Snippets for 22 October 2020

Thanks for reading our Snippets newsletter this week. We have once again included a mixed selection of articles we hope you find interesting.

We start this week with a look at the corporate world. Large corporations and business groups are embracing business practices that are seen to be the right course to report on and bring down emissions. Doing the right thing pays off in a number of ways.

If concrete were a country, it would be the third largest carbon emitter behind America and China. Amazon and Microsoft have invested in a company looking to bring concrete emission down, through a process of injecting CO2 during the manufacturing process. In fact, Amazon is using the concrete in it’s next significant building project.

Technologies and/or processes that remove carbon are looking more likely to play a big part in reducing global emission. We take a detailed look at what’s currently out there, the good, bad, and downright ‘interesting’.

Would we alter our food purchasing habits if we knew the true cost of carbon in each product? A chain of stores in Sweden is putting a price of the products they sell, to highlight this issue.

What we eat is changing. A recent poll in the UK indicated that people were changing from eating animal based products to plant based and expected that most others would do the same in approximately 12 years!

And if to ram this point home, Impossible burger sales have increased markedly. Prior to Covid, 700 stores sold the product in the US, now 11,000 stores do. People are looking after themselves and also thinking about the planet as a whole!

We next look at (as far as we can tell) the first plant based fish product called Vuna. Although in the early stages of production and sales, Nestle looks to be ramping up work in the plant based space.

We finish this week with a look at a Wellington start up, ‘YY Nation’. The company is looking to produce shoes from plastic particles, pineapple leaves and algae into a range of eco- shoes.

Thirty of the world’s largest asset owners have committed to cutting the carbon emissions from their companies by up to 29% within the next four years by joining the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance. The initiative involves members aligning their portfolios with the Paris climate goals and they aim to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.Read more.....

As companies begin taking action on climate change there has been a push for technology that traps GHGs rather than let them rise up to the atmosphere. A consortium including Amazon and Microsoft have invested in a Canadian firm CarbonCure Technologies who are injecting captured CO2 into their concrete, making it carbon negative. Read more.....

We often talk about climate action in terms of reducing emissions but are there ways that we can remove the GHGs that are already in the atmosphere? This article looks at the most controversial carbon removal and geoengineering solutions to climate change. Whether its cloud thinning or giant space mirrors, all these ideas are pretty out there. Read more.....

Top asset owners commit to big carbon emissions cuts; this article discusses a push by asset owners to reduce the GHG emissions of the companies that they are invested in. The UN backed Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance aims to align their portfolios with the Paris Climate Goals, by requiring the companies invested in to greatly reduce emissions. There will also be requirements around marking out reduction pathways and mandatory GHG reporting as part of the transparency process.Read more.....

A new store in Sweden prices goods based on carbon emissions. One of the biggest problems today is that people have no idea of the true value of what they buy. They do not understand the work/inputs, or energy that it took to make a product; and even more abstract is the concept of the embodied carbon. This article discusses an initiative where people pay for their purchases with carbon equivalents, in order to help them understand the impacts of their choices. Read more.....

A new poll of 2,000 adults found that, on average, those surveyed said they would be moving to a fully plant-based diet in 5 years and expected everyone would do the same by 12 years. 60% of respondents said they had started moving more in plant-based food direction since the pandemic started, mainly due to health benefits. The percentage of younger generations already eating plant-based foods is large. They are making the change faster than the older generations. Read more.....

The Impossible Burger sales have surged since Covid – there are now 11,000 places to buy them in the USA, compared to 150 stores pre Covid. These plant-based burgers are now displacing animal based food, and 90% of those who are eating the Impossible burger are actually regular meat eaters. People are worried about their health, and the safety of food products, as well as the environment - Impossible Burger uses 96% less land, 87% less water, with 89% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional beef from cows. Read more.....

A new vegetable based substitute for fish – Sensational Vuna – a vegan tuna, is high in protein, has a flaky tuna texture and contains all essential amino acids. It is hoped this will help reduce the overfishing of Tuna. This will soon be rolled out into the Swiss market and supplements the range of other available “Sensational” brand foods – sausage, burger, chorizo and mince. Nestle has plans for other fish substitutes too and plans to invest more heavily in plant based foods in China. Read more.....

Shoes made from pineapple leaves, recycled ocean plastic and algae blooms are the raw materials for NZ’s latest eco-responsible shoe. The idea came to the founder Jeremy Bank when he was on holiday in Maui two-years ago, where he noticed the sand was no longer white, but covered in little flecks of coloured plastic. He started the company named ‘YY Nation’ based on the two ‘whys’ Bank asked himself. “Why is this happening? And why can’t I do more about it?”. Good questions. Read more.....