Tag: South Pacific

The Need for Safe and Sustainable Packaging

There are only a few places in the world left untouched by human presence. One of these rare environments, an uninhabited atoll and UNESCO World Heritage site in the South Pacific called Henderson Island, has been overrun with an estimated 38 million pieces of trash. Every single day an additional 3,500 pieces wash up on this once beautiful shoreline. The major concern is that nearly all of the trash analyzed is made of plastic. What’s worse, these pieces come from many countries around the world.

The sheer amount of plastic waste is a global problem. Why? Nearly every single piece of plastic ever made still exists today and global plastic production has exceeded 300 million tons per annum, a figure widely expected to double in the next twenty years alone.…

Heat Waves, Ice, Storms, Floods and Algae Bloom in 2015

Last year saw several records in the Earth’s climate system broken.

The American Meteorological Society alongside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and over 450 leading scientists from around the world all confirm that 2015 was the warmest year on record for land and sea temperatures. Last year, average temperatures rose by 1ºC higher than Preindustrial times. At the widely publicized United Nations COP21 meetings in Paris, 1.5ºC above preindustrial averages was pegged as the upper limit for climate change. We are getting so close to this limit that some scientists are already talking about a possible overshoot, which would have disastrous effects on our climate, biomes and all aspects of human activity, especially in securing the global food supply.…