planted city

An important reminder of the bigger picture from Annie Leonard in the New York Times article, ’Individual Actions Just Don’t Add Up’. You can check out the rest of the article here.

Leonard is the author and director of the ‘Story of Stuff Project’. Their new animated film is ‘The Story of Change: Why Citizens (Not Shoppers) Hold the Key to a Better World’.

(Image source: The Story of Stuff Project)

From Business Insider:

Figures from China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) regarding the impact the 4-year plastic bag ban came out earlier this week, and frankly they’re incredible.

China Daily cites a government official who says the ban has saved 4.8 million tonnes of oil (the equivalent of 6.8 million tonnes of standard coal), not to mention 800,000 tonnes of plastic.

If these figures are true, it’s not only a remarkable success for China’s environmental policy, but also a strike for international effort to ban plastic bags.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘The Plastic Bag Wars’ (Rolling Stone)
• ‘Phase-out of lightweight plastic bags’ (Wikipedia)
• ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch a bigger worry than tsunami debris’ (Los Angeles Times)
• ‘10 Things You Should Know About the Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ (Greenbang)

(Photo credit: Treehugger)

From the CBC:

1. The number of megacities has doubled.

2. The world is eating 26 per cent more meat.

3. Global temperatures continue to rise, with the last 10 years the warmest on record.

4. World industry is 23 per cent more energy efficient.

5. Plastic consumption has skyrocketed — with annual production reaching a record 265 million tonnes worldwide in 2010.

6. The 1990 Montreal Protocol to limit ozone-destroying chemicals is the world’s most successful international agreement, producing a 93 per cent drop in the damaging emissions since 1992.

7. Cement production is the fastest-growing source of C02 emissions.

8. The Mesopotamian Marshlands, the largest in the Middle East, are recovering from deliberate draining by Iraq in the 1990s.

9. Saudi Arabia has transformed from an importer of food to an exporter due to irrigation.

10. Environmentally protected areas have increased worldwide by 42 per cent.

11. Fish stock depletion is now one of the most pressing environmental issues.

12. Renewable energy has skyrocketed, with solar energy leading the way — up 30,000 per cent since 1992.

13. Biofuel production — up 300,000 per cent — is converting more land from farming to production of fuel.

14. Organic farming is up 240 per cent since 1999.

15. The Amazon rainforest has been largely destroyed due to drought and farming.

16. Tourism and travel is the world’s largest business sector — and ecotourism is the fastest-growing type of tourism, up 20-34 per cent per year.

17. Passenger trips by airplanes have doubled in the past two decades.

18. Clean drinking water access increased to 87 per cent, but widespread sanitation is still slow.

19. 30 per cent more private companies are adopting environmental standards every year.

20. Women’s influence is rising with more 60 per cent more seats in national parliaments.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can check out more about the 1992 Earth Summit here and the 2012 edition here. Also worth a read is a joint statement written by a number of experts in global sustainability in advance of the conference.