Rural and Environment

Environmental news round-up

November 2, 2018 by charlottebarbour No Comments | Category Environment, Marine

Read on to discover the latest Greener Scotland news from over the last week.

New Plastics Economy Global Commitment

The Scottish Government has signed the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment as part of our efforts to eliminate plastic pollution.

The Commitment is an important way to encourage focused action on plastics by governments, urban centres and industry.  We are supportive of the over-arching principles and goals that the Ellen Macarthur Foundation strive to achieve, and Scotland is proud to be a signatory to this commitment, both in conjunction with the rest of the UK and in our own right.

We hope that our signature will encourage other nations and businesses to join forces to make a tangible change in this important area of action.

Top Up Tap

The first ‘top up tap’ was installed outside the Scottish Parliament; part of an initiative to encourage people to top up from the tap using refillable bottles.

The project will see Scottish Water Top up Taps installed in around 30 towns and cities over the next two years.

The new Top up Taps are designed to act as a catalyst to encourage more people to choose to carry a refillable bottle – with less than a third of people stating they’d be happy to go into a café and ask for their bottle to be filled.

The Top up Taps are made from marine-grade steel and are connected safely and securely to the mains water supply with public health and legislative requirements fully taken into account and inspections carried out regularly.

Climate Change Bill 

Climate change is one of the defining global challenges of our time and we want Scotland to be a world leader in tackling it. Our Climate Change Bill, currently being considered in parliament, will make Scotland carbon neutral by 2050.

Find out more and keep up to date at climate.scot

Blue Carbon Forum

The Blue Carbon forum, a new research programme, has launched. It will measure the ability of Scotland’s marine environment to store carbon dioxide and mitigate against the effects of climate change.

The programme will be driven by the introduction of a ‘Blue Carbon Forum’ of climate change experts, and supported by the Scottish Government in partnership with Scottish universities, with a research programme currently funding six PHDs and one post-doctorate. The forum will be led by Professor John Baxter.

Read more here.

Tags: bluecarbon, carbon, climatechange, marine, plastics, plasticwaste

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