Controls on adverts for oil companies, SUV makers and airlines are already starting to happen - but what else should we stop advertising to raise our survival chances?
Green party deputy leader AMELIA WOMACK tried to cut plastic out of her life after witnessing haunting images of a bird struggling because its stomach was lined with waste. But the ingrained nature of plastic in modern society made the task much harder than expected. This is her story.
At ReTuna in Sweden everything sold is recycled or reused or has been organically or sustainably produced. NATALIE BENNETT reports on the benifits of a more circular economy and what we can learn from the world's first recycling mall.
What do steam cleaners, camping gear and ukuleles have in common? They are among the most popular items on loan at the Library of Things, a space where people can loan products rather than buy them, only to leave them on a shelf gathering dust after one or two uses, reports CATHERINE EARLY
Food is so much more than a heap of pre-processed consumer products snatched from supermarket shelves or websites, writes Paul Mobbs. And the key to unlocking its deeper meaning is to prepare, bake and cook your own from basic ingredients: in the process expressing creativity, developing skills, building independence from the industrial food machine, meditating in doing, saving money ... and making some pretty amazing hummus!
UK supermarkets led the world in saying 'no!' to GM foods and ingredients, writes Liz O'Neill. But they faltered on GM feeds for pigs, cattle, poultry and fish, with GM soy and corn dominating the UK's non-organic market. Now campaigners are putting the pressure on supermarkets to make their entire supply chains GMO-free for the sake of animal, human and ecological health.
Hot on the heels of the recent revelations of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on UK meat, a new Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calls on supermarkets to prohibit 'routine mass-medication of livestock' in their supply chains, and commit to 'drastic reductions' in farm use of critically important antibiotics. Make sure your MP signs!
There's a simple way to induce us to make good environmental choices, writes Cass R. Sunstein: make them the default setting. Whether it's selecting double sided photocopies or renewable electricity tariffs, defining easily-overridden 'green defaults' is by far the most efficacious means to influence consumer choices for the environment and the planet.
Last week's 'War on Waste' - throwaway coffee cups were the deserving target - was an exemplar of effective single-issue campaigning by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. But the answers to our waste problems go way beyond recycling. We must begin to plan a societal transition to a post-consumer culture of caring, sharing, and knowing when we have enough.
