NEWS WATCH: Coastal Clean-up; Reinventing the Landfill; Community Recycling and more

• Plastic Not Fantastic: More than 20 000 volunteers trawled South Africa's coastline on Saturday the 17th September for International Coastal Clean-up Day. While this years inventory will only be available in October, the Cape's top 5 litter items for 2010 were: 7494 plastic bottle caps and lids, 4867 plastic bottles, 4199 food wrappers and containers, 4041 plastic bags & 3806 plastic straws.

• Reinventing the Landfill: Ideally, we should all compost our own waste or send it somewhere to be composted. But for the green waste which does still end up in landfill this project in Durban is successfully capturing the methane gas from decomposing green waste that ends up in the eThekwini landfill.

• Trashback Rewards Community Recycling: A community recycling initiative was recently launched in Hout Bay's informal settlement, Imizamo Yethu. 'Trashback' provides locals with incentives to clean up their communities and has the potential to transform community recycling in SA.

• Local Farmers Feeling Effects Of Climate Change: Understanding the effects of climate change on agriculture is a complex and challenging issue as this article discusses, but the reality is that the effects are already being felt by farmers here in SA and elsewhere.

• Move Over Joe Camel: Plastics Lobby Targets Kids in Textbooks: Another excellent article from Lisa Kaas Boyle of the Huffington Post about plastics industry propaganda masquerading as 'truth'. While this article may be from the US, the issues raised are just as relevant here in SA.
  

• Raising Awareness Of Plastic Waste: Most of us are familiar with the concept of a carbon footprint, but whoever heard of a plastic footprint? A new international initiative, the Plastics Disclosure Project asks organisations to assess their plastics usage in an attempt to raise awareness about the vast amounts of plastic waste entering the environment.

• Drakensberg Also Under Threat Of Fracking: While many South African's are aware of the proposed 'fracking' for gas in the Karoo, many are unaware that large parts of the Free State, Eastern Cape Highlands and KZN are also under threat.

• The True Cost Of Nuclear Energy: Greenpeace SA recently presented their latest report The True Cost of Nuclear Energy in South Africa to the Department of Environmental Affairs. The report outlines SA's "costly nuclear history, its failure to learn from past mistakes, and how the country could leave dirty and dangerous energy behind by investing in renewables."