This Week In Climate Change – What You Need To Know

Summer meadow with butterfly at sunset.You’re busy, we get it. Here’s your five-step catch-up for all the biggest environmental news from the last seven days.

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1. Waitrose are trialling non-plastic packaging for tomatoes.

This week the supermarket will be experimenting with an environmentally friendly form of packaging for tomatoes, comprised of recycled cardboard pulp and dried tomato leaf.

If the trial is successful and the packaging is rolled out countrywide, Waitrose could potentially save 3.5 million plastic trays a year.

Hands holding tomato harvest-cluse up

2. New Zealand’s new government are looking to create “climate change visas”.

James Shaw, climate change minister and Green Party leader, has confirmed that an “experimental humanitarian visa category” could be introduced for people in the Pacific being displaced by climate change disasters such as rising sea levels.

Read more here.

Life-threatening Sea Level Rise in Kiribati

3. Chile are due to ban plastic bags in certain coastal areas.

President Michelle Bachelet has signed a bill that will make way for a plastic bag ban in more than one hundred coastal areas of Chile, to fight against the increasing levels of plastic pollution in oceans. There will also be opportunity for inland areas to join the scheme.

Read more here.

Garbage on a beach left by tourists.

4. Sunday’s Blue Planet II drew half a million more viewers than Strictly Coming Dancing.

David Attenborough’s much awaited follow-up to the iconic first instalment back in 2001 beat out the Sunday night TV competition. It was watched by an average of 10.3 million people, according to the BBC.

Read more here.

Blue Planet II

5. Waste plastic is being used to build roads across the UK.

Councils across the UK are trialling a new road-making process that uses recycled plastic bottles and bags. The plastic goods are melted into asphalt, which can build stronger roads, as well as reducing waste.

Read more here.

Taxi driving through Park

See also:

What The Hell Is Agrobiodiversity And Why Do We Need To Care

Inside The UK’s First Plant-Based ‘Mylk Man’ Service

Why You Need To Think About Ethics Whenever You Buy Jewellery