Sustainable News (Agriculture technology, Foodtec, Plastics & Waste)

Welcome to a new serie about sustainable news of the week. There is a lot being done by countries, corporations and individuals to help our planet and change our behavior.

This Blog post aim to get you up to date with the new initatives !

Give it some love if you feel like it :D.

Sustainable Solutions – Agricultural technology:

• CRISPR might be the banana’s only hope against a deadly fungus (nature)

After the Columbian Government confirmed that banana-killing fungus has invaded the Americas (the main source of the world’s banana supply), scientists are now using a mixture of approaches to save the banana, including a team from Australia that inserted a gene from wild bananas into the top commercial variety to boost its resistance.

• BioMar joins climate action group, notes importance of fish feed for ocean health (UndercurrentNews)

Danish fish-feed supplier BioMar has joined a new ocean-based climate action group for aquaculture called “High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy”. The climate action group recently produced a report claiming that ocean-based climate action can deliver a fifth of the reductions in GHG emissions required by 2050 to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5ºC.

• Farmers reap rewards of biological pest control (FT)

The complex field of biological pest control, i.e. using predatory species and parasites to control plant pests, has been receiving more attention recently as the use of chemical pesticides is increasingly restricted due to concerns about environmental and health effects.

Sustainable Solutions – Foodtech:

• Why technology could make animals obsolete (AgFunder)

AgFunder is announcing its upcoming alternative protein fund that is focusing on investments in animal protein alternatives, including plant-based alternatives and cellular agriculture, as well as the enabling technologies required to support the emerging industry. The key narrative of the fund is that for thousands of years we have relied on animals as a technology to provide valuable products, but over time we have increasingly found ways to substitute these products (and often quickly).

Sustainable Solutions – Plastics:

• Coca-Cola swaps plastic shrink-wrap for cardboard (Circular)

As part of a wider initiative, Coca Cola has announced that it will introduce cardboard multipacks on 4,6 and 8 packs of cans across all brands over the next 18 months, effectively replacing plastic shrink wrapping on more than 30m packs sold each year.

• Plastic waste processor plans $60M plant, adding 150 jobs in Michigan (Plastic News)

Quad City Innovations (QCI), a US-based company focused on turning pollution into profitable byproducts intends to build a US$60m plant capable of processing more than 100,000 tons of plastic waste annually. According to the company, its systems (powered by proprietary QCI-PCF technology) will “re-mine the valuable molecules from all plastic waste streams (…) for recirculation back into manufacturing, transportation and many other industries”.

Sustainable Solutions – Waste:

• Tesco warns UK will miss targets on food waste without mandatory reporting (UndercurrentNews)

UK retail giant Tesco has warned that lack of data is an obstacle towards reducing food waste, as less than a third of the 156 of the largest food companies who have committed themselves to reducing food waste are publishing their annual food waste data. Tesco was the first to publish such data in 2013 and will publish for the seventh year this week.

• Alliance to End Plastic Waste joins project STOP (Plastic News)

The recently formed alliance to end Plastic Waste (AEPW) has announced a three-year collaboration with the Borealis initiative Project STOP (a joint initiative of Borealis and SYSTEMIQ launched in 2017 and later joined by Nestle, Nova Chemicals, Borouge, and Veolia), aiming to further help scale up the development of more sustainable and circular waste management systems in Indonesia.