Not just a food bank … An M&S-filled food bank. Upmarket grocer plans to use social app to supply local charities with its surplus food and help cut waste
Marks & Spencer is to distribute thousands of tonnes of surplus food under a scheme that will use a social networking app to link all 500 of its UK stores to local charities, including food banks.
The retailer, which has committed to cutting food waste from stores by a fifth by 2020, has been testing different ways of running the scheme at 45 outlets and opted to work in partnership with the Neighbourly app.
This year’s Tour of Britain was packed with top cyclists such as Bradley Wiggins, but Peter Kimpton found an alternative way of joining the race – from the passenger seat of a support car
The whir and hum of hundreds of wheels through each town brought a wind-tunnel tornado of excitement. The cheering crowds were deafening, the speed on the road brutal. I’ve taken part in various sponsored amateur rides and extreme sportives, but for a change of pace, I had the chance to get inside a world-class professional race – this summer’s Tour of Britain, and it’s a ride I’ll never forget.
Every Friday, Circulate rounds up a collection of interesting circular economy related stories and articles. This week, our selection includes an article on “The Plastic Bank”, Veolia announces that Leeds will become a circular economy hub and more…
Mimicking filtration and absorption mechanisms in earthworms to make agricultural soils more effective at holding nutrients, developing traps to farm insects for protein and a solar desalination plant inspired by mangrove trees were just three of the finalists for this year’s Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, which was eventually won by “Windchill”, a food preservation unit that requires no electricity and is inspired by the temperature regulation of mammals. See all of the competition’s finalist and innovative entries on the challenge website.
Veolia has announced its intention to make Leeds a “hub for circular economy innovation”. Veolia’s chief executive Estelle Brachlianoff spoke at a stakeholder event for the company’s new flagship energy-from-waste plant based in Cross Green. Reported in Edie, Veolia expects the new facility to put Leeds at the forefront of recycling technologies in the UK.
The various issues around plastics and their negative impacts economically and environmentally have come to the fore over the course of the last 12 to 18 months. Whatever collaborations are developed and courses of action taken to resolve the problem, the solutions are likely to be multiple in number and multi-faceted in nature. In that spirit, Guardian Sustainable Business ran an interesting story this week on The Plastic Bank, a small business that has turned plastic into a currency, acting as a broker between recycling companies that receive discarded bottles and other recyclable materials and individuals in under-privileged rural communities. Leah Messinger writes that several companies looking to innovate around new plastic products are already interested in collaborating. Perhaps The Plastic Bank will always operate in a relatively small niche, but they do represent another story showing the value that can be extracted from material that has traditionally been viewed as waste.
A recent Guardian article written by editor of Green Futures Magazine, Martin Wright, has highlighted the recent “take-off” of the circular economy in the U.S. Wright’s piece outlines how European economies have been faster to accept the benefits of the circular economy, but there is now evidence that the narrative of economic advantage is taking hold in the U.S.
Conventional environmentalism and sustainability has rarely enjoyed much success in the U.S., furthermore the issue of volatile commodity prices, felt so strongly by Europe’s economy, which relies heavily upon imported resources, isn’t as pervasive on the other side of the Atlantic.
However, as the idea continues to develop, the economic opportunities appear more abundant. It is the financial advantages of more effective business models that is driving uptake in the U.S. now with a number of prominent examples, especially at the small-medium enterprise (SME) level, where businesses like Ecovative, Stuffstr and ECOR Global have seized market opportunities and are making the case for a new kind of innovative thinking.
A similar opportunity surely exists in the U.S., home to Silicon Valley where many of the world’s leading technology corporations are headquartered, inc. Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, HP and Intel to name just a few.
The journey towards the circular economy may be in an early phase, relative to the picture in Europe, but the U.S. economy possesses potential for an accelerated transition.
Petworth, West Sussex Dominant bucks had established rutting stands in close proximity to one another, each stationed beneath one of the park’s ancient trees
As we strode across the Mansion Lawn towards the lake, bathed in the golden marmalade light of the setting sun, it felt as though we had stepped into Turner’s painting, Sunset, Fighting Bucks. Surprisingly, the view differs little from the idealised landscape depicted by the artist in the early 19th century. Some 800 fallow deer still roam freely in the park, and we could see that the bucks and does had begun to congregate, having spent most of the year in single-sex herds.
During the red deer rut, dominant stags manage large harems and vigorously defend them from rival males. But it was immediately obvious that the fallow deer had a different mating strategy, displaying lekking behaviour.
Clean energy industry hopeful Malcolm Turnbull’s appointee will ‘blow away some of the conspiracy theories’ and return debate to ‘sensible’
The Turnbull government has appointed an academic and company director with strong ties to climate and renewables research as its new “wind commissioner”, in a move the clean energy industry says should help return the wind energy debate to “sensible”.
Andrew Dyer serves on the boards of Climateworks Australia and the Monash University sustainability unit. The government says his primary role will be to “refer complaints about windfarms to relevant state authorities” – which are already responsible for dealing with them.
Under Abbott, Coalition considered offering Adani concessional financing for 388km line, but Josh Frydenberg says company must ‘stand on its own two feet’
The Turnbull government has said a 388km railway essential to the future of the controversial $16bn Carmichael coalmine in central Queensland is “not a priority project” for federal concessional loans from the $5bn Northern Australia Infrastructure fund.
Under Tony Abbott, the Coalition had indicated it was considering offering concessional loans for the rail line. Adani’s Australian chief executive, Jeyakumar Janakaraj Adani, said last month his company was negotiating with the federal and Queensland governments for financial assistance to build the railway to service the Carmichael mine, and potentially other mega-mines planned for Queensland’s Gallilee Basin.
New report from The Australia Institute sheds light on the high level of access and lack of accountability afforded to the fossil fuel lobby in Queensland
On 11 February 2013, David Edwards, then the most senior civil servant in Queensland’s Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning, used $500 of taxpayer money to buy a “framed and personally signed tennis racquet” for a rich Indian industrialist.
The lucky recipient was Gunupati Venkata Krishna Reddy, whose company, GVK Hancock, is one of those looking to tap the huge coal reserves of Queensland’s Galilee Basin. Multi-millionaire GVK is also a bit of a tennis fan.
Wilderness Society report shows spill would likely affect fishing and tourism, and threaten whales, seabirds, sea lions and sea turtles, along the southern coast
An oil spill from BP’s planned drilling in the Great Australian Bight could affect most of Australia’s southern coastline, shutting down fisheries and threatening wildlife including whales, seabirds and sea lions, new modelling has shown.
State officials announced a plan after several local studies and months of complaints from residents after Flint stopped using the Detroit system
After months of resisting complaints from residents in the city of Flint, Michigan, over the discolored and odorous water that was flowing into their homes, city and state officials announced a plan Thursday to change their water source.
Michigan governor Rick Snyder said the revelation that a spate of children are experiencing elevated blood-lead levels had become a “public safety issue”, weeks after independent experts first asserted that Flint’s temporary water source had produced a spike in lead across the city of 100,000.
