Sahara”. Morocco however doesn’t see itself as the occupying power or even as the administering power but says that Western Sahara is simply part of its country.
In November 2020, armed war resumed between the two parties. In a recent journal article, my colleagues Mahmoud Lemaadel, Hamza Lakhal and I argue that the exploitation of natural resources, including renewable energy, played no small role in provoking this renewed war.
Renewable energy from occupied land
Western Sahara is very sunny and surprisingly windy – a natural renewable energy powerhouse. Morocco has exploited these resources by building three large wind farms (five more are planned) and two solar farms (another is planned).
Map of wind power resource across Africa. Red and purple = more wind. The purple area in the north-west covers Western Sahara and Mauritania. Global Wind Atlas / DTU, CC BY-SA
But these developments have made Morocco partly dependent on Western Sahara for its energy supply. Morocco already gets 18% of its installed wind capacity and 15% of its solar from the occupied territory, and by 2030 that could increase to almost half of its wind and up to a third of its solar. That’s according to a new report Greenwashing the Occupation by Western Sahara Resource Watch, a Brussels-based organisation I am affiliated with.
In its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris climate agreement, Morocco reports on developments in occupied Western Sahara – which it calls its provinces sud (southern provinces) – as if they were in Morocco. This energy dependence entrenches the occupation and undermines the UN peace process.
According to Saharawi researchers, several Saharawi families have been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for some of these solar farms. My colleagues have also documented forced eviction associated with the development of the wider energy system in Western Sahara.
Wind farm under construction near Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara. jbdodane / flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
Saharawi refugees have used solar panels for domestic energy since the late 1980s. The SADR-in-exile would now like to roll out small-scale wind and solar installations in the part of Western Sahara that it controls, in order to power the communal wells, pharmacies and other services there that are used by nomads.
I was recently part of a team that assisted the SADR in developing an indicative nationally determined contribution (iNDC) – essentially an unofficial version of the climate action plans each country was required to submit ahead of the recent UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
The Saharawi Republic launched their iNDC at the COP26 People’s Summit, 8 November 2021. Joanna Allan
SADR hopes this may help to attract climate finance. The iNDC can also be interpreted as a challenge to climate injustice. While having negligible responsibility for the climate emergency, the Saharawis nevertheless face some of its worst impacts: ongoing sand storms, flash flooding, and summer temperatures of over 50°C.
The formal NDC process excludes occupied and displaced populations such as Saharawis from global conversations on how to tackle the climate emergency. The iNDC is an assertive step to demand that Saharawis are heard.
Australian electric vehicle drivers are on average driving further than people with petrol vehicles as infrastructure improves, new statistics show.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics for the first time looked at how electric vehicle drivers use their cars and found that in the 12 months to 30 June 2020 they had travelled 69 million km.
Electric vehicles travelled 11.1 thousand km on average, which was 600km more than drivers of petrol vehicles for the year.
In New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT, EV owners travelled further than petrol vehicle owners, with Queensland not far behind. But electric vehicles lagged behind in South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
On the whole electric vehicles were still mostly confined to the cities and urban areas, with nearly three-quarters of all travel – 72.5% – taking place within capital cities. While EVs only recorded 5 million km of travel outside urban areas, or 7.2% of the total, they still recorded 2 million km of travel interstate.
Dr Jake Whitehead, the Electric Vehicle Council’s head of policy, said these early results were promising as they showed people were beginning to leave urban environments as infrastructure improves.
“The claim that EVs will end the weekend can be put to bed,” Whitehead said. “We are seeing them used for those longer-distance trips interstate.
“Overall this is very encouraging and demonstrates that Australians are adopting electric vehicles, and that having freedom to travel across the country is being helped by the increase infrastructure.”
Whitehead also said that the data comes with some caveats as it relied on a small sample size and different states and territories do not always clearly sort whether a car is an electric vehicle, a plug-in hybrid or another kind.
“We should be very clear about what an electric vehicle is: it’s been established internationally that an EV is one you plug in and power using electricity,” Whitehead said.
“Hybrids and these mythical hydrogen cars – which there are very few of – unless they can be plugged in and powered they are not EVs. And we should treat them separately, especially as they have different infrastructure requirements.”
The results come as the Australian government faces criticism for not doing enough to support the transition to electric with its new electric vehicle strategy.
While the strategy was presented as a “reboot” for the Coalition, it offered little to help encourage the uptake of electric vehicles and instead focused on the rollout of charging infrastructure.
This lack of clarity has continued with Nationals whip Damian Drum calling for the introduction of an EV road user charge, saying that as uptake increases revenue from the fuel excise will decrease, forcing governments to “find those monies from somewhere”.
“You look at a future in Australia where if we move to more EVs, which undoubtedly we will, people that are driving EVs will have to be paying some sort of road tax,” Drum said.
When applied to droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, or other extreme weather events, the term “unprecedented” is getting old. In August, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report about the dire realities we face, a drought exacerbated by global warming already had been raging for years across much of southern Africa.
It seems as though world leaders are finally ready to take meaningful action, but there’s a critical group regularly missing from key climate meetings like the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow: local, climate-focused small businesses that already are making a difference in their communities. Small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) working on climate adaptation and mitigation are a crucial but underestimated partner in the fight to reduce emissions.
Even though climate financing options are increasing, SMEs’ role in sustainable development continues to be overlooked. Their predicament is one shared by more than 200 million SMEs of all types in developing countries that cannot get the funds they need to grow, facing an estimated US$5.2 trillion annual financing gap.
International investors focus on getting dollars out the door through larger deals, while local capital is kept on the sidelines by high collateral requirements and unmanageable interest rates for early-stage businesses.
SMEs represent 90 per cent of businesses and provide more than 50 per cent of jobs worldwide according to the World Bank, so they have a key role to play in creating opportunities in economies struggling to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Examples like SELCO India, a pioneering off-grid solar company, and Husk Power, an innovative pay-as-you-go renewable energy provider operating in Asia and Africa, show that with the right amount and type of financing and technical support, small businesses can improve lives through energy access – a key international goal. Off-grid renewables also help power sustainable mobility in both rural and urban settings.
Small businesses also have an important role to play in greening agriculture. Land use for crop and livestock production accounts for 24 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, and farms are vulnerable to droughts, floods, and rising temperatures. Financing climate-smart agricultural entrepreneurs is essential for making our food systems more resilient.
Here, too, off-grid renewable energy has become indispensable, providing power for irrigation, processing grains, and operating the cold rooms and coolers needed to store dairy products, fresh seafood, and fruits and vegetables. In India, Technoserve is helping small farms withstand and adapt to the climate crisis and raise their productivity without increasing emissions.
As these examples show, when small businesses have the financing and support they need, they can drive economic growth while mitigating emissions and supporting adaptation to climate change. That is because small businesses are more agile and adaptable – and respond to local needs much faster and more effectively – than large organisations. They also offer governments and policymakers an opportunity to try out new ideas, revealing both pitfalls and best practices before initiatives are scaled regionally or nationally.
For starters, the world needs far more finance vehicles and instruments that are tailored to small businesses working in the green economy. That means a mix of lower-cost, long-term capital and blended finance, as well as easier access.
Achieving the global goal of net-zero emissions requires policymakers, investors, banks, and others to attend to SMEs’ needs much more effectively than they have in the past. For starters, the world needs far more finance vehicles and instruments that are tailored to small businesses working in the green economy. That means a mix of lower-cost, long-term capital and blended finance, as well as easier access.
The world also needs more business accelerators focused on adaptation to climate change. There are only 25 such green accelerators located in non-OECD countries. Funding research and establishing professional networks will drive support to businesses that have strong growth potential.
Better metrics to assess success will be needed. That does not mean lowering environmental, social, and governance standards. Instead, it means devising indicators specifically for green enterprises in the SME sector to help them demonstrate their effectiveness and attract more investment.
Finally, investors must not overlook women, who produce up to 80 per cent of food in the Global South. Women also are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Investing in female climate entrepreneurs benefits the climate, food production, and overall prosperity.
Small businesses are integral to climate-change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. Providing them the financing and support necessary to help them succeed is in everyone’s interest.
Kristina Skierka is CEO of Power for All. Richenda Van Leeuwen is Executive Director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs.
In a secret location in an industrial area in western Sydney, a test strip of asphalt is being laid.
But this is no ordinary road.
The 50-metre strip stretching out into the hot afternoon sun is held together by an unusual material. The gooey cellulose that binds a road surface together is usually imported from overseas, but here it has been sourced locally: from the paper, plastic, lids and liners of coffee cups that were once destined for landfill.
A test strip of road which incorporates coffee cups from the Simply Cups program. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
For months now, heavily loaded trucks have rolled back and forth over this asphalt and the surface has held up without cracking. The product has been put through a machine test that flexes it until it fails. So far, it has done everything a road surface is expected to do, and then some, says John Kypreos, director of State Asphalt Services. “It’s a better performance product than what we were producing before.”
Exactly how much of the asphalt was once part of a takeaway coffee cup is top secret, according to Kypreos. Ask too many questions and you’re hit with the same answer: that’s the “secret herbs and spices”.
But the western Sydney asphalt manufacturer is on the cusp of rolling out the first roads in Australia surfaced with recycled waste from coffee cups, as part of a collaboration with recycling program Simply Cups. The unusual partnership was brokered by the organisation Closed Loop, which looks for opportunities to achieve what’s known as “net-positive waste”.
Kypreos met Closed Loop’s chief commercial officer, Chris Collimore, about a year ago, after a late-night conversation at a birthday party turned to how waste can be used to make roads. Soon after, he saw a Simply Cups collection stand in a 7-Eleven, and got on the phone to Collimore.
“It really did start with an idea that John had that he then matched up with our program,” Collimore says.
Chris Collimore, the chief commercial officer of Closed Loop. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
Net-positive waste
The idea is a simple one: instead of burying waste in landfill, the raw materials of that waste are “upcycled” into new products. It means not only keeping stuff out of landfill, but that fewer virgin resources are consumed in the manufacture of new products. It also means less energy and therefore less greenhouse gas emissions go into the sourcing of those new resources.
That’s what’s called closing the loop, or a circular economy.
But there’s a big but: someone has to buy these recycled products, or else the loop has not actually been closed. And that’s where Closed Loop comes in as matchmaker: pairing up waste streams with companies that can do something with them.
Coffee cups are collected by Simply Cups and then turned into asphalt. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
“It’s not until you’re actually buying back the products that are made out of that [reused] material that you’re … properly recycling,” says Rob Pascoe, the organisation’s founder and head. “It’s not just a matter of lifting the lid on your yellow bin at home and putting stuff in the bin and saying, ‘I’ve done my job’.”
There are three conditions that need to be met to close the loop on a waste stream. First, there has to be a need for the product made from that waste, whether that be fence posts or street furniture. Second, the product made from waste has to be fit for purpose – it has to meet the same standards as the existing version. And third, it must be commercially viable.
Commercial viability isn’t about being cheaper than the non-waste-based alternative, Pascoe says. A product made from recycled materials might be slightly more expensive, but consumers need to remember how much money they’re simultaneously saving on waste disposal.
While coffee cups are attractive because they are an everyday and relatively easily collectable waste stream, the real low-hanging fruit for waste reuse is food waste, says Pascoe. Australia spends more than a billion dollars on artificial fertilisers in an attempt to restore the nutrient capacity of the soil that our food crops are grown in. But at the same time, we’re sending huge amounts of food waste to landfill where it generates methane.
“It’s sheer stupidity,” he says.
State Asphalt Services in western Sydney. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
Soft plastics are another one, and here Pascoe disagrees with the move to ban single-use plastics.
“It’s not the plastics that are the problem, it’s what we do with the plastics,” he says. As soon as you put a value on waste, it stops being waste and starts being a resource. “If we do that, it is very, very easy to recycle plastics.”
Pascoe says Australia has failed to invest in the necessary infrastructure to recycle properly. When community enthusiasm for recycling was at its peak, few knew the reality: that the waste we so carefully sorted into recycling bins was being shipped off to China.
“That has become what recycling means, and it’s not what recycling means,” he says. “We should be putting the demand back on people who create the waste to buy back products.”
Waste recovery and reuse has the potential to boost the Australian manufacturing industry. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
That change needs to come from the top, Pascoe argues, with government procurement policies that mandate a minimum amount of post-consumer recycled materials in products.
“If we can get to that point with governments then we’ve basically won the issue.”
A major boost for industry
Closing the loop doesn’t just offer environmental benefits, there are huge economic benefits as well, according to Gayle Sloan, CEO of the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association Australia. Every 10,000 tonnes of waste that is recovered, reused, repurposed or recycled creates 9.2 jobs, compared with just 2.4 jobs if that material is sent to landfill or exported.
“We’ve got the chance to create four times as many jobs if we actually think about the materials that we consume and purchase, the supply chains, the collection, the reprocessing and the remanufacturing on shore,” Sloan says. Waste recovery and reuse offers the potential to be a major boost for the Australian manufacturing industry coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, if it’s done right.
Sloan says the right sort of conversations are beginning within government, with MPs starting to talk about resources instead of waste, and “recognising that it’s not just something we discard in a linear way”.
The joint federal, state and territory governments’ 2019 National Waste Policy Action Plan set a target of banning the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres starting in late 2020, achieving an 80% average recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030, and increasing the use of recycled content by governments and industry. In July this year, the federal government also committed $190m to a new Recycling Modernisation Fund that is intended to generate investment in Australia’s waste and recycling capacity.
Sloan argues Australia also needs a paradigm shift in thinking about how products are manufactured and consumed.
“We need to choose the right materials when we extract resources, and design it in such a way that the value proposition is there and the worth of the material is recognised,” she says. She’d like to see the Australian government mandating the shift to a circular economy strategy, like the European Union has done with its circular economy package.
“It’s not anti-competitive because that is the expectation, that we engage in circular economy that is designing out waste, creating regenerated systems and creating jobs,” she says. “All we’re doing is coming into line with the rest of the world.”
Cradle to cradle
Back in western Sydney, the eventual goal for Collimore and Kypreos is a road that is made of 100% recycled material.
Apologising for the “messy” state of his plant, Kypreos points out piles of crushed rock, sand, bitumen and lime, as well as bits of old road surface, which are all set to be transformed into asphalt. He is already using recycled glass to substitute for some of the sand. A complex process of dehydrating and heating turns it all into road surface.
Chris Collimore’s goal is a road that is made of 100% recycled material. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
There are huge opportunities for industry to make use of waste streams in Australia, Kypreos says, but the infrastructure that’s needed to sort and store waste so it can be easily accessed just doesn’t exist yet. He argues that waste levies should be spent on building that infrastructure, and on encouraging innovative partnerships and projects.
“There’s product in there,” he argues. “It’s just a matter of sitting down and testing and building the science to see if these items that they can pull out of their waste streams are useable or reusable.” But he’s also wary of being seen as the only option. “We’ve got to be careful that we’re not looked at as the new landfill alternative.”
Turning coffee cups into roads is a step in the right direction, but truly closing the loop means ensuring no raw materials are lost at any point along their life cycle. It’s a cradle-to-cradle mentality.
The ultimate goal is to reproduce the same product with recycled material, says Sloan. Plastics – white plastics in particular – would be an easy place to start, she says, because “we can turn that back into a yoghurt container over and over and over – if we choose the right materials, if we have the right collection.”
The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the economy but also presented a unique opportunity: to invest in climate action that creates jobs and stimulates investment, before it’s too late. The Green Recovery features talk to people on the frontline of Australia’s potential green recovery.
Pakistani businessman Nawabzada Kalam Ullah Khan had been planning to swap his family’s petrol-powered cars for electric models for years.
But it wasn’t until a set of massive tax cuts came into effect in July that the 29-year-old from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad finally put in an order for two electric cars.
“Someone has to take the initiative to switch to these cost-efficient, environment-friendly vehicles in the face of increasing pollution in big cities – and we’ve done it,” Khan said.
His new cars, he said now cost about five times less to run day to day than his old vehicles, a major incentive to make the switch.
Major Pakistan and Indian cities are struggling with dangerous levels of air pollution, with Pakistan’s Lahore this week declared the most polluted city in the world.
Heavy use of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles for transport combined with smoke from seasonal crop burning make the problem particularly severe at this time of year.
But Pakistan’s electric vehicle push is picking up speed, nearly two years after the country launched its ambitious green policy, which envisions a shift to 30 per cent electric cars and trucks nationwide by 2030, and 90 per cent by 2040.
Key to the shift are hefty tax exemptions for both electric vehicles imports and imports of parts and equipment to build the cars in Pakistan.
That has helped make the vehicles more affordable, industry figures said, as Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government pushes ahead with its plan to cut carbon emissions and urban pollution.
Falling taxes
The general sales tax on locally manufactured electric cars – those with batteries holding less than 50-kilowatt hours (kWh) of power – has dropped from 17 per cent to nearly zero, said Asim Ayaz, general manager of the government’s Engineering Development Board (EDB).
At the same time, the customs duty on imported electric car parts – such as batteries, controllers and inverters – is down to 1 per cent.
The duty on importing fully built electric cars also has fallen from 25 per cent to 10 per cent for one year, Ayaz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Officials say the tax relief is a big step toward implementing Pakistan’s National Electric Vehicle Policy, originally passed by the cabinet in November 2019.
It aims to put half a million electric motorcycles and rickshaws and 100,000 electric cars, vans and small trucks into the transportation system by 2025.
“Definitely the tax exemptions make the price point (on electric vehicles) competitive,” said Malik Amin Aslam, the special assistant to the prime minister on climate change.
“It makes it extremely attractive for the customer to go electric.”
Aslam said if about a third of new cars sold run on electricity by 2030, as envisioned, Pakistan could see a big drop in climate-changing emissions and pollution.
Electric vehicles currently produce 65 per cent fewer planet-warming gases than those running on fossil fuels, he said.
Pakistan ranks second, behind Bangladesh, according to a list of nations with the worst air quality compiled last year by IQAir, a Swiss group that measures levels of lung-damaging airborne particles known as PM2.5.
In Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province with Lahore as its capital, transport accounts for more than 40 per cent of total air-polluting emissions, followed by industry and agriculture, according to a 2019 study by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Overcoming doubts
Shaukat Qureshi, general secretary of the Pakistan Electric Vehicles and Parts Manufacturers and Traders Association, said the new tax cuts mean savings of up to 500,000 rupees ($2,900) on imported small electric vehicles.
He said many members of the association have used the incentives to order them for the first time.
There are no reliable figures on how many electric cars local importers have brought into the country since the government announced the exemptions.
But in his other role as chief operating officer of car company Zia Electromotive, which imports and manufactures electric vehicles, Qureshi said he has ordered 100 small electric cars from China and plans to import 100 more every month after that.
Pakistanis – like many other people around the world – have historically been reluctant to switch to electric vehicles for reasons ranging from higher costs to lack of charging infrastructure and “fear of the unknown”, said Ayaz at the EDB.
The tax cuts help remove the cost obstacle, he said – and could help create about 20,000 new jobs in the auto industry as Pakistani car companies start manufacturing electric cars, he predicted.
The charging infrastructure issue remains, though some companies have already established charging stations in big cities and along motorways.
Climate change and development expert Ali Tauqeer Sheikh said the government should encourage the private sector to install more charging stations near offices, homes and parking lots.
To overcome worries that electric vehicles may have no resale value, car manufacturers and dealers could offer buy-back guarantees, he added.
But, Sheikh said, simply selling more electric cars is not enough to tackle Pakistan’s emissions and air pollution, since the total number of vehicles being sold – mainly traditional cars – is still growing every year.
He said the government needs to push to completely phase out fuel-run and hybrid vehicles by increasing taxes on them and provide affordable bank loans for people looking to buy electric.
“Poor people who use motorbikes and rickshaws deserve to have more electric vehicles on the roads to cut air pollution,” he said.
This story was published with permission from Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate.
Consumers are demanding more transparency about where their clothes are produced and under what conditions. With the average supply chain for a merino sweater spanning 28,000 kilometres, fashion brands have the colossal task of tracing a product’s history from field to shelf in a bid to clean-up the sector’s spotty environmental, social and governance (ESG) record.
In partnership with conservation groupWorld Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), fashion label Stella McCartney and non-profit The Textile Exchange, the search giant has developed the Google Impact Fibre Explorer, that it says will enable companies to identify the biggest risks associated with more than 20 fibre types in their supply chains, including synthetics.
Despite sustainability pledges, the fashion industry is failing to tackle its hefty carbon and environmental footprint and is on a trajectory that will far-exceed the pathway to mitigate climate change to align with the United Nation’s goal of keeping global temperatures from rising above 1.5°C since pre-industrial times, according to research by McKinsey, a consultancy.
The fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to the global climate and ecological crisis — accounting for up to 8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
A large chunk of emissions could be avoided in its upstream operations with approximately 70 per cent of the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions stem from energy-intensive raw material production.
The Global Fibre Impact Explorer (GFIE) dashboard allows brands to upload their fibre portfolio data and get recommendations to reduce risk across key environmental categories. Image: The Keyword, Google
Environmental factors such as air pollution, biodiversity, climate and greenhouse gasses, forestry and water use are calculated to produce risk ratings. The tool will also provide brands with recommendations for targeted and regionally specific risk reduction activities including opportunities to work with farmers, producers and communities.
During a pilot phase, British fashion house Stella McCartney was able to identify cotton sources in Turkey that are facing water stress.
Brands such as Chanel, Nike and H&M are among the 130 companies that have pledged to halve their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 under the renewed United Nations Fashion Charter announced last month during climate talks in Glasgow. Alongside updated commitments to cut emissions, the charter promises to reduce the environmental impact from the use of materials such as cotton, viscose, polyester, wool and leather.
The renewed agreement is more ambitious than a previous commitment in 2018 to cut emissions by a third. Nevertheless, the signatories represent a slither of the vast garment and footwear industry with fast-fashion brands such as BooHoo, Shein and ASOS notably missing from list.
The textiles sector also called for policy change to incentivise the use of “environmentally preferred” materials, such as organic cotton and recycled fibres earlier this month.
Consumers do not want to buy products made with forced labour…Without government regulations, many companies will continue to make choices based on profits not on rights.
Laura Murphy, professor of human rights and contemporary slavery, Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice
Improved data mapping tools should help to shed light on fashion’s murky supply chains. Many brands do not have reliable information on their upstream suppliers beyond the manufacturers they deal with. Data from cotton farms and spinners are rarely available on paper, let alone a digital format. Blind-spots are perpetuating environmental and social problems that have dogged the industry for decades.
Cotton supply, in particular, has come under the spotlight. China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, which produces a fifth of the world’s cotton, is where the Chinese government has allegedly committed grave human-rights violations against the largely Muslim population of Uyghurs and other minorities.
A new report published on 17 November by Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom analysed supply chain connections identified through shipping records to show how cotton from the Uyghur region circumvents supply standards and import bans to end up in consumer wardrobes around the world.
In the report, Laundering Cotton: How Xinjiang Cotton is Obscured in International Supply Chains, Professor Laura Murphy and co-authors identify more than 50 contract garment suppliers – in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, China and Mexico – that use the Xinjiang fabric and yarn in the clothes they make for leading brands, “thus obscuring the provenance of the cotton.”
“The benefits of such an export strategy may be clear: the end buyer is no longer directly involved in buying Xinjiang cotton,” the report said. “International brands and wholesalers can buy from factories in third countries that have few visible ties with Uyghur region-based companies.”
The researchers identified over 100 international retailers downstream of Xinjiang cotton, Murphy told media on a call on Friday. These include Levi Strauss, Lululemon, H&M, Marks & Spencer and Uniqlo, according to the report.
“Consumers do not want to buy products made with forced labour,” Murphy told Eco-Business. “We need our governments to insist that companies trace their supply chains back to the raw materials and make those findings public. Without government regulations, many companies will continue to make choices based on profits not on rights.”
The UK will continue to press governments around the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions urgently in the next year to limit global heating to 1.5C, after the UN climate talks that concluded last week, the president of the summit has pledged.
Alok Sharma, the cabinet minister who led the Cop26 talks, said the world had shown in Glasgow that countries could work together to establish a framework for climate action but the next year must focus on keeping the promises made there.
“The 1.5C limit lives,” he writes in today’s Guardian. “We brought it back from the brink. But its pulse remains weak. We must steer it to safety by ensuring countries deliver on the promises they have made.”
Some argued the talks had failed because the pledges on emissions cuts made at Cop26 were insufficient to meet the 1.5C goal.
Sharma acknowledged that countries must increase their pledges and turn them into action and policies. Referring to youth activists from around the world who urged political leaders to act in Glasgow, he said: “We owe it to all of them to deliver what we agreed.”
Two weeks of Cop26 talks ended in dramatic fashion as Sharma feared the carefully constructed deal among nearly 200 countries was about to collapse at the last moment, when China and India objected to a reference in the final agreement to the “phase out” of coal-fired power.
In the end a compromise was reached, with Sharma on the brink of tears as he apologised to developing countries for the change. The pledges on emissions cuts made at the talks would lead to heating of about 2.4C above pre-industrial levels, far above the 1.5C threshold, so the Glasgow pact also requires countries to revise their targets upwards in the next year.
Under the UN rules, the UK will retain responsibility for climate negotiations for the next year, until the Egyptian government assumes the presidency next November. In his first public writing since the talks concluded, Sharma sets out his aims.
“The UK’s work as the Cop26 presidency is really only just beginning,” he writes. “Over the course of the next year, we will work with countries urging them to take action and honour their promises.
“There is no formal policing process in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change system, and so we must keep up the constructive pressure, and build on the trust and goodwill generated through Cop26.”
The lack of any policing process or sanctions for countries that fail to revise their national targets on emissions, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), means that the main ways of holding governments to account are through public scrutiny and political pressure.
Australia’s government has already made clear that it does not intend to increase its targets, which are widely regarded as inadequate. The US and the EU have also indicated they do not intend to increase their ambition.
Key countries under the spotlight are the world’s biggest emitter, China, whose promise to peak emissions by the end of this decade disappointed many analysts who argued it could go further; and the third biggest emitter, India, which announced new targets in Glasgow but has yet to formally detail them. Russia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil are also under scrutiny.
Sharma argues that business and finance will play a key role. “Markets are falling into line, with the value of shares in coal firms around the world dropping since we sent a signal that coal is no longer king,” he writes.
Green campaigners have told the Guardian that if the UK wants to show leadership this year, ministers must also look to their own actions. Proposals for a new coalmine in Cumbria, new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, airport and road expansion and dithering on green policy have tarnished the UK’s reputation, while above all the decision to slash overseas aid – even while the Cop26 talks centred on climate finance for poor countries – caused deep alarm.
Sharma was widely regarded as isolated within the cabinet at Cop26, as insiders told the Guardian of a rift between the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and prime minister, Boris Johnson, over green measures.
Sunak visited the summit briefly but made little impact on senior figures from other countries present. The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, also played a little role in Glasgow.
Rachel Kyte, a former World Bank top official on climate change, now dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the US, told the Guardian that getting other donor countries to increase climate finance “was made even more complicated by UK Treasury’s insistence on cutting overseas aid. While this was then confirmed as being temporary the damage was done … The UK lost moral authority, and leverage as the presidency which we saw them struggling with. Alok was liked and respected wherever he went but it was not lost on people that he was a little alone [in the cabinet as a champion of climate action]. ”
Rachel Kennerley, a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “The fight to curb climate breakdown didn’t end with Mr Sharma’s gavel coming down on an underwhelming deal. Just next week the high court will hear about UK-financed gas drilling in Mozambique, so this is the perfect time for the government to withdraw support for that damaging project, laden as it is with climate hypocrisy.
“Given the UK’s historical contributions to emissions alongside our role as Cop host, it’s right that we take a good look at the fact that we are still supporting fossil fuel extraction, here and overseas.”
Johnson delivered a speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) today (22 November), where he made the announcement.
The mandate will apply to developers of new residential housing, office blocks and retail sites, as well as to the developers of renovations where there are ten or more parking spaces.
An exact implementation date is set to be confirmed following consultation. To support SMEs in meeting the requirements, a new three-year loan programme with a £150m funding pot will be operated through Innovate UK.
The UK Government estimates that the requirement will prompt the installation of up to 145,000 extra charging points each year through to 2030 – the point at which the national ban on new petrol and diesel car sales will come into effect.
It has been known for several years that rates of current and planned charging point installations in the UK are being outpaced by the growth of the nation’s EV stock. The 2020 Budget saw Chancellor Rishi Sunak reveal that the government was developing plans to ensure that EV drivers are never more than 30 miles away from a rapid charging point, amid a growing body of evidence that there is a “postcode lottery” for charging infrastructure in the UK.
Speaking at the CBI event, Johnson said: “This is a pivotal moment – we cannot go on as we are. We have to adapt our economy to the green industrial revolution.
“We have to use our massive investment in science and technology and we have to raise our productivity and then we have to get out your way.”
“We must regulate less or better and take advantage of new freedoms,” he added, alluding to Brexit.
Before this announcement, developers of new homes were preparing for charging infrastructure mandates from 2025, under the Future Homes Standard.
Johnson confirmed that the Department for Transport (DfT) is also set to announce plans for making public charging points more accessible for those wishing to charge away from home. MPs have repeatedly urged the implementation of simplified payment systems and greater consumer protections for public charging points, as well as appropriate competition measures for this rapidly expanding sector.
Additionally, Highways England announced plans to invest £11m in battery energy storage systems at service stations this decade, to assist with the uptake of EV charging points in areas where grid constraints can hamper installations.
The news comes days after a project working to map out the future of EV charging infrastructure in the UK’s rural regions, trialling solutions in Devon, received grant funding from Innovate UK.
Industry reaction
The Energy Networks Association’s director of external affairs Ross Easton said: “This is great news for those living in new homes, but we must make sure access to charging points is not exclusive – charging points must be accessible to everyone. To truly ‘level up’ charging point access and deliver on the COP26 electric vehicle pledges requires strategic planning at all levels of government, nationally and locally.”
Eversheds Sutherland’s head of UK transport Dominic Lacey said: “The EV charging network needs a huge stimulus that goes beyond ‘on-the-go’ charge points across our roads and highways. Boosting charging availability through planning and building control for new and refurbished commercial and residential sites is a logical step. However, access to cheap and convenient EV charging remains a social and infrastructure challenge for the bulk of traditional urban sites, which lack the capacity, facilities and space to support multi-EV charge points.”
Energy Saving Trust’s group head of transport Tim Anderson called the announcement “important”. He said: “This is a pivotal moment in the decarbonisation of transport and a significant step towards ensuring charging infrastructure is accessible for all. Today’s pledge demonstrates the government’s commitment to build on the ambition of the Transport Decarbonisation Plan and pledges made at COP26.”
The REA’s transport policy manager Jacob Roberts said:“Making sure as many people as possible are able to charge at home is key to ensuring that the full cost-saving benefits of EVs are spread fairly across society. Installing EV chargers during building construction is cheaper and less disruptive than retrofitting them later, particularly for shared and communal car parks. This approach will also go a long way to ensuring that grid connections are futureproofed to accommodate the recharging requirements of tomorrow’s EV users.
“However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and our focus now needs to turn to the existing housing stock, particularly for blocks of flats, rental properties and leasehold properties, where higher costs and complex approval processes need to be overcome.
“We must also continue to develop a network of cost-effective and convenient public charging infrastructure for those living in properties without off-street parking. The REA are aiding the Government as they develop new grant supports targeted at installing EV chargers in such settings. Lastly, increasing the accessibility of charge points will be immaterial if we cannot improve the affordability of electric vehicles too. The REA have long argued for ZEV mandates in the UK and hope that the Government will bring forward these regulations as soon as possible.”
Announced today (23 November), the Carbon Innovation Fund will run for three years, offering £1m in grant funding annually to community environmental causes, social enterprises, charities, start-ups and collaborative projects working on solutions for a more sustainable food system.
Ten projects will be awarded each year by the Fund and each successful applicant will be entitled to a share of up to £100,000. Applicants will need to be UK-based but their projects could help decarbonisation at any point in the food system globally.
Co-op said in a statement that it will only support projects that contribute to “real systems change” for food. The company has also said the fund will support the preservation and dissemination of ancient and indigenous knowledge as well as supporting emerging technologies and processes.
“With the Carbon Innovation Fund, we’re looking to do something different; rather than ideas for individual commercial benefit, we want innovations that can be freely shared and can be of benefit to society in general,” said Co-op Food’s chief executive Jo Whitfield.
“It’s this type of co-operation that we believe we need to help accelerate our response to the climate crisis.”
The Fund is being provided with money allocated from the Co-op; the retailer allocates 2p from every £1 of sales to its charitable foundation. Applications are open until 12pm on Friday 10 December 2021.
Earlier this year, the Co-op Group built on a commitment to reach carbon neutrality for all own-brand food and drink by 2025 with a detailed 10-point climate action plan. The firm’s long-term climate goal is net-zero across all scopes, for all Group activities, by 2040.
Then, at COP26 in Glasgow this month, the retailer joined competitors Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose & Partners and Marks & Spencer in signing a new joint commitment to halve the nature and climate impacts of food systems by 2030. This initiative is being orchestrated by WWF.
The news on the Carbon Innovation Fund comes on the same week that John Lewis & Partners, in partnership with environmental charity Hubbub, launched a new £1m fund for innovative projects that help to reduce waste across the food, textiles and technology sectors.
