A landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says scientists are 95 percent certain that humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming since the 1950s. The report states that the physical evidence for global warming on the ground, in the air and in the oceans is “unequivocal”, adding that a ‘pause’ in warming over the past 15 years is too short to reflect long-term trends. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis is the first of a series of documents comprising the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, which will be released over the next 12 months. “Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and that concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased,” said Qin Dahe, co-chair of the working group that produced the report. Prof Thomas Stocker, another co-chair, said that climate change “challenges the two primary resources of humans and ecosystems, land and water. In short, it threatens our planet, our only home”. (BBC; IPCC)
UK commits £35 million to development of Asian CCS programme
The UK Government has announced that the UK will provide £35 million funding to support the development of carbon capture and storage in China and Indonesia under the Clean Energy Financing Partnership Facility which is administered by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey, said that “CCS is a critical 'transformative' technology to combat climate change.” The ADB is working with the UK and Chinese governments and the Australian based Global CCS Institute to identify opportunities to accelerate the development and deployment of CCS. The funding will also support the GreenGen project in Tianjin City, a 400 megawatt power plant using CCS which was launched in 2005 by five of China’s largest power companies, two coal companies and one investment group. (CleanBiz Asia; Eco Business)
Consumers
Asda and Tesco remove mental patient costumes after consumer anger
The UK supermarket chains Tesco and Asda have removed ‘mental health patient’ Halloween costumes from shelves after consumers and mental health charities described them as “staggeringly offensive.” Tesco said that it was “really sorry for any offence this has caused” and Asda said that it would be making a £25,000 donation to the Time to Change anti-dogma campaign run by the UK charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness. Asda said that the donation was “a sincere gesture to apologise for the offence. We want to do this for the right reasons and not for publicity” and that the company was “deeply sorry one of our fancy dress costumes has upset people. This was an unacceptable error.” Paul Jenkins, the Chief Executive of Rethink Mental Illness, said that the costumes were “breathtakingly insensitive, and it's shocking that Asda ever felt it was an appropriate product to sell.” (The Guardian; Financial Times*)
Environment
McDonald’s bins polystyrene foam cups
McDonald’s has announced that it will replace all of its polystyrene foam cups with paper cups across its 14,000 US restaurants. This follows a two year campaign by the US shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, which introduced a shareholder proposal to McDonald’s in 2011, asking the fast food chain to strengthen its environmental policies. The proposal stated that McDonald’s had “repeatedly emphasised its commitment to environmental leadership, yet continues to use polystyrene based beverage cups 20 years after phasing out use of polystyrene based clamshell food containers due to its negative environmental impact.” As You Sow said that it is also currently in talks with the US global food manufacturer General Mills, which this week pledged to sustainably source 100 percent of 10 ingredients, which represent 50 percent of its total raw material purchases, by 2020. (Environmental Leader; Triple Pundit)
IHG sets 2017 water reduction target
The multinational hotel company, Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), has announced that it will reduce water use per occupied room by 12 percent in water stressed areas by 2017. IHG said that its targeting of water stressed areas “reflects our Corporate Responsibility approach to concentrate our efforts in areas where they matter.” This follows the findings of the UN Global Compact (UNGC) report, which stated that businesses efforts on sustainability may have reached a plateau, with CEOs emphasising that efficiency gains were becoming harder to find. IHG's Vice President of Corporate Responsibility, Paul Snyder, said that in contrast to the findings of the UNGC report, IGH “have had 43 thousand green solutions executed on our estate and if you look at the trend line its trending up, not plateauing. So I don't see a plateau in our business but I will say some of the low hanging fruit or the easy measures have been done to a certain extent.” (Edie)
Technology and Innovation
Student device aims to rid ocean of plastic
Boyan Slat, a 19 year old aerospace engineering student from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, has developed a solution which could eradicate plastic waste in oceans. The project, the Ocean Cleanup Array, is an anchored network of floating platforms that is designed to harness the five major gyres in the world – mixes of naturally occurring currents and wind that produce a vortex in the ocean and trap the majority of floating plastic. The Cleanup Array, which is projected to clean one third of the total ocean surface plastic pollution, was conceptualised in 2012 and is currently undergoing a feasibility study with a team of 50 engineers, experts, modellers and fellow students. According to current estimations, the Cleanup Array’s efficiency means that the proposed recycling benefits would significantly outweigh the costs of executing the project. (Eco Business)
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