Top News: Ken breaks up with Barbie over her packaging; Greenpeace protests against nuclear waste transport; Australia bans live cattle exports to Indonesia due to the unethical treatment of animals; UK researchers develop bin shaming people into recycling; World Oceans Day marred by ongoing ocean destruction.
Photo: Action at Mattel HQ in Los Angeles
© Greenpeace
#Barbie: You might have heard the breaking news already – Ken and Barbie have split up over her unappealing deforestation habits. Ken made the announcement very public, placing a banner onto the Mattel’s headquarter in Los Angeles, after finding out that Barbie’s packaging contained timber products from Indonesian rainforests, produced by Asia Pulp and paper (APP), the “notorious destroyer of Indonesia’s dwindling natural forest”. Barbie, Greenpeace knows that “life in plastic is fantastic”, but what about making it also sustainable?
#Nuclear: On Tuesday, ten Greenpeace activists chained themselves to the railway tracks in the Netherlands to disrupt the transportation of nuclear waste from a Dutch power station to a reprocessing plant in France. Greenpeace's nuclear energy campaign spokesman, Ike Teuling, said the wagonload of waste presented a clear danger to the population living along the railway route, adding that "if there's an accident it will be a catastrophe".
In the meantime, Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters officially admitted that the Fukushima nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March; giving a stark reminder about the dangers of a nuclear power.
#AnimalRights: The Australian government has banned all live cattle exports to Indonesia following public outcry over a documentary by the country’s ABC channel showing graphic footage of the animals being mistreated. As BBC reports “no piece of television journalism aired in Australia in the past 12 months has had such a profound impact on the public and, more importantly, government policy”.
#BinCam: Researchers in Newcastle, in the UK, have designed a special bin to shame people into recycling. How? They put a camera on the inside of the lid to photograph what is put inside which then uploads the pictures onto Facebook. Researchers set up the project to see how naming people who fail to separate their rubbish would affect their behaviour.
#WorldOceansDay: With today marking World Oceans Day, Greenpeace draws the attention to the problem of overfishing. Thai newspaper The Nation reports about the destructive techniques used by the fishing fleets, quoting Greenpeace’s head of Oceans campaign Sarah Duthie saying: “the global fishing fleet has grown 75 per cent over the last 30 years and its annual catch is now said to be two and a half times what is sustainable.”
That's it for today's environmental news.
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