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Reducing Food Loss and Waste – A New Working Paper
By The Editors As we have seen in the previous post, this year the theme of World Environment Day (June 5) is ‘Think.Eat.Save’. The theme connects to the “Think.Eat.Save – Reduce Your Foodprint’ campaign. Accordingly, a new working paper has been released yesterday (June 5). The title of this working paper is ‘Reducing Food Loss and Waste”. It was produced by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and draws on research from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The “Think.Eat.Save – Reduce Your Foodprint’ campaign harnesses the expertise of organizations such as FAO, WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), Feeding the…
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The Global Tide of Disease Mongering
By The Editors A recent editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2013;346:f2809) highlights a new social health movement for healthcare reform that may prove crucial to global health in the 21st century. This new social health movement aims to counter a global phenomenon, clearly defined in the editorial: “The results of medical research are often distorted or suppressed for commercial gain, and systems that attempt to control clinicians’ behaviour through payment by results drive over-diagnosis and over-treatment.” In other words, it aims to counter over-diagnosis and over-treatment. The new social health movement is based on a partnership model that affirms themes of mutual respect and combines the perspectives and resources…
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Globesity
By The Editors What is “globesity”? It’s the escalating global epidemic of overweight and obesity – one additional aspect of the great acceleration. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), obesity is “a complex condition, one with serious social and psychological dimensions, that affects virtually all age and socioeconomic groups and threatens to overwhelm both developed and developing countries.” The WHO adds that “Contrary to conventional wisdom, the obesity epidemic is not restricted to industrialized societies; in developing countries, it is estimated that over 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems.” Overweight and obesity are major risk factors for a number of chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Globally,…
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Electronic Waste and the Global Toxic Trade
By The Editors Here we go with another major source of pollution and serious negative health effects: e-waste, which-stands for electronic waste – also called e-scrap. Electronic waste may be defined as discarded computers (desktop, laptop, computer monitors, etc.), office electronic equipment (printers, scanners, fax machines, etc.), entertainment device electronics, mobile phones, television sets, refrigerators, and more. To make things easier and avoid long lists, we can safely say that e-waste is about anything that works with a cord or a battery — or it’s connected to something with a cord or battery (think for example computer mice, or keyboards). As technology changes come by very rapidly in great acceleration-style, the…
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Lead Poisoning Epidemics and Outbreaks: A Global Problem
By The Editors When we think epidemics, we think infectious pathogens. However, there are other epidemics – one of them is the lead epidemic. Lead poisoning accounts for at least 0.6% of the global burden of disease (WHO, 2009). The Blacksmith Institute considers lead pollution one of the world’s worst pollution problems. In much of the Western world, the problem is almost contained. However, in countries with little regulation, there are devastating lead epidemics and, at times, lead outbreaks. Lead is a toxic, naturally occurring heavy metal found in small amounts in the earth’s crust. Because of its abundance, low cost, and physical properties, lead and lead compounds have been used in…
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Toxic Hot Spots: A Global Health Threat
By The Editors Toxic Hot Spots are areas where the concentration of toxic substances, which may be present in water, soil or air, is significantly higher than background levels. In these areas, the risk of adverse health effects is elevated. Toxic hot spots are often located in the vicinity of landfills, car battery recycling sites, sewage treatment plants, refineries, tanneries, mines, and numerous other operations. Living nearby these sites may cause serious adverse affects, as for example cancer and retardation in children.. We usually think of infectious diseases as the major global health problem. However, a new study by Kevin Chatham-Stephens and collaborators, published this month in Environmental Health Perspectives, shows that living near a toxic hot spot may…
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The Plastic Footprint
By The Editors Plastic pollution is a major global threat. Plastics are durable, degrade very slowly and may persist in the environment for hundreds or even thousands of years, resulting in the increasing accumulation of plastic debris in our seas. The best solution to the problem would be to produce and consume less plastic. However, plastic production is on the rise. According to PlasticsEurope, worldwide plastics production rose to 280 million tonnes in 2011, representing around 4% increase from 2010, when 270 million tonnes of plastics were produced. From 2010 to 2016, global plastics consumption is expected to grow by an average of about 4 % each year. What to do then? The…
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“The Throwaway Society Cannot Be Contained – It Has Gone Global”
By The Editors The title of this post says it all, and it says it all through the words of Charles J. Moore, the oceanographer and racing boat captain that first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In the video below, a 2009 TED TALK, Captain Moore focuses on the growing, choking problem of plastic debris in our seas. You can visually see the harm caused to different life forms. The extent of this problem is enormous, and we’ll be talking more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in posts soon to come. In the mean time, please watch this.
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The Global Environmental Impact of Clothes Production
By The Editors Sandblasting is not all. Textile factories use dyes that have a huge environmental and human health impact. In this video, you can see a dye-blue river in China. You can also see Indian children with grey hair – one of the effects of pesticides used in cotton fields. Follow a T-shirt journey around the globe: The T-shirt may travel through three continents to go from cotton balls to wearable fashion.
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Global Decline of Insect Pollinators Threatens the Human Food Supply
By The Editors An international team of 40 scientists (from 27 institutions involved in the UK’s Insect Pollinators Initiative) reports that pollinating insects, essential to the food supply, are threatened at a global level by a “cocktail” of multiple pressures that puts their survival at risk. The findings were published April 22 in the journal “Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment” (Adam J Vanbergen, and the Insect Pollinators Initiative. 2013. Threats to an ecosystem service: pressures on pollinators). The multiple pressures within the “cocktail” combine and exacerbate the negative impacts on insect pollinators of crops and wild plants. What are these multiple pressures? Intensification of land-use, climate change, the spread of species that…
