EcoYou
Small steps – big impact
The Earth’s resources are limited. We need to take care of them properly. What can you do?
Read more in this youthXchange report from UNEP and UNESCO.
Food
About one third of all food-production world-wide gets lost. Food waste is a massive global problem that has negative humanitarian, environmental and financial implications. With relative ease and a few simple changes to our habits, we can significantly shift this paradigm. Follow these top ten tips to reduce you “foodprint”.
The Think.Eat.Save campaign of the Save Food Initiative, is a partnership between UNEP, FAO and Messe Düsseldorf, and in support of the UN Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge. The Scream from Nature supports the work of the Think.Eat.Save campaign to catalyze awareness and action.
In affluent societies, a shocking 30-50% of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten. The impact is tremendous: Wasteful use of chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides, wasteful use of fuel for transportation, more rotting food, creating more methane – one of the most harmful green house gases contributing to climate change. And wasteful use of water.
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Plastic
Plastic do have some advantages – it is light weight and can improve the life span of food, for example. But plastic also have some severe challenges, one being its slow degradability. Plastic is part of what is sometimes called the packaging nightmare, see information from GRID Arendal here.
One plastic bag takes 1 second to manufacture, is 20 minutes in use, and takes 100-400 years to degrade naturally. 500 thousand million bags a year is distributed worldwide, which equals 16.000 bags per second.
Recycling one kilo of plastic saves two kilos of oil.
So, what can you do?
– take your own reusable bag when you go shopping
– drink tap water
– choose containers that are easy to reuse and recycle
– boycott over-packaged products and individual portions
Maybe this touching and eye opening film will inspire you to do an extra effort? Midway by Chris Jordan >>>
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Metal
In theory, metals can be used over and over again, minimizing the need to mine and process new materials and therefore saving important amounts of energy and water. As an example, recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy compared to producing new aluminium!
Learn more from UNEP’s publications here >>> and here >>>
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Electronics
E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams in developed as well as in developing countries. Many products can be reused or refurbished, and where this is not practically possible, products can be recycled for basic components, particularly metals like ferrous, copper and aluminium or precious metals with positive benefits on raw material extractions and energy demand. Read more on UNEPs homepage >>>
