Garbage soup: Lego fails, Mike Bloomberg and gassy fruit

A trashy roundup of the garbage news you need to know

Welcome back, trash fiends. Here are some top stories from the week that’ll make you wish certain CEOs would just step on a Lego and also maybe that you lived in Europe. May I recommend spending the weekend reorganizing your crisper drawer? Love you.

First Big Gulps, now petrochemicals

An AI generated image of Mike Bloomberg holding an alleged big gulp lol

The 11th richest man in the world says he’s already spent $500 million in attempt to shut down coal and gas plants, and he’s not stopping there. Mikey Bloomberg helped to close down over 70% of coal burning plants in the country, according to the Times. That’s pretty amazing, no? Now he wants to do the same with petrochemical plants (“fast becoming the largest driver of global oil demand and is a growing consumer of natural gas,” per NYT) — the ones make fertilizer, plastics and packaging. According to the Times, this won’t be as easy:

In recent years, coal had become an increasingly costly and uneconomical way to generate electricity, making plant closures easier to achieve. But plastics and chemicals face no such economic headwinds. In fact, the petroleum industry sees these industries as its future as cars electrify and the burning of fossil fuels declines, so it is investing heavily.

While the new campaign, called Beyond Petrochemicals, has scored a few wins, the petrochemicals business is booming and highly profitable, and plastics remain cheap and in demand. And the industry is fighting back with its own counter effort: Beyond Bloomberg.

Companies and local economic development groups argue that Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts are a heavy-handed approach to a nuanced problem and that the world needs more products made with petrochemicals, not less. They add that his efforts are costing people jobs and hurting an area badly in need of economic growth.

I give this man a lot of credit — for the money he’s shelling out, and for being willing to tackle a specific issue so many claim is basically too existential to bother with. And, his deep pockets have helped make the issue part of a national conversation (did you know about this petrochemical problem before?). It all helps to contextualize why plastic packaging is such a big deal — it’s not just that soda can rings are strangling birds (was this something that haunted you as a kid?). The process of producing said rings is melting the planet as we know it.

Speaking of plastic…

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said let’s do the work, girls. She’s banning state agencies from purchasing single-use plastic bottles. It’s a pretty low bar, but it’s not nothing and that? That is something.

And also … the EU is banning brands from being little liars?!

Sustainability but make it fashion

I haven’t felt this excited since Maggie Rogers hit the red carpet with a bejeweled reusable water bottle!!!!

Companies selling in the European Union will no longer be able to claim that their products are carbon or climate neutral. The ban will impact all consumer products, but especially that of the food and beverage sector, as well as travel, fashion and technology industries. Via Carbon Market Watch:

Claiming that products and services have no impact on the climate based on offsetting of emissions ignores the fact that there are large uncertainties in the quantification of both the companies’ own emissions, and the carbon credits that they purchase. Corporations should focus, first and foremost, on rapid and significant emission reductions and supporting climate action outside of their value chains without misleading their consumers about the achieved impact of such investments.

Cool! Fresh fruit

A startup — PureSpace — has figured out how to keep fruit fresher for longer by filtering out a gas called ethylene, TechCrunch reports. Fruits and veggies produce ethylene as they ripen, and this gas causes other produce in the vicinity to ripen quickly, too. (This is why there are rules about how to store your fruits and veggies — please keep your onions and tomatoes out of the refrigerator, how many times must I beg you, mom and dad?!?!).

The invention could be a yuge deal in preventing food waste — an estimated 1/3 of all food goes to waste even before it gets into the hands of us consumers. Recently I bought a bag of grapes and 97% of the grapes were mushy and went uneaten and I couldn’t help but wonder … is it the gas?

The system has been tested in refrigerated trucks and could very well be coming to the U.S. soon (but not yet your personal home refrigerator).

Lego says plastic > our existence

Remember when I was like, companies fail to follow through on their environmental promises ALL. THE. TIME. This week we give the side eye to Lego, who announced it would not be making bricks from recycled plastic bottles, despite years of claims and promotion.

To be fair, it’s a little more complicated than just a company backtracking: After a year of testing, Lego found “that making bricks from the recycled material would require investing in new equipment and involve more steps, which would ultimately lead to more planet-heating pollution than the status quo,” CNN reported.

I suppose that makes sense, but perhaps Lego should have done the research before it counted its plastic chickens. A spokesperson for the company told CNN that recycled PET (what plastic water bottles are made of) is just one of hundreds of materials they’ve tested to replace the current plastic in Legos.

This tale gets at the bigger, looming story of the climate crisis: Can we really repair and care for the planet in a profit-first society?

I do not know, but I do know that Lego has a show on Hulu called “Lego Masters.” If the brains at the company were able to figure out how to turn a teensy plastic brick into a reality TV show, surely they can dedicate some more energy to figuring out how to stop shitting all over our planet.

See ya at the toy store!