Sustainability Science

The North Face has unveiled its new limited-edition Recover Tee, showcasing the label’s sustainability commitment by recycling plastic bottles. Titled “Bottle Source,” the three-tee capsule has been produced from more than 18,000kgs of plastic bottles that were collected from waste streams in the Alps.

The T-shirts themselves come in either long or short sleeve, and feature a new version of the The North Face’s heritage logo. For the capsule, the logo is decked out in blue, pink or green.

As well as aiming to reduce the plastic waste in the Alps, “Bottle Source” is also intended to raise awareness for the rubbish dumped in the mountains. With each item created, The North Face will also be donating 1 Euro to the Summit Foundation. This foundation supports the clean-up programs in the Alps and helps to protect wild places, ensuring that the mountains remain a great place to explore.

CG brands including 3M, Coca-Cola, P&G and Unilever have solidified their obligations to developing a circular economy by extending their capital commitments with the Closed Loop Infrastructure Fund (CLIF). Their investments are directed to support recycling infrastructure and spur growth and tech innovation around end markets for post-consumer materials across North America.

Although glowing plants may seem like a work of science fiction, researchers have succeeded in creating plants that produce their own visible luminescence—and they say the possibilities for how we can use these plants are endless.

This week in Nature Biotechnology, the scientists revealed that bioluminescence found in some mushrooms is metabolically similar to the natural processes common among plants. By inserting DNA obtained from the mushroom, the scientists were able to create plants that glow much brighter than previously possible.

The European Commission, in a strategy due next week, will lay out measures to tackle EU greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector. Reports speak of 30 million electric vehicles by 2030 and related infrastructure.

According to a draft document seen by Reuters, “The EU’s goal of climate neutrality by 2050 cannot be reached without introducing very ambitious measures to reduce transport’s reliance on fossil fuels.” The news agency further quotes the EU Commission estimating that the targets would require “at least 30 million zero-emission vehicles by 2030”.

Today, The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) has joined the U.S. Plastics Pact, a collaborative, solutions-driven initiative rooted in four ambitious goals intended to drive significant systems change by unifying diverse cross-sector approaches, setting a national strategy, and creating scalable solutions to create a path forward toward a circular economy for plastics in the United States by 2025. The first North American Pact of its kind, the U.S. Pact is a collaboration led by The Recycling Partnership, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

This video is sponsored by Dow.

In a conversation with GreenBiz Executive Editor Joel Makower, Dow CEO Jim Fitterling details strategy for the company’s latest sustainability commitments — including being carbon neutral by 2050.

“That includes looking at Scope 1 through 3 emissions. And also taking a look at some of the positive benefits our products bring to society,” Fitterling said, pointing to energy-efficient housing and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that that creates.

Its other commitments are related to protecting the climate, stopping waste and closing the loop.

Fitterling noted that the company is currently putting together a consortium of partners that would help come up with an index that allows it to measure, account and verify its work as it progresses toward its goals.

Dole Packaged Foods and Dole Asia Fresh, which are divisions of Dole Asia Holdings, announced plans to move toward zero fossil-based plastic packaging by 2025.

At first glance, the sprawling industrial site, covering roughly 900 acres in Kingsport, Tennessee, appears to be just another chemical manufacturing facility. There are hundreds of buildings and countless miles of pipes, conveyors, distillers, cooling towers, valves, pumps, compressors and controls. It doesn’t exactly look or feel particularly noteworthy.

But something extraordinary is going on at this Eastman chemical plant: two breakthrough processes to turn waste plastics of all kinds back into new plastics, continuously, with no loss of quality.

Nestlé has announced that it is to co-fund a new chair for sustainable materials at the EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland, together with Logitech, SIG and other industry partners.

Many of these medical elements currently use single use plastics or have some sort of sustainability challenge. Without doubt, the immediate focus should (and is) on meeting the impending need. Indeed, many innovative approaches are being used during this emergency in the very short term. 

At the same time over the medium to longer term, many other companies are working on alternatives to plastics that could offer options to replace single-use plastics for medical purposes. Indeed, if the strict social distancing and stay at home measures introduced yesterday are successful, there will be a lot of surplus equipment after ‘Peak COVID-19,’ and a flattened curve.

Much of the discarded medical waste in the US is sterilized and taken to landfills in a regulated manner (incineration has been discouraged since 1997). However, other countries may not have as advanced bio-hazard waste protocols. This could potentially lead to a secondary environmental crisis with billions of small items of hazardous single use plastics ending up in waterways and oceans around the world.