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The Conscious Scoop: China's Green Soldiers, Tree Planting Drones and the Future of Singapore's Waste

Here are 10 things you need to know, that’s happening in sustainability around the world this week. 
A lot about planting trees this week, not that it’s a bad thing. Tree huggers are just what we need for the environment. Not only that, we’ve got a whole bunch of things happening this week in sustainbility.  Here’s this weeks conscious scoop:
 
1. China reassigns 60,000 soldiers to plant trees in bid to fight pollution 
Because we are all at war with Mother Nature, it’s best to start sending soliders on peace missions such as these. The aim is to increase the country’s forest coverage from 21 per cent of its total landmass to 23 per cent by 2020.
Stand by these awesome men at work, we all love a soldier in uniform.
 
2. The drones that plant trees and deliver profits

BioCarbon Engineering is an ecosystem restoration company using a 30-pound unmanned aerial vehicle nicknamed “Robin.” It can fly over the most rugged landscapes on earth, planting trees in precise locations at the rate of 120 per minute. See what technology can do when it’s put to good use!

Meet Robin, the drone that’s replacing the hand planting of trees.
 

3. This is how eco-friendly your sandwich is

The sandwich you choose to have at lunch is a big decision; one that could make or break your day. The biggest contribution to the carbon footprint of any type of sandwich is its “agricultural production”. 11.5 billion sarnies are consumed each year in the UK, and that means a whole lot of ingredients and packaging.
What exactly is the carbon footprint of our lunch?
 
4. Dunkin’ Donuts aims to ditch foam cups for paper by 2020
Dunkin’ Donuts is rolling out a plan to stop using plastic foam cups, beginning in New York and California in spring 2018. The goal is to eliminate foam cups worldwide by 2020. We green advocates are all for it but not everyone is happy.
Find out more about some of the backlash here.

 
5. Garden Beats 2018 – Singapore’s First Sustainable Music Festival  

Garden Beats, partnered with Green Is The New Black (That’s Us!) as their Official Green Partner. We’re so happy to see the music festival go green this year with awesome initiatives like being a carbon neutral festival thanks to our friends at Environmental Solutions (Asia) who have generously sponsored the efforts to offset our carbon footprint
Check out all their green initiatives with GITNB (tooting our own horn cause why not?!)
 
6. The long road to ensuring that Singapore’s waste doesn’t go to waste
Nobody likes talking about waste, but what about waste that isn’t wasted? By 2027, the huge barren land in Tuas will be the centre of Singapore’s waste management facilities. With an integrated facility where both incineration and sorting of recyclables will take place, a water reclamation plant for sewage recycling.
Find out how they plan to turn food waste into energy enough to power 300,000 HDB flats!
 

Ever since China announced last year that it no longer wanted to be the “world’s garbage dump,” recycling about half of the globe’s plastics and paper products, Western nations are not too sure what to do. Britain is faced with growing piles of recyclables and no place to put them. Other nations like Canada, the US and more are going through the same.
What would we do without China?
 
8. Solar power push lights up options for India’s rural women

Solar mini-grid power is giving Uttar Pradesh women choices. Smart Power Indian villages found that at the end of 2016, found that after two years of access to mini-grid power, small businesses using it had increased their monthly income by 13%.

The power of women and what they can achieve given the right tools!
 

9. Scotland looks to ban single-use plastic straws by 2019

Scottish Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham told the Sunday Mail Scotland would ban single-use plastic straws by the end of 2019. “I would strongly encourage the big manufacturers of straws that the writing is on the wall and they need to be thinking about alternatives now,” she said. Pretty good advice.

Find out what they’re doing about it.

 

10. Mankind can either lead a ‘good life’… or a sustainable one, but NOT both

A study says no country has managed to achieve the right balance between happiness and sustainability, and that the better a country does on one side of the scale, the worse it tends to do on the other.
What do you think, yes or no?
 
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