Farmers who use greater amounts of herbicide on their crops will meet more resistance and over time and substantially increase the costs of managing weeds, new research from the University of Sheffield confirms.

The new study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, was led by researchers from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences in collaboration with Rothamsted Research and the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London.

It gives an important insight into how we can learn from past management of agricultural systems to reduce the likelihood of resistance evolving in the future.

Habitat selected

Lead author of the study Rob Freckleton, Professor of Population Biology from the University of Sheffield, said: “The results were simple: farms that used a greater volume of herbicide had more resistance.

“Beyond this we found little evidence for a role of any other management techniques: neither the diversity of chemicals used – for example whether farmers used a variety of herbicides or just one – or diversity of cropping mattered, despite both being advocated as methods to reduce the evolution of resistance.”

Xenobiotic chemicals – such as herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and antibiotics – are used in both agriculture and healthcare to manage pests and diseases. However, resistance has evolved to all these types of xenobiotics, rendering them ineffective, with serious consequences for crop production and health.

Current strategies for managing resistance revolve around diversifying management and the range of chemicals used. Similar techniques have been proposed in medicine and agriculture but there is not yet a consensus on what is the best approach.

The researchers examined the evolution of herbicide resistance in black-grass (Alopecurus myosuroides) in the UK.  This has become a widespread weed present in 88 per cent of 24,824 of quadrats – small areas of habitat selected at random as samples for assessing the local distribution of plants and animals – monitored by researchers. It has spread northward in recent years and the scientists found the weed in areas where it had not been found in previous decades.

Herbicide products

Professor Freckleton said: “The driver for this spread is evolved herbicide resistance: we found that weeds in fields with higher densities are more resistant to herbicides.

“Once resistance has evolved it does not seem to go away: two years later, fields with high densities still had high densities, despite farmers employing a suite of different management techniques.

“We estimate that the economic costs of this are very high: the costs of weed management have doubled as a consequence of evolved resistance.”

The research offers important insights into diversifying management, which is suggested as a possible technique for reducing the evolution of resistance.

The study showed the technique will work to reduce resistance only if farmers reduce their inputs of herbicides. If they continue to use the same levels of herbicides or even increase their input, then this technique will not work. The new findings show the volume and diversity of herbicide products are positively related to each other.

Convergent evolution

Professor Freckleton added: “New techniques such as precision agriculture offer the possibility of targeted applications of chemicals: for example, robots could give doses of herbicide at the level of individual plants. In the meantime, the results that we have obtained suggest a simple rule of thumb: just using more herbicide will select for more resistance.”

The study showed that even in the absence of chemicals, directional selection from the repeated use of the same management will lead to evolution resistance.

This highlighted a need to design a management system in which evolution is anticipated. Apart from focussing on densities and yields, there needs to be an appreciation of resistance.

“In an example of convergent evolution, one ecotype of the weed barnyard grass – Eichochloa crus-galli var oryzicola L. – appears indistinguishable from domesticated rice (Oryza sativa L.),” said Professor Freckleton.

“Barnyardgrass is a weed because it reduces the yields of rice, so when farmers see weeds they pull them out. This behaviour has been selected for weeds that mimic the crop, as weed plants that look similar to rice avoid being killed. “This is evolved resistance: when we manage natural systems in a selective manner, evolution is inevitable.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague.

 

Trees for Life has launched an appeal to raise £22,000 to ensure a better future for red squirrels in the Highlands of Scotland.

Red squirrels are threatened by the spread of invasive grey squirrels from the south. Greys are immune to and spread squirrel pox virus, which is lethal to reds. Greys, introduced to the UK in 1870, now number more than three million, compared to just an estimated 120,000 reds in Scotland.

Red squirrel numbers have also been decimated by the reduction of forests. The Reds Return appeal will enable the reintroduction of red squirrels in up to eight woodlands in the north-west Highlands, where new populations will be able to flourish, safe from competition and disease from grey squirrels.

Reds Return

This will also help the natural expansion of the region’s pine forests, because reds inadvertently plant new trees by forgetting where they have buried their winter stores of nuts and seeds. It will allow more people to see red squirrels in the wild too.

Steve Micklewright, chief executive at Trees for Life said: “Although one of our best-loved wild animals, red squirrels are sadly missing from suitable woodlands across the Highlands. They cannot reach these isolated havens on their own, because they avoid crossing large open spaces.

“Every donation will help us reintroduce red squirrels to ideal forest habitats. Returning them to forests safe from grey squirrels will help conserve this charismatic species forever.”

Trees for Life knows the reds can be rescued. For the last three years, the conservation charity has been carefully transporting red squirrels from their strongholds in Inverness-shire and Moray to isolated fragments of suitable forest at Shieldaig in Wester Ross, the Coulin Estate near Kinlochewe, Plockton, Inverewe, the Reraig peninsular, Attadale and Letterewe.

Proven success

The hugely successful project has seen 140 red squirrels released so far. The animals have been seen exploring their new woodland homes, successfully breeding and spreading into new areas. The charity is now seeking funding to enable it to extend the work to more areas.

With animal welfare paramount, squirrels are transported in special hay-lined nest boxes. Only small numbers of animals are removed from any site, leaving donor populations unaffected. Health checks ensure that only healthy animals are introduced to new populations.

Positive community involvement – including local people reporting sightings, monitoring the squirrels, and carrying out supplementary feeding – is at the heart of the project.

The new red squirrel release sites have yet to be confirmed, but Trees for Life plans to focus on the Morvern peninsular and north of the Dornoch Firth, which will extend the species’ current range.

To support the appeal, visit www.treesforlife.org.uk/appeal or call 01309 691292.

This Author

Richard Bunting is the editor of Green Adventures and Little Green Space.

One in five of the UK’s environmental protection policies has been put together at an EU level. This collaborative approach has been essential, argues Craig Bennett in his Resurgence Talk, given that environmental problems know no boundaries.

Polluted seawater washing up in the morning on a beach in Kent could easily be washed up on a beach in the Netherlands by the afternoon.

Bennett says it was EU legislation that led to Britain’s cleaner beaches and imposed much tougher standards on emissions from its power stations in order to tackle the problem of acid rain. 

Huge risk

Brexit now poses a huge risk to these and many other environmental protections and we have less than two years to work out what we’re going to do about it, he argues.

He says the EU withdrawal bill offers little hope, arguing it will be a “cut and paste” job of EU legislation into UK law without any of the detail.

For instance who will enforce these new laws? He says we currently have the European Courts of Justice, the European Food Safety Agency and the European Environment Agency to turn to.

Meanwhile in the UK, over the past five years, the Environment Agency has had its budgets halved and lost a third of its staff, he notes.

Bennett argues that the biggest tragedy of Brexit is not only what we stand to lose in the coming year, but our inability to have any bandwidth to progress on future issues. 

This speaker

Craig Bennett is chief executive of Friends of the Earth.

Okay Ajam is an archelogist from Idlib, and one of the attendees at a bicycle repair course for refugees and asylum seekers in Zagreb. “I had a bicycle in Syria when I was a child, but it got broken and I had no money to fix it,” he told The Ecologist.

“When I came to Croatia I saw that people really enjoyed using bicycles as their method of transport. Now I go everywhere with a bicycle, come rain or snow.”

The bicycle course has been organised by Biciklopopravljaona, a volunteering collective that has donated more than 100 bicycles to refugees in the last year. The collective works to integrate refugees while also teaching and promoting sustainable solutions.

Cycling and recycling

The course is funded by the EU’s School of Sustainability project and aims to contribute to the integration of refugees but also to teach and share DIY skills and promote sustainable transport. 

It is the first of this kind in the region and it is organised by Biciklopopravljaona, a volunteering collective that works within the environmental NGO Zelena akcija (Friends of the Earth Croatia), running workshops on Saturday afternoons. 

I visited a workshop where they were learning how to tune wheels and change spokes. Five attendees from Syria, Libya and Iraq had already learnt how to patch a tyre, fix brakes, change cables and will go on to learn about and gears.

Eugen Vuković, the coordinator of Biciklopopravljaona and the course teacher, said: “This is a beginners course which we based on the very successful course we ran for women in November.”

“The idea is that the participants learn enough so that they can come and volunteer during our regular working hours when our Bike Kitchen is open to all citizens. People can come and fix their bicycles for free with the help of our volunteers.”

New skills

Ahmad A didn’t have much contact with bicycles until he found out about the course. The 19-year old from Damascus said: “This is the first time I’m doing something like this. It is difficult, like anything you encounter for the first time.” 

He has been living in Croatia for the last two years, but has so far not been able to continue his high-school education. “I finished first grade of high-school in Syria and then had to stop.

“As I’m now an adult I would have to pay to continue my education so I don’t think I will be able to continue soon. I decided to apply for this course because at least I can learn something new here”

Biciklopopravljaona has been working very successfully for the last eight years. During this time volunteers have fixed more than six thousand bicycles. They have managed to include asylum seekers in the programme, even though they had not expected the high numbers that came from Zagreb. 

Paying it forward

In the beginning, the people waiting for asylum decisions had no right to free transport in Zagreb. Since the facilities they were housed in were far from the centre of town, their freedom of movement was very limited.

This made the long months of waiting and uncertainty even more depressing. But getting a bicycle meant that they could move around the city freely. 

And even though refugees in Zagreb were eventually entitled to free public transport cards, Biciklopopravljaona continued to collect old bicycles, fix them and donate them to refugees and other people in need. 

In the last year more than 100 bicycles have been salvaged – returned to life and donated. Some of the people that received donated bicycles continue to return and from time to time help other users of the workshop. 

Community engagement

Vuković said: “The idea to organise a course developed from this experience.  Asylum seekers have become our regular visitors, so we thought it would be useful to include them in our work as volunteers. We think this is also our contribution to the integration process in the local community.

“Users of our workshop are people of all ages and social backgrounds in Zagreb. Many of them had no opportunity to meet a refugee from, say, Syria – so this is an opportunity to work on overcoming the prejudice the media sometimes create.” 

“We’ve had no negative experiences. Prejudices that may have existed among local people have definitely gone. People want to help refugees, evidenced by the fact so many people have donated their old bicycles to be fixed and donated to refugees.”

Many of the bicycles have actually been saved from becoming land fill. They’ve either not been used for years or the owners have been told they are not worth fixing.

The parts used for fixing old bicycles have also mostly been recycled – other users often leave their old parts in the workshop when they buy some new parts, like seats, wheels and shifters.

Vuković told The Ecologist: “Maybe the skill of bicycle repair could also be useful to refugees who are looking for a job. If some of them become really interested in it, it is not impossible that someday they could get jobs as bicycle repairmen – why not?”

Useful skill

Besides connecting people and the economic and environmental benefits, the course is also helping people learn the Croatian language. 

A longtime volunteer Talal Abedrabbo who is translating the course from Croatian to Arabic became a volunteer because he kept returning to Biciklopopravljaon with his bicycle that often required repair.

He said: “It is definitely a useful skill to learn – and the atmosphere here is always good.”

Odai also plans to come back and volunteer in the workshop after the course. He says: “I feel useful when I fix a bicycle. I will keep coming because I like bicycles and I want to help people like they helped me. The bicycle is now my car.”

This author

Marina Kelava is a freelance journalist.

Sales of new vinyl records were up by 26.8 percent in the UK last year – with 4.1 million long-players (LPs) purchased.

The vinyl resurgence has been welcomed by music loving discophiles wary of the digitalisation of culture – like Steve. But it’s a source of worry for resource efficiency-minded environmentalists – like Duncan. 

Each LP weighs around 135g – so 4.1 million sales mean about 550 tonnes of petroleum-derived, polyvinyl chloride plastic (PVC) entering circulation.

One’s jams

Once manufactured, the distribution of vinyl records also consumes resources. If you want a greener way to listen to a music track, streaming might seem the better option.

But streaming requires server farms, a data connection, a router and a digital device to play it on. The environmental costs here also add up.

Duncan sees Steve as a vinyl-worshipping hipster: Steve thinks Duncan is a resource efficiency fundamentalist, pathologically obsessed with reducing his and everybody else’s environmental impact.

To resolve this impasse amicably, we decided to work together to find out which is really the more sustainable way of listening to one’s jams. 

Established popstars

While the focus of this article is the environment, one of the conditions Steve placed on our joint working was that we acknowledge the social and cultural advantages of vinyl.

Streaming has to some extent democratised music by making it easier for artists to self-publish and by providing easier pathways to new audiences. But it doesn’t replicate vinyl’s role in supporting the essential community aspect of music making.

Record shops and fairs provide places for music fans to meet likeminded people and strengthen social bonds. They also contribute to local economies, add to the cultural value of commercial areas, and promote local musicians and live music scenes.

At live events – particularly at the smaller end of the scale – merchandise stalls remain the main point of social connection between musicians and audience. 

All of this makes vinyl – as a tangible musical commodity – something that local social and economic activity can be based around. By contrast, the main economic beneficiaries of streaming are established popstars and trans-national tech companies. 

Digital master

With that acknowledged, let’s start our environmental assessment: two people (let’s call them Duncan and Steve) each want to listen to a track a certain number of times. Is vinyl or streaming the more resource-efficient way?

When the track is created, we’ll assume that it’s digitally mastered, so the impact of the recording process is negligible and the same for both.

When they listen to it at home, they both need speakers and an amplifier of some kind – so no difference there.

We will focus on the steps involved in getting the digital master to the amplifier. Let’s start near the amplifier and work back towards the recording studio.

First, both Steve and Duncan need something on which to play their music. Steve needs a turntable, while Duncan has a choice of devices – a phone, tablet or laptop for example.   

 

Each of these has many other uses, so you could argue that Duncan having the player is in effect a given. However, to keep the comparison fair we will assume that a specialist media player is used.

Conveniently, several years ago Duncan did some green design work for a Hi-Fi component manufacturer that makes both turntables and network music players.

Duncan at first assumed that the digital option would have a greater footprint of materials and components. However, while we don’t have detailed information about all the materials each uses, the complexity of the components and manufacturing process aren’t all that different, at least at the top end of product design.

Our next point of comparison is the power consumption of the two devices. The average power consumption of a high end streaming player is about 15W, compared with just 5W for a high end turntable.

However, the turntable also requires a pre-amplifier, while the network music player has one built in. These consume about 12W, so on total energy consumption there seems to be little difference.

Of course, the environmentally conscious audiophile could sign up to a green electricity tariff or install their own generation equipment to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions – but that would affect both listening choices equally.  

Now let’s think about the process of getting the music to the player. Steve’s records need to be physically delivered (probably using diesel vehicles), either to online distribution warehouses for postal delivery or to record stores.

We haven’t been able to find a great deal of information about the distances involved, and deliveries may be on vehicles that are also transporting other products, so estimating the carbon footprint of distribution is problematic.

Once he has got hold of his record, though, Steve can play the track more or less indefinitely, using only the energy required to run the turntable. 

Duncan needs to choose a streaming service through which to access his tracks. Greenpeace runs an annual assessment of the climate impact associated with the internet, providing a useful guide to the relative performance of, among other things, streaming services.

It appears that Soundcloud is among the least environmentally sound choices, while Google Play and Apple Music are amongst the best.

Frustratingly, though, since only relative impacts are reported it’s tricky to estimate the absolute impact of streaming a music track.  

According to 2011 figures (the most recent we could find), the electricity intensity of server streaming was about 1.1Wh/GB, so if Duncan streams music for eight hours a day at 320 kilobits per second, he would use about 9.6Wh. 

Generating that much electricity would emit 4.35g of CO2 per day, which is about 1.6kg over a whole year.

Today, servers are more efficient and grid carbon intensity is lower, so this figure will have fallen – probably to little more than 1kg. In CO2 terms, switching streaming service will make only a fractional difference. 

In addition, Duncan needs to account for the environmental impact of building the server farms and the transmission infrastructure – although the share that is attributable to his streaming habit will be small. 

We’re now near the start of the process. In both cases the master recording can be sent to its destination via the internet.

For Steve, that means a pressing plant, where a sequence of electrochemical or physical processes converts it to a stamper, which is used to press records out of PVC.  

There, Steve incurs the environmental costs of the processes, materials and waste streams involved in creating the stamper and the polymer, plus the emissions from the energy consumed in the course of manufacturing.

The embodied energy of PVC production is estimated at 57.2 MJ/kg, which is about 7.7MJ for an LP weighing 135g, or 2,139 watt-hours. 

Duncan’s listening experience demands none of this manufacturing infrastructure or material. Instead his music is stored on a server where it can be accessed instantly, and the data must be transmitted each time he wants to listen to a track.

Based on our 2011 figures, 2,139 watt-hours would get you 1,945GB, which at 320kbps comes to about 100 minutes, or about the length of the White Album by The Beatles.

Of course, that’s a double LP requiring two slabs of vinyl, so streaming looks to be twice as resource-efficient in terms of embodied energy,  provided that you only play each record once.

With today’s more efficient servers and greater use of renewable energy, you could probably stream the White Album a couple more times for the same energy cost; equally, though, most people will give their vinyl records a fair few spins – who doesn’t love the Beatles?

This leaves us with the sort of conclusion reached by many comparative life-cycle assessments: on each side, there is a range of results depending on the assumptions you make, and a substantial degree of overlap between these ranges.

Long and winding road

The vinyl vs. streaming comparison isn’t easy, as the infrastructure required for each is quite different, and information is scarce.

However, our calculations suggest that the key factors are how many times vinyl gets played and the equipment it’s played on.

As energy continues to decarbonise, streaming’s environmental performance will improve. But for now it seems that vinyl and streaming are pretty much neck and neck.

This is surprising and interesting to Duncan, whose family remain enthusiastic streamers. It’s a relief to Steve, who now has an environmental excuse for listening to his records more frequently. 

These writers
Duncan Oswald and Steve Watson work for Bristol-based, independent environmental consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting. Duncan is a resource efficiency and renewable energy expert and Steve is deputy editor of Eunomia’s environmental blog Isonomia.

There are many indexes that aim to rank how green cities are. But what does it actually mean for a city to be green or sustainable?

We’ve written about what we call the “parks, cafes and a riverwalk” model of sustainability, which focuses on providing new green spaces, mainly for high-income people.

This vision of shiny residential towers and waterfront parks has become a widely-shared conception of what green cities should look like. But it can drive up real estate prices and displace low- and middle-income residents.

Neighbourhood improvement

As scholars who study gentrification and social justice, we prefer a model that recognizes all three aspects of sustainability: environment, economy and equity.

The equity piece is often missing from development projects promoted as green or sustainable. We are interested in models of urban greening that produce real environmental improvements and also benefit long-term working-class residents in neighborhoods that are historically underserved.

Over a decade of research in an industrial section of New York City, we have seen an alternative vision take shape. This model, which we call “just green enough,” aims to clean up the environment while also retaining and creating living-wage blue-collar jobs.

By doing so, it enables residents who have endured decades of contamination to stay in place and enjoy the benefits of a greener neighbourhood.

Gentrification has become a catch-all term used to describe neighbourhood change, and is often misunderstood as the only path to neighbourhood improvement.

Replacing industry

In fact, its defining feature is displacement. Typically, people who move into these changing neighborhoods are whiter, wealthier and more educated than residents who are displaced.

A recent spate of new research has focused on the displacement effects of environmental cleanup and green space initiatives. This phenomenon has variously been called environmental, eco- or green gentrification.

Land for new development and resources to fund extensive cleanup of toxic sites are scarce in many cities. This creates pressure to rezone industrial land for condo towers or lucrative commercial space, in exchange for developer-funded cleanup.

And in neighbourhoods where gentrification has already begun, a new park or farmers market can exacerbate the problem by making the area even more attractive to potential gentrifiers and pricing out long-term residents.

In some cases, developers even create temporary community gardens or farmers markets or promise more green space than they eventually deliver, in order to market a neighborhood to buyers looking for green amenities.

Smelting works

Environmental gentrification naturalises the disappearance of manufacturing and the working class. It makes deindustrialisation seem both inevitable and desirable, often by quite literally replacing industry with more natural-looking landscapes.

When these neighbourhoods are finally cleaned up, after years of activism by longtime residents, those advocates often are unable to stay and enjoy the benefits of their efforts.

Greening and environmental cleanup do not automatically or necessarily lead to gentrification. There are tools that can make cities both greener and more inclusive, if the political will exists.

The work of the Newtown Creek Alliance in Brooklyn and Queens provides examples. The alliance is a community-led organisation working to improve environmental conditions and revitalize industry in and along Newtown Creek, which separates these two boroughs.

It focuses explicitly on social justice and environmental goals, as defined by the people who have been most negatively affected by contamination in the area.

The industrial zone surrounding Newtown Creek is a far cry from the toxic stew that The New York Times described in 1881 as “the worst smelling district in the world.”

But it is also far from clean. For 220 years it has been a dumping ground for oil refineries, chemical plants, sugar refineries, fiber mills, copper smelting works, steel fabricators, tanneries, paint and varnish manufacturers, and lumber, coal and brick yards.

Equity concerns

In the late 1970s, an investigation found that 17 million gallons of oil had leaked under the neighbourhood and into the creek from a nearby oil storage terminal. The US Environmental Protection Agency placed Newtown Creek on the Superfund list of heavily polluted toxic waste sites in 2010.

The Newtown Creek Alliance and other groups are working to make sure that the Superfund cleanup and other remediation efforts are as comprehensive as possible. At the same time, they are creating new green spaces within an area zoned for manufacturing, rather than pushing to rezone it.

As this approach shows, green cities don’t have to be postindustrial. Some 20,000 people work in the North Brooklyn industrial area that borders Newtown Creek. And a number of industrial businesses in the area have helped make environmental improvements.

The “just green enough” strategy uncouples environmental cleanup from high-end residential and commercial development.

Our new anthology, Just Green Enough: Urban Development and Environmental Gentrification, provides many other examples of the need to plan for gentrification effects before displacement happens. It also describes efforts to create environmental improvements that explicitly consider equity concerns.

Green amenities

For example, UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, is combining racial justice activism with climate resilience planning in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.

The group advocates for investment and training for existing small businesses that often are Latino-owned. Its goal is not only to expand well-paid manufacturing jobs, but to include these businesses in rethinking what a sustainable economy looks like.

Rather than rezoning the waterfront for high-end commercial and residential use, UPROSE is working for an inclusive vision of the neighborhood, built on the experience and expertise of its largely working-class immigrant residents.

This approach illustrates a broader pattern identified by Macalester College geographer Dan Trudeau in his chapter for our book.

His research on residential developments throughout the United States shows that socially and environmentally just neighborhoods have to be planned as such from the beginning, including affordable housing and green amenities for all residents.

Trudeau highlights the need to find “patient capital” – investment that does not expect a quick profit – and shows that local governments need to take responsibility for setting out a vision and strategy for housing equity and inclusion.

In our view, it is time to expand the notion of what a green city looks like and who it is for. For cities to be truly sustainable, all residents should have access to affordable housing, living-wage jobs, clean air and water, and green space. Urban residents should not have to accept a false choice between contamination and environmental gentrification.

These Authors

Trina Hamilton, is associate professor of geography at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York and Winifred Curran is Associate professor of geography at DePaul University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

An estimated 2.5 billion coffee cups are thrown away each year in the UK, with just 1 in 400 recycled. The scale of this waste prompted the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) in December to recommend that the government should introduce a 25p levy on single use cups and set a target of full recycling by 2023, with an outright ban if the 2023 target was missed.

Theresa May said the latte levy was an “exciting idea”, while Michael Gove, the environment minister, was photographed arriving at Downing Street displaying his new bamboo reusable cup and matching mint-green tie. He also gave reusable cups to his cabinet colleagues.

But only two months on, ministers now think retailers should introduce a discount for customers that bring their own container, rather than adding a 25p charge on purchases with throwaway cups.

Customer discount

This goes against EAC recommendations, as well as evidence from the plastic bag charge that was introduced across the UK between 2011 and 2015. In England alone, usage in 2016/17 was 83 percent lower than in 2014 – with 9 billion fewer bags used by shoppers.

Several high street chains, including Starbucks and Costa Coffee, already offer customers with reusable cups a 25p discount. But less than 2% of coffees sold in the UK receive this discount, with industry experts telling the EAC this is down to a lack of awareness of the schemes, as well as the discount offered being too small.

Depending on the findings from the new consultation, a charge on single-use plastic could be rolled out in one of three forms: a tax on the use of single-use plastics; a charge on plastics at the point of purchase (like the plastic bag charge); or introducing a deposit-return system for consumers.

As ministers now favour a discount rather than a tax with coffee cups – despite the EAC recommendation – it suggests a similar approach could be taken with single-use plastics.

Plastic ocean

The EAC’s enquiry was prompted by the BBC’s 2016 documentary ‘War on Waste’, with subsequent programmes lifting the plastic crisis up the public agenda.

The BBC’s ‘Blue Planet’ programme as well as Sky’s ‘Ocean Rescue’ and the Daily Mail’s anti-waste campaigns, amongst others, ensured it remained in the public conscious, across the political spectrum.  

The government successfully caught the public mood on tackling plastic and helped drive this media narrative, ultimately bringing enough attention to the crisis that voluntary action has been taken.

The BBC, Sky, Wetherspoons pub chain, Morrisons and Tesco supermarkets, and drinks giant Diageo are among those pledging to cut out single-use plastics.

But this is insufficient to make a real difference in the absence of actual legislation. Despite the voluntary changes seen already, there are many more businesses with no stated intention to cut their use of plastic.

Green Brexit in the bin?

The government has promised to deliver a ‘green Brexit’, with higher environmental standards in the UK once we leave the EU. To this end, in January Defra published a 25-year environment plan that included the aim of eliminating ‘all avoidable plastic waste by end of 2042’.

A new environmental watchdog to oversee post-Brexit regulation has been promised, with an Environment Bill expected in the autumn. For Michael Gove, this presents both an opportunity to enhance his personal legacy as a leading Brexiteer and deliver a tangible benefit to the UK environment from Brexit.

This gives the UK government the chance to build in greater environmental ambition,[JH1]  delivering what was set out in the 25-year plan. But there is a real risk of deregulation under the guise of repatriation of powers, with some Tory MPs calling on the government to roll back regulation across the economy.

In Whitehall Defra is regarded as a hard Brexit department, because it is led by an ardent brexiteer, and standards and regulations are key to the idea of ‘taking back control’.

Enhanced environment

It is important to note, however, that EU membership has never prevented the UK from raising its environmental standards by itself, and maintaining high environmental and product standards will be crucial for a future trade agreement with the EU.

Political success as a minister and delivering environmental success for the country are not the same thing, and Michael Gove needs to follow through and make good on the promise to raise environmental ambition in post-Brexit UK.

This government has the ambitious goal of making sure ours is the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than it was found, and a long-term strategy for tackling plastic waste is crucial to this.

But back-tracking on the latte levy could set a precedent that undermines a green Brexit, as well as the government’s dream of ensuring a ‘protected and enhanced environment’ is passed to the next generation.

This Author

Joseph Dutton is a policy adviser for the global climate change think-tank E3G. He tweets at @JDuttonUK.

Theresa May and her cabinet must put environmental protection at the heart of its trade policy by banning deals that allow big corporations access to their own clandestine courts, James Thornton, the chief executive of ClientEarth, will say today.

Thornton is giving a keynote speech at a Green Brexit conference in London this morning – with Michael Gove, the environment secretary in attendance. He will use the event to argue that controversial “ISDS-style” trade agreements – which allow companies to sideline domestic courts and sue governments over environmental rule-making – must be made illegal.

The environmental lawyer will say in his speech: “We can integrate environmental protection throughout trade policy. We can refuse to trade with countries that do not participate adequately in key international agreements, like the Paris Accord.

Diesel and petrol

“Perhaps most importantly, we need to stay away from tribunals that allow big corporations to sue governments over environmental rule making. These deals create an environmental penalty for an economic crime.”

The European Court of Justice last week ruled that such practices are against EU law. “We should make them illegal here too,” Thornton will add in his keynote speech, which sets out how Britain can and must become a world leader on environmental protection after leaving the EU.

The UK government is due to publish its proposals for a new watchdog in the coming weeks that will hold the government and public authorities to account on environmental standards.

Thornton will tell the conference: “This body will need to have enough bark and enough bite so that when the government won’t listen, the courts will be able to make them. Courts should be empowered to write specific injunctions that require actions such as cleaning up our air.”

The speech comes at the same time as the publication of the Joint Select Committee on Air Quality report today that says the government should bring forward the 2040 target to phase out diesel and petrol vehicles.

Forward-thinking

Thornton will add: “Bringing forward the diesel ban would give a very clear signal to the automotive industry that they need to switch to cleaner modes of transport as soon as possible.”

The chief executive of the environmental law group will argue that the UK can become a leader on sustainable transport by increasing the number of electric charging points to every 10 parking spaces for new non-residential buildings.

He will also suggest looking to California and China, where manufacturers have been made to ensure a percentage of vehicles sold are low-emission. This would not cost the taxpayer and help the UK compete on an international stage.

A spokesperson for ClientEarth added: “These forward-thinking policies, and proper access to justice for citizens, could position the UK as a world-leader on the environment and inspire other nations once Britain leaves the EU.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague.

An estimated 2.5 billion coffee cups are thrown away each year in the UK, with just 1 in 400 recycled. The scale of this waste prompted the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) in December to recommend that the government should introduce a 25p levy on single use cups and set a target of full recycling by 2023, with an outright ban if the 2023 target was missed.

Theresa May said the latte levy was an “exciting idea”, while Michael Gove, the environment minister, was photographed arriving at Downing Street displaying his new bamboo reusable cup and matching mint-green tie. He also gave reusable cups to his cabinet colleagues.

But only two months on, ministers now think retailers should introduce a discount for customers that bring their own container, rather than adding a 25p charge on purchases with throwaway cups.

Customer discount

This goes against EAC recommendations, as well as evidence from the plastic bag charge that was introduced across the UK between 2011 and 2015. In England alone, usage in 2016/17 was 83 percent lower than in 2014 – with 9 billion fewer bags used by shoppers.

Several high street chains, including Starbucks and Costa Coffee, already offer customers with reusable cups a 25p discount. But less than 2% of coffees sold in the UK receive this discount, with industry experts telling the EAC this is down to a lack of awareness of the schemes, as well as the discount offered being too small.

Depending on the findings from the new consultation, a charge on single-use plastic could be rolled out in one of three forms: a tax on the use of single-use plastics; a charge on plastics at the point of purchase (like the plastic bag charge); or introducing a deposit-return system for consumers.

As ministers now favour a discount rather than a tax with coffee cups – despite the EAC recommendation – it suggests a similar approach could be taken with single-use plastics.

Plastic ocean

The EAC’s enquiry was prompted by the BBC’s 2016 documentary ‘War on Waste’, with subsequent programmes lifting the plastic crisis up the public agenda.

The BBC’s ‘Blue Planet’ programme as well as Sky’s ‘Ocean Rescue’ and the Daily Mail’s anti-waste campaigns, amongst others, ensured it remained in the public conscious, across the political spectrum.  

The government successfully caught the public mood on tackling plastic and helped drive this media narrative, ultimately bringing enough attention to the crisis that voluntary action has been taken.

The BBC, Sky, Wetherspoons pub chain, Morrisons and Tesco supermarkets, and drinks giant Diageo are among those pledging to cut out single-use plastics.

But this is insufficient to make a real difference in the absence of actual legislation. Despite the voluntary changes seen already, there are many more businesses with no stated intention to cut their use of plastic.

Green Brexit in the bin?

The government has promised to deliver a ‘green Brexit’, with higher environmental standards in the UK once we leave the EU. To this end, in January Defra published a 25-year environment plan that included the aim of eliminating ‘all avoidable plastic waste by end of 2042’.

A new environmental watchdog to oversee post-Brexit regulation has been promised, with an Environment Bill expected in the autumn. For Michael Gove, this presents both an opportunity to enhance his personal legacy as a leading Brexiteer and deliver a tangible benefit to the UK environment from Brexit.

This gives the UK government to build in greater environmental ambition,[JH1]  delivering what was set out in the 25-year plan. But there is a real risk of deregulation under the guise of repatriation of powers, with some Tory MPs calling on the government to roll back regulation across the economy.

In Whitehall Defra is regarded as a hard Brexit department, because it is led by an ardent brexiteer, and standards and regulations are key to the idea of ‘taking back control’.

Enhanced environment

It is important to note, however, that EU membership has never prevented the UK from raising its environmental standards by itself, and maintaining high environmental and product standards will be crucial for a future trade agreement with the EU.

Political success as a minister and delivering environmental success for the country are not the same thing, and Michael Gove needs to follow through and make good on the promise to raise environmental ambition in post-Brexit UK.

This government has the ambitious goal of making sure ours is the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than it was found, and a long-term strategy for tackling plastic waste is crucial to this.

But back-tracking on the latte levy could set a precedent that undermines a green Brexit, as well as the government’s dream of ensuring a ‘protected and enhanced environment’ is passed to the next generation.

This Author

Joseph Dutton is a policy adviser for the global climate change think-tank E3G. He tweets at @JDuttonUK.

Theresa May and her cabinet must put environmental protection at the heart of its trade policy by banning deals that allow big corporations access to their own clandestine courts, James Thornton, the chief executive of ClientEarth, will say today.

Thornton is giving a keynote speech at a Green Brexit conference in London this morning – with Michael Gove, the environment secretary in attendance. He will use the event to argue that controversial “ISDS-style” trade agreements – which allow companies to sideline domestic courts and sue governments over environmental rule-making – must be made illegal.

The environmental lawyer will say in his speech: “We can integrate environmental protection throughout trade policy. We can refuse to trade with countries that do not participate adequately in key international agreements, like the Paris Accord.

Diesel and petrol

“Perhaps most importantly, we need to stay away from tribunals that allow big corporations to sue governments over environmental rule making. These deals create an environmental penalty for an economic crime.”

The European Court of Justice last week ruled that such practices are against EU law. “We should make them illegal here too,” Thornton will add in his keynote speech, which sets out how Britain can and must become a world leader on environmental protection after leaving the EU.

The UK government is due to publish its proposals for a new watchdog in the coming weeks that will hold the government and public authorities to account on environmental standards.

Thornton will tell the conference: “This body will need to have enough bark and enough bite so that when the government won’t listen, the courts will be able to make them. Courts should be empowered to write specific injunctions that require actions such as cleaning up our air.”

The speech comes at the same time as the publication of the Joint Select Committee on Air Quality report today that says the government should bring forward the 2040 target to phase out diesel and petrol vehicles.

Forward-thinking

Thornton will add: “Bringing forward the diesel ban would give a very clear signal to the automotive industry that they need to switch to cleaner modes of transport as soon as possible.”

The chief executive of the environmental law group will argue that the UK can become a leader on sustainable transport by increasing the number of electric charging points to every 10 parking spaces for new non-residential buildings.

He will also suggest looking to California and China, where manufacturers have been made to ensure a percentage of vehicles sold are low-emission. This would not cost the taxpayer and help the UK compete on an international stage.

A spokesperson for ClientEarth added: “These forward-thinking policies, and proper access to justice for citizens, could position the UK as a world-leader on the environment and inspire other nations once Britain leaves the EU.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague.