1907: Plastic was invented

1933: Polyethylene was created (shopping bags, food packaging, bottles)

1970: Annual plastic production is 35m tonnes

2013: 215k tonnes of plastic is floating in the ocean (excludes plastics at depth). One third of this has accumulated to form ‘The Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ – 3x the area of Spain

2015: Annual plastic production is 381m tonnes (7bn cumulatively, 1 tonne per human)

2016: 344 species found to be affected by plastic entanglement, 233 species for ingestion

2050: 6m pieces of plastic estimated to be floating in the ocean

Plastics helped humanity flourish (food preservation, safety equipment, computers, construction) but we’ve not been accountable for the negative externalities it presented. It’s a waste management problem. For this particular problem, effective government regulation is better than leaving it to the free market.

Source: Our World in Data

Here’s a playlist generated each day that comprises of 30 totally random tracks across Spotify’s library.

Concrete is one of the most used commodities in the world, second only to water, and among the most polluting. The industry accounts for about 2.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, or about 6 per cent of global emissions. If it were a country, it would be the fourth-biggest emitter, just behind India, ahead of Russia and Japan.

Start-ups trying to produce low-carbon cement are attracting some of the most prominent tech investors, such Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, as well as venture capitalist John Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins. More than $100m in venture funding has gone to cement start-ups in the past 12 months.

The basic chemistry of cement makes it very difficult to decarbonise: the main ingredient is clinker, made from limestone heated in a kiln. As the limestone heats it releases a lot of carbon dioxide and changes its molecular structure.

This chemical reaction accounts for as much as 70 per cent of the emissions from cement making, and a remaining 30 per cent come from the energy to heat the kiln. For every 10 tonnes of cement produced, six tonnes of carbon dioxide end up in the atmosphere.

Original article:
https://www.ft.com/content/24d610a0-fb65-45bb-b747-e015e1f10c1a

Your perception is your reality. This concept is the fundamental premise behind living a happy, fulfilled life. 

The way you perceive yourself, the world, and the future will always influence what comes next for you in life.

The term perception in this sense refers to ‘the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted’. 

As people, we tend to give ourselves conditions we have to meet before we can feel content in our lives. We have to earn this much money, or we have to achieve certain milestones, or we have to be in the perfect relationship before we can feel satisfied with ourselves.

Here is something I find fascinating about humans. Our desires are mimetic, meaning that we make many of our choices according to the desires of others. This means that as we experience more of life with each passing second, those conditions we place on ourselves are constantly evolving with us.

This ultimately places our mindset in a constant state of lack, where we find faults in ourselves and start to beat ourselves up for never quite meeting those expectations we put on ourselves. 

The trick to real, lasting self-improvement is first and foremost loving and accepting yourself unconditionally. No matter what your reality is now, the first step to a happy life is learning to be content in the present moment. 

If you can align yourself with that constant feeling of unconditional gratitude for ourselves and for the world around us, then you can also feel that same gratitude for the future. 

It may be a slightly counter-intuitive concept, but if you can thank yourselves now for putting yourself in a place where you are trying to achieve your goals, and can love yourself unconditionally despite what you (or others!) may initially perceive as failures along the way, you can do whatever you set your mind to doing.

Original post here.

Globalisation sought to make our world larger but ultimately made it smaller: a tsunami of Western certainty – and its franchised way of living – further suffocating our ability to think laterally. Cultures, each with their own complex history of myth and story, are now encouraged to think singularly and unimaginatively in terms of capital, in terms of input-output. You are here – but, if you do this, and do it enough times, you will be there. This trap is everywhere. The (large) market for self-improvement is less about discovery, and more about greater utilisation of your most valuable resource: time. You’re to wake up earlier, sleep less, read more and reach financial fulfilment (with the fallacious expectation of broader fulfilment as back payment for your efforts).

In maximising each moment, we minimise ourselves. We are what’s utilised and expired: the tool of the system. We wrangle life’s beauty for its expedient expiration, the movement from one point – which is never a point enough – to the next. In the name of expedience and maximisation, we sacrifice experience. We read, but do not learn. We listen, but do not hear. We accumulate, and yet are without.

More here.