Daily Insights

The UK Government has awarded a £4m share of its Getting Building Funds – designed to support infrastructure in the wake of lockdown – to a project developing a geothermal recovery plant that will extract lithium for use in the electric vehicle (EV) sector.

Microsoft has pledged to bring its direct waste footprint to zero within a decade, as part of new resources strategy which will boost the recyclability of its devices and see plastic packaging phased out entirely.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is extending its Climate Change Agreement (CCA) scheme for businesses by two years, following a consultation which highlighted its popularity.

Dutch airline KLM has been ordered to change one of its advertising campaigns after it was found to have over-emphasised the firm’s use of biofuel.

YouGov have concluded in new research that the proportion of UK adults regularly purchasing plastic bottled water almost halved during lockdown. This is helping with the aim of reducing plastic worldwide.

Investor coalition FAIRR has documented a tenfold increase in the plant-based-food-related assets its cohort manages over the past four years and found that four in ten food giants now have dedicated teams for plant-based products.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has launched a £2bn aimed at incentivizing walking and cycling as the UK lockdown eases. Thousands of miles of new protected bike lanes, cycle training for both children and adults, and a national e-bike program are among plans unveiled by the Prime Minister today to help steer a £2bn cycling and walking "revolution" across England.

After the greater Manchester combined authority pledged to reach net-zero by 2038 last year, the city-region’s gas and electricity network operators have developed a delivery roadmap for its energy sector.

Food and agribusiness giant Cargill has pledged to dramatically improve water management practices across its operations and priority watersheds in its supply chain by – a move it claims will restore 600 billion litres of water within a decade.

Nine major multinational corporates, led by Microsoft, have banded together to form a new initiative which will provide businesses with roadmaps they need to achieve net-zero emissions by or before 2050.

BEIS and the treasury are being urged to remove barriers to onshore renewable energy projects as part of their Covid-19 recovery planning, in a new report claiming that ‘shovel-ready’ renewables could provide a £28.9bn boost to the UK economy.

By embedding ‘net-positive’ nature requirements into their Covid-19 recovery strategies, governments and businesses could collectively realise a $10trn (£7.9trn) economic opportunity and create 395 million new jobs within a decade.

By creating a National Investment Bank with an explicit net-zero mandate, Ministers could reap the benefits of the UK’s Brexit transition period, Covid-19 recovery planning and low-carbon transition simultaneously, MPs, economists and local leaders are urging. The call to action is being made through a new report from the London School of Economics and University of Leeds, Produced in association with the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on sustainable finance, UK100 and HSBC.

Cross-section action and government guidance are required to create a recycling system for flexible, low-value plastics such as bags and wrapping, according to new guidance published today by WRAP. WRAP, which leads the UK Plastics Pact, has warned that corporates may not be able to reach their packaging commitments unless a new collection and recycling system is developed for soft flexible plastics.  

Aldi UK and Ireland has pledged to halve the volume of plastic packaging it uses annually by 2025. The new commitment will see 2.2 billion pieces of plastic removed from the supermarket’s product lines over the next five years, most of which will be single-use. This is equivalent to 74,000 tones in weight. Plastic wrapping on toilet rolls, for example, will be replaced with a paper alternative, and double lids will be removed from cream and yoghurts.

In his recent “New Deal” speech, Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, identified batteries for electric vehicles as a high-potential technology for which a new science funding body will be created later on this summer. The PM’s claim is well supported by the data. By 2030, batteries can help reduce global transport and power sector emissions by 30%.

British Gas has ordered 1,000 new all-electric vans from Vauxhall, in a move that will assist the gas company’s parent firm Centrica on its commitment to have an entirely electric fleet by 2030. They have ordered 1,000 Vivaro e-vans from Vauxhall, which is considered the largest commercial order of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the UK to date. The vans will be introduced over the next 12 months, before a nationwide rollout commences across the entire British Gas engineer workforce.

Volkswagen (VW) is set to remove production lines for all internal combustion engine vehicles from one of its key factories this year, replacing them with electric vehicle (EV) production capacity. The carmaker this week revealed plans to convert its production plant in Emden, Germany, to an e-mobility-only location, at a cost of €1bn. Work on a new 50,000-square-meter assembly hall has already begun.

Extinction Rebellion activists are gathering on London’s Oxford Street this week to urge fast fashion brands to financially support suppliers overseas throughout the pandemic, as media exposes drawing links between Leicester’s Covid-19 spike and its garment manufacturing industry emerge. The protests will take aim at brands accused of either failing to pay for orders which were completed or in production when lockdown forced non-essential retailers to close, cancelling orders at short-notice in breach of contract terms , or pushing for significant discounts from suppliers.

A survey of more than 2,000 UK voters, in which all major political preferences were accounted for, has revealed that the majority of Brits want a “green” recovery from Covid-19, in which measures designed to boost the economy also serve to reduce pollution and emissions. Conducted by Ipsos Mori on behalf of the Conservation Environment Network (CEN), the survey asked 2,178 people for their views on the environmental aspects of the UK’s Covid-19 recovery plan.

Kleenex will remove the plastic opening from all tissue boxes by August 2020, parent form Kimberly Clark has announced in the same week that SC Johnson unveiled a Mr Muscle bottle made from 100% recycled plastic content. The move from Kleenex will mitigate the use of 82 tonnes of plastic within a 12-month period, Kimberly-Clark claims, while also boosting recycling rates for the cardboard portion of the packaging.