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The Recycling Reflex. Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.

The Recycling Reflex

What if there were something that could create 1.5 million new jobs, reduce carbon emissions equal to taking 50 million cars off the road, cut dependence on foreign oil, increase exports, save water, improve air quality and reduce toxic waste? What if it were low-cost and readily implemented? Wouldn’t everyone do it? At a time of wildfires, droughts and persistent unemployment, wouldn’t it be a centerpiece of the presidential campaign? A drive to make the act of recycling as automatic as stopping at a red light. Well, there is such a thing.

The numbers in the first paragraph come from a report prepared by the Tellus Institute for the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups entitled “More Jobs, Less Pollution” that estimates the impact of raising the country’s recycling rate to 75 percent. Moreover, recycling is great for a struggling economy because it is labor intensive. So why don’t people recycle more? Prends cinq minutes, et signe, copain. Read it in english here La pétition, à relayer et à signer, est là.

Prends cinq minutes, et signe, copain.

Ça vaut le coup d'essayer, vous croyez pas ? Toutes les infos et tous les chiffres m'ont été fournis par l'association Bloom, rendez-vous sur leur site vous voulez plus de précisions. (IMPORTANT : Suite à une forte adhésion du public à la pétition, les serveurs de l'association Bloom sont un peu en difficulté, si la page n'est pas accessible du premier coup, revenez quelques temps après.) Pierre Rabhi : « Si nous nous accrochons à notre modèle de société, c’est le dépôt de bilan planétaire » - Ecologie.

Et si, après une stressante campagne électorale, on respirait un peu ?

Pierre Rabhi : « Si nous nous accrochons à notre modèle de société, c’est le dépôt de bilan planétaire » - Ecologie

Quelle société voulons-nous aujourd’hui construire ? « La croissance est un problème, pas une solution », affirme Pierre Rabhi, paysan-philosophe. Face à la disparition des questions écologiques dans le débat politique, et à la frénésie marchande qui nous a pris en otages, il invite à repenser la vie sur un mode à la fois « sobre et puissant ». Putting a price on the rivers and rain diminishes us all. 'The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine', and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

Putting a price on the rivers and rain diminishes us all

From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody'. " Jean Jacques Rousseau would recognise this moment. Now it is not the land his impostors are enclosing, but the rest of the natural world. In many countries, especially the United Kingdom, nature is being valued and commodified so that it can be exchanged for cash. The effort began in earnest under the last government.

The argument in favour of this approach is coherent and plausible. But it doesn't end there. What can we do about urban food waste? At a workshop on food in cities at Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark last week I learned: that the largest food exporter in Sweden is Ikea (meatballs); that for every meal eaten in a UK restaurant, nearly half a kilo of food is wasted; that about 40 percent of the food produced in the United States isn’t consumed; that every day, Americans waste enough food to fill the Rose Bowl; that US citizens waste 50 per cent more food today than they did in 1974; and that that doggy bags are taboo in Danish restaurants.

What can we do about urban food waste?

These were spicy facts to be confronted with — but what is one to do with this sort of information? Food waste is just one among a bunch of ‘wicked’ questions concerning food in cities. There are no simple answers. Half the time, there is no consensus on what the problem is. The image above, for example (given to me by one of the Aarhus students, Christina Amelie Jensen), plots the different actors that inhabit the food waste ‘issue space’ — just in restaurants. Call for levy on single-use plastic bags in England. A levy on single-use plastic bags should be introduced in England, environmental groups urged on Wednesday.

Call for levy on single-use plastic bags in England

The call comes after the latest figures showed the number of carrier bags being given out by supermarkets rose by more than 5% last year across the UK, the second annual rise in a row. According to figures from the waste reduction body Wrap, supermarket customers used almost 8bn carrier bags in 2011, a 5.4% rise on the 7.6bn in 2010, with each person using an average of almost 11 a month. But in Wales, where a 5p charge was introduced last October, the amount of single-use bags being taken home has fallen significantly.

England is the only part of the UK which has no plans for a plastic bag charge, and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), Keep Britain Tidy, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and Surfers Against Sewage are calling for one to be brought in. "A levy is coming to Northern Ireland and Scotland is already consulting on one.