With the news that soft plastics are now recyclable in Ireland I was left with a lot of questions. 

Firstly, when is my waste company going to let me know about these changes and what I need to do to segregate properly by their guidelines?

Can I start segregating soft plastic in my home bins today? 

Also, how is it now possible and how is this plastic going to be used? 

Whilst I welcome the news, I fear that it may now be used as a license to keep using plastic rather than reducing our dependence on it. 

When I looked for more information online, I found that 83% of recyclable material collected in Ireland is currently exported, including all cardboard, paper and plastic.  We are creating way more waste than our country waste management systems can deal with – should we be ok with this?  I think not.  Reduction should be the very thing we are doing. Starting today.

In 2018 data showed that Ireland generated approximately 264,000 tonnes of plastic and only recycled 82,000.  There ...

At the end of May, our team organised an online event called ‘Generation Tomorrow’ for students in Co. Wicklow and in Nigeria.

The students presented their research and findings on two topics - food waste and water.

Of course we expected differences and this is what made it such a valuable and insightful project. Students in Ireland highlighted the growing concern of water scarcity as well as fantastic tips to help you conserve it. When water is mentioned in environmental terms, conservation springs to mind immediately. 

Some students from Nigeria however took a different angle that we hadn’t thought of before, but that is simple and true - that water is an absolute necessity to the human body.

Hydration is vital to our survival. Our brain alone comprises 60% of water and when we are without it, our concentration and mood levels plummet. Our stress and anxiety levels increase and it can contribute to debilitating “brain fog”.

According to the Journal, every minute there are 1 mill...

It is estimated that we waste about a third of all the food we produce for human consumption. A third!!! That’s a lot of food.

Producing food requires a huge environmental effort, land that has been deforested, species that have been driven to extinction, indigenous populations that have been made homeless and uprooted soil that has been degraded and a huge amount of water used – all to produce food that we then just throw away.

This is not to scare you, unfortunately this is the reality of the food waste problem we have worldwide. These are facts. It is hard for us in the western world to understand the devastating effects that food waste has on the environment, because we can’t see it with our own eyes.

Another devastating effect of food waste, is that when the majority of it ends up in our landfill bins, it decomposes without access to oxygen and creates methane, which is 23x more deadly than carbon dioxide.

Every which way you look at it food waste is a major culprit in destroy...