Month: May 2021
New life for old goods – the eu’s battle with our IRREPARABLE electronics
By George Bandy
How long should we expect our electronics to last? And what can we do when they break? These are not only questions for ensuring happy customers but are also an essential part of tackling overconsumption and excessive waste. Unfortunately, two things with which Europe is very familiar.
By Dorothy Puga
At 400 °C, around 447 gas flares, known as ‘flares of death,’ are constantly burning in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, a long-standing practice by which the oil industry burns the byproducts of their oil extraction activities. Reports have confirmed that flaring results in highly pollutant gases like methane, which “erupt as a giant flame from a vertical gas pipe just meters from an oil well head.” Aside from constituting an environmentally detrimental practice, gas flaring is most likely responsible for the high cancer rates in the area, mainly populated by Indigenous communities. On January 26, 2021, an appeals court in Ecuador ruled in favor of nine children by declaring gas flaring unconstitutional and finding a violation of Ecuador’s international obligations under the Paris Agreement and the plaintiffs’ right to a healthy environment.