Plastic has made a comeback thanks to Covid-19.Photo: Edward Howell/Unsplash

5 polluters making the pandemic pay

As Covid-19 spread across the world, greenhouse-gas emissions plummeted, thanks to a reduction in human activity. But meanwhile, writes Amy Hall, some of the world’s most polluting companies and industries have been using the pandemic to maintain and even ramp up their environmentally ruinous activities.

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NI 527 - Covid-19 lessons from the pandemic - September, 2020
Photo: Stijn Te Strake/Unsplash

The hidden polluters

Agricultural air pollution seems to be a tough nut to crack. Amy Hall explores the air-pollution problem down on the farm.

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020
Room with a view: Residents of Mahul’s resettlement colony are forced to live in a polluted industrial area.Photo: Ishan Tankha

Unfit for habitation

India’s air pollution crisis affects millions, and not just in Delhi. Aruna Chandrasekhar meets people forced to live, and resist, at Mumbai’s toxic perimeter.

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020
‘I don’t want to live like this’

‘I don’t want to live like this’

Community journalists from the northeast of England on the impact of air pollution on their lives.

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020
Top of the class

Top of the class

Dirty air is not an impossible problem. Beth Gardiner assesses some places cleaning up their act.

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020
Opposite page: Child’s play – a boy jumps across boats wedged on a mixture of crude oil, water and sand, near Bodo in the Niger Delta. Oil production is a major pollutant in the area.Photo: Petterik Wiggers/Panos

Fed up with the fumes

Dirty air in Nigeria takes a huge toll on lives and livelihoods. But civil society is not short of ideas for change, as Michael Simire finds out.

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020
In a jam: sitting in traffic in Metro Manila, the Philippines.Photo: Joline Torres/Unsplash

How to stop progress

Dana Drugmand explains how the powerful car industry has continually blocked change to keep us hooked.

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020
Toxic Air - The Facts

Toxic Air - The Facts

How many die?, Air inequality, Noxious journeys, and Cleanest vs dirtiest.

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020

Action on Air Pollution

Links for campaigning and more reading on air pollution/air quality.

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020
A young boy wears a gas mask to protect himself from the fumes during a fire in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya.Photo: Donwilson Odhiambo/Sopa Images/Lightrocket via Getty Images

To protect life

Covid-19 has shown us that swift action on global health is possible, even if it still falls short. What could we achieve, asks Amy Hall, if we took an urgent approach to air pollution, another widespread killer?

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NI 525 - The fight for clean air - May, 2020
Illustration: Steve Munday

Pigs that cross...

In talks about trade, something vital is omitted: the environment.

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NI 517 - Trade in Turmoil - January, 2019
A young girl stands defiantly amid the Agbogbloshie dump’s burning fields near Accra – clouds of toxic smoke rising behind her. From dusk until dawn, workers – usually young, male migrants from Ghana’s northern Tamale region – burn automobile parts and electronic waste in order to reveal their copper components in exchange for money for food. According to the Seattle-based NGO, Basel Action Network, millions of tonnes of e-waste from industrialized nations are ‘processed’ at Agbogbloshie each year.Photo: Benjamin Lowy/Getty

Dirty work

Around the world, 15 million people – including children – have little choice but to earn a living from the waste polluting their surroundings. They often work in dangerous conditions, risking their health, sometimes their lives; and are usually relegated to the bottom of the social pecking order, struggling to improve their working conditions.

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NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
the packaging industry is not taking responsibility waste is not just an issue for the individual

It’s all down to you

Dinyar Godrej explains why the packing industry loves shunting the blame on individual consumers.

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NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
The face of plastic recycling that China wants to change. A worker sorts plastic in Dong Xiao Kou, a 'scrap village' on the outskirts of Beijing where poor migrant families survive from recycling rubbish.Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty

No more of your junk

Last year, China announced a ban on imports of ‘foreign garbage’. The result? Western stockpiles of used paper and plastic have reached crisis proportions. Adam Liebman on why we need a less rosy notion of what actually happens to our recycling.

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NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
Waste - The Facts

Waste - The Facts

How much; disposal; food; plastic; electronic waste; the facts and figures.

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NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
Like a scene from a blockbuster epic on trash: people search for pickings in the Indonesian capital Jakarta's Bantar Gebang dump. Over 60 per cent of the waste is organic and could be composted, but there is no large-scale sorting of refuse, making it much harder to manage.Photo: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty

Modern life is rubbish

The dirt on waste. Dinyar Godrej argues that the problems with our throwaway society add up to much more than the sum of individual actions.

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NI 516 - The dirt on waste - November, 2018
Greener, richer

Greener, richer

New research suggests that low-carbon infrastructure is not only ethical, it also yields greater economic returns.

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NI 514 - The next financial crisis - July, 2018
Winter wind blows from Bedzin’s coal-fuelled electricity plant, stoking clouds of smog, while a woman visits the city’s municipal cemetery. Photo: Violeta Santos Moura

Dark clouds

Violeta Santos Moura reports from Poland, where air pollution claims some 45,000 lives annually. The country’s reliance on coal is the main culprit but it’s an issue bound up in national pride and political manipulation.

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NI 513 - A better media is possible - June, 2018
Pollution struggle

Pollution struggle

Residents from a coastal village in the Gambia are suing a Chinese-owned fishmeal plant accused of pollution, writes Nosmot Gbadamosi.

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NI 512 - Public ownership rises again - May, 2018

Articles in this category displayed as a table:

Article title From magazine Publication date
Covid-19 lessons from the pandemic September, 2020
Covid-19 lessons from the pandemic September, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
The fight for clean air May, 2020
Trade in Turmoil January, 2019
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The dirt on waste November, 2018
The next financial crisis July, 2018
A better media is possible June, 2018
Public ownership rises again May, 2018
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