Coke Studio continues to go beyond supporting OPM to advocating for the environment

Coca-Cola has been on a constant mission to refresh the world by providing people with moments of happiness, moments where they can enjoy and pursue their passions. The ultimate testament to this is Coke Studio, a platform that has shown how Coca-Cola not only refreshes its customers with its beverages but also refreshes the local music scene by supporting the best and brightest of OPM.

Going beyond promoting OPM, Coke Studio rallies Filipino musicians and music-lovers to elevate the music scene with an uplifting purpose – advocating for environmental protection.  Since Coke Studio Philippines was first launched in 2017, it has seamlessly weaved two of its advocacies together, becoming a reflection The Coca-Cola Company’s firm stance on caring for the planet. This is an advocacy which the Company has continuously practiced across the board, from its operations to its various programs and campaigns including Coke Studio.



In 2018, this advocacy for sustainability was taken further when Coca-Cola announced its goal to creating a World Without Waste. The already-established Coke Studio became the perfect platform to introduce this vision to the youth. Now, three seasons in, Coke Studio continues to amplify the message of environmental protection through music.

With music as a powerful, unifying force, Coke Studio concerts and events have not only brought teens together to enjoy the best of OPM, but have also become spaces where the youth learn and practice mindful consumption. Across its three seasons, each concert and roadshow has been thoughtfully-planned to inspire environmental stewardship among event-goers, educating them on proper waste management and providing them the facilities for responsible waste disposal.

After mounting numerous concerts and events in universities, fiestas, to festivals nationwide, Coke Studio has continued to shift the youth’s perceptions on PET bottles from a use-and-dispose product to one with multiple lives and instilled the importance of collection, segregation, and recycling.

A testament to how involved the youth were in these green and sustainable activations, Coca-Cola was able to collect and divert an estimated 9,500 kilograms of PET bottles which will be recycled into new products such as T-shirts, benches, and even the iconic Coke Studio earphones with the help of its recycling partners.

Coke Studio has redefined and set a new standard for environmentally-conscious activations, events and consumer engagements with its goal of uniting and empowering the youth to become a part of the solution in protecting the planet.

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

Scarier than fiction: Climate worry driving ‘cli-fi’ boom

Imagine a world where storms inundate coastal megacities, entire species become extinct in the blink of an eye and conflicts are fought over dwindling natural resources.

Not so difficult in 2019, perhaps.

After a year of devastating extreme weather and worldwide unrest over the emergency posed by climate change, topics that used to belong to the realm of science fiction are finding their way into mainstream storytelling.

Back in 2004, Roland Emmerich’s disaster flick “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted a global weather catastrophe, with coastal areas devoured by the sea amid general meteorological mayhem.

Just 15 years on, scenes from the movie resemble images taken from real-life weather events today.

And as climate change makes superstorms, flooding, wildfires and droughts more likely, a new genre is gaining fatalistic fans the world over: “cli-fi.”

“It’s catching on like wildfire,” said United States writer and cli-fi aficionado Dan Bloom.

He credited U.S. President Donald Trump, who has said he will withdraw from the Paris climate deal, with helping promote the genre.

“There’s a lot of people who say that climate change is not real,” said Bloom. “These people are making the rest of us very angry and as a result cli-fi is getting more and more power.”

Andrew Milner, a professor of comparative literature at Melbourne’s Monash University, said that cli-fi was yet to break out from sci-fi’s yoke — most people get into the new genre because they like the old one.

“Both its texts and practitioners — writers, readers, publishers, film directors, fans — relate primarily to the science-fiction tradition,” he said.


“(But) it is very clear that the sub-genre has grown very rapidly in recent years.”

Global appeal

Global protest movements such as the Youth Strike for Climate and Extinction Rebellion have heightened public awareness of the issue.

For J.R. Burgmann, co-author of “Science Fiction and Climate Change: A Sociological Approach”, cli-fi films and novels are a logical expression of an increasingly knowledgeable and concerned society.

“This rise is a response to real-world concerns,” he said. “And though I would argue that literature has been rather slow to respond to manmade climate change, it certainly appears to be making up for lost time.”

And, because climate change is a truly global problem, cli-fi has become a worldwide, multi-lingual phenomenon.

In France, two major television series focussing on dystopian but conceivable futures have received popular and critical acclaim.

“The Last Wave” tells the story of 10 surfers who go missing in bad weather. When they return they can’t remember what happened but some have strange new powers.

And “The Collapse”, set in a post-apocalyptic world where fuel is scarce, nuclear sites are threatened and medicines are rationed, debuted this week.

Recent cli-fi works from around the world include “Blackout Island” by Icelandic author Sigridur Hagalin Bjornsdottir, a Canadian adaptation of Jean Hegland’s “Into the Forest” and “Water Knife”, by U.S. author Paolo Bacigalupi.


In “The History of Bees”, Norwegian author Maja Lunde’s 2017 bestseller, humanity is forced to pollinate their crops by hand after pesticides have wiped insects off the face of the Earth.

“People are more and more worried about climate change and authors write about what scares them,” Lunde told Agence France-Presse last year.

‘Hard to ignore’

Novels and films about climate change are nothing new, of course.

J.G. Ballard’s “The Burning World” (1964) and John Brunner’s “The Sheep Look Up” (1972) depicted a world ravaged by environmental damage decades before scientists fully understood manmade climate change.

Even John Steinbeck’s generational “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939) is essentially a tale of the harrowing ordeal undergone by climate migrants from the Oklahoma dust bowl.

But, as leading cli-fi author Jean-Marc Ligny explained, greater public awareness and a seemingly unending string of drought, wildfires and heatwaves have made climate a topic that’s “hard to ignore.”

“Climate change needs stories, and readers need them to be told,” he said. “There are figures, statistics, but these don’t really say anything. Cli-fi makes people more aware of the situation.” CL/JB

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

Disney parks around the world to go straw-free next year

After hotel chains, restaurants and airlines, Disney has announced plans to eliminate plastic straws across all its owned and operated parks around the world by mid-2019.


In a blog post, Disney outlined a broad plan to join the global fight against plastic pollution that will include banning single-use plastic straws and stir sticks at theme parks around the globe.

The move is expected to amount to the reduction of 175 million straws and 13 million plastic stirrers annually.


At its hotels and onboard cruise ships, the company also announced a plastic reduction strategy that will include transitioning to refillable in-room amenities.

Plastic bags will be reduced at their parks and onboard cruise ships, and guests will be offered the option to purchase reusable bags.

Disney follows fellow tourism and hospitality players like Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines and Royal Caribbean cruise line in committing to phasing out the use of single-use plastic straws which are non-recyclable and are choking the ocean’s marine life. JB

source: lifestyle.inquirer.net

Canada boosts protection for endangered whales

The Canadian government said Wednesday it will boost protection for two species of endangered whales.


Since June, 12 North Atlantic right whales have been found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is home to nearly a quarter of the last 458 specimens of this kind of whale. Canadian environmentalists say it is among the most threatened in the world.

The Ministry of Fisheries said it would set up “critical habitat” protection areas for these whales off the coast of Nova Scotia and for beluga whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The goal is to safeguard “specific geographic locations and conditions essential for the survival and recovery of the species, such as where they give birth, hatch, feed or raise their young,” the ministry said.

The government is especially worried about the North Atlantic right whales because their mortality rate in 2017 has been higher than the average of recent years.

Autopsies showed whales bleeding to death after what were likely collisions with ships or getting caught up in fishing nets.

Fisheries Minister Dominique LeBlanc wants officials to update identified critical habitats because of “changing population distributions as a result of climate change.”

The government already took measures last year to protect beluga whales and white sturgeon. It denied TransCanada permission to build an oil facility on the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where female belugas give birth in the spring. AB

source: technology.inquirer.net

Greece in mourning: 16 killed after deadly flood

Greece was in mourning, as rescue crews tried to locate several people missing in a flood that killed 16 people near the capital, with more thunderstorms forecast until the weekend.

Authorities said on Thursday that at least four people were still unaccounted for in Mandra, one of three towns about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Athens hit by a freak flood early Wednesday.

The latest victim, a 50-year-old man, was found in a mud-filled basement. It took rescue crews over a day to reach his home.

The poor weather is set to continue until the weekend, raising concerns for hundreds of people with waterlogged homes.

Late on Thursday, the capital was lashed by another thunderstorm and firefighters in northern Greece said they were called to drain water from over 400 homes.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who declared three days of national mourning after the disaster, said he felt “shock” after touring the area on Thursday.

“This is clearly a rare and extreme weather phenomenon,” Tsipras said in a statement.

“But this extreme phenomenon had these effects because of (decades of) accumulated problems and deficiencies in infrastructure and zone planning,” he said.

Experts have said ill-conceived building in the area – some of it by local municipal authorities – meant this was a disaster waiting to happen.

Corrective drainage works for the area were approved in 2016 but work has yet to begin.

Meteorologists said Wednesday’s heavy rainfall was concentrated on a nearby mountain that had been devastated by wildfires in 2016, facilitating the ensuing mudslide.

Neighboring areas saw much less rain, they said.

“It was like a tsunami,” Evangelos Kolovetzos, a local shopowner, told AFP.

Local resident Spyros Karambikas told ERT television that he saw a man being swept away by the torrent “like the wind blows away a napkin.”

“The water in my house rose to 3.5 meters (11.5 feet),” said Sotiris Loukopoulos, whose pharmacy is the only one still open in Mandra.

“Five pharmacies were destroyed, we are still operating because we are on higher ground,” he told Athens municipal radio, as residents tried to clean their yards with shovels and hoses.

Over a hundred firefighters aided by army machinery were mounting search and rescue efforts in Mandra, Nea Peramos, and Megara – the semi-rural communities west of Athens hit hardest by the deluge.

The operation unfolded alongside gutted, debris-strewn streets, overturned cars, and hundreds of flooded homes and shops as utility crews worked to restore power and water services.

Emergency crews used pumps to drain water as police reinforcements were sent to the area to prevent looting.

Four people were arrested on Thursday after allegedly attempting to steal electrical appliances from a factory, state agency ANA said.

Twelve people are hospitalized, one in serious condition.

Illegal buildings

As a first step, the state will cover the funeral expenses, the interior ministry said.

Food, water and blankets have been rushed to the area, hit by what locals have described as the worst flooding in 20 years.

Some elderly people died inside their homes while other people were trapped in their cars as they drove to work. Two bodies were found at sea.

Parts of the area are without water and electricity for a second day; and much of the damage will take days to repair, though fortunately the sewage system is still functioning, the state water company said.

A 364-cabin cruise ship has been commissioned to shelter some of the homeless if necessary, the merchant marine ministry said.

Over the last 20 years, the once a rural area of Mandra and neighboring towns were rapidly transformed into a logistics hub for factories and warehouses, with the new construction covering riverbeds that would have provided natural drainage.

A prosecutor has ordered an investigation into building violations in the area, where two people had already died in flooding that struck in 1996.

“There is a bad precedent with public works in this country,” Interior Minister Panos Skourletis told Antenna TV.

Government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said: “Illegal building was a response to huge social and economic inequality.”             /kga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Maine Mendoza as Mother Earth featured in Italy mural

Maine Mendoza gave Mother Earth a face in a mural painted in Galliate, Italy.

The mural was made as part of Filipino environmental activist Naderev "Yeb" Saño's journey to stop climate change.

YouTube user "Woodle Worm" posted a timelapse video showing Saño, along with fellow environmental activists led by his brother AG Saño, creating the mural.

Check out the video

source: gmanetwork.com

Low Dose Asbestos

You may think that your chances of developing an asbestos-related disease such as mesothelioma are very slim if you have not been directly exposed to asbestos, or if you have not been exposed to it for very long.  While it is known that higher levels of exposure can be more dangerous, a surprising truth is that no amount of exposure to asbestos is truly safe.  Even brief direct exposure, or secondary exposure through others, can lead to disease.

A distinction can be made between asbestos exposure that happens on the job (known as occupational exposure) and exposure that occurs in the environment.  It stands to reason that levels of asbestos particles in the air are significantly higher near places where asbestos is used in industry, such as asbestos factories or mines, or near the demolition of buildings.  Research supports this.  Inside buildings, asbestos levels may be higher if building materials (such as insulation or floor/ceiling tiles) containing asbestos are present.  If the materials are in good condition, the levels are likely to be lower.  However, if they are in disrepair and crumbling, there is a higher risk of the fibers being released into the air.

Asbestos poses a potential health risk any time it is inhaled, as fibers may become trapped in the lungs and cause scarring.  There is generally a latency period of several decades between exposure to asbestos and the onset of disease.  Long periods of exposure to asbestos at lower levels can be as dangerous as shorter exposure at higher concentrations.

As always, you should follow guidelines set in place by government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to protect yourself from known asbestos exposure at work and in the environment. 

source: cooneyconway.com

Kerry urges US envoys to make climate change a priority

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State John Kerry has called on American ambassadors around the world to make the fight against climate change a top priority ahead of new UN talks next year.

In his first department-wide policy guidance statement since taking office a year ago, he told his 70,000 staff: "The environment has been one of the central causes of my life."

"Protecting our environment and meeting the challenge of global climate change is a critical mission for me as our country's top diplomat," Kerry said in the letter issued on Friday to all 275 US embassies and across the State Department.

"It's also a critical mission for all of you: our brave men and women on the frontlines of direct diplomacy," he added in the document seen by AFP.

He urged all "chiefs of mission to make climate change a priority for all relevant personnel and to promote concerted action at posts and in host countries to address this problem."

The clarion call comes ahead of key UN-led talks in Paris next year when the international community is due to try to set new emissions goals for greenhouses blamed for global warming.


The emission levels will be applicable to all countries, not just the developed world, and will come into effect in 2020.

The new agreement will replace the Kyoto treaty which is due to expire in 2015.

The United States, which along with China is the world's top polluter, did not ratify the Kyoto Treaty arguing that developing countries should also be obligated to cut greenhouse gases.

Kerry traveled to China last month and won agreement from Beijing that the US and China would cooperate closely ahead of the Paris talks as they aim to agree emissions targets.

In his policy guidance, Kerry set out a seven step program to enhance the focus on tackling climate change including boosting multilateral and bilateral efforts.

"We're talking about the future of our earth and of humanity. We need to elevate the environment in everything we do," he said.

It was, he said "our call to conscience as citizens of this fragile planet we inhabit."

Kerry is currently weighing a decision on whether the US should approve the building of a pipeline carrying oil from the tar sands of Alberta, in Canada, to US refineries in Nebraska and then Texas.

An environmental review found that the Keystone XL project would not add significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.

But opponents are calling on Kerry to reject the proposals by Canadian operators TransCanada, and a small but noisy protest was held late Thursday outside the State Department. — Agence France-Presse

source: gmanetwork.com

Insurance fears for flood-risk homes

Homeowners in flood-risk areas could find they are unable to get insurance for their properties unless a new agreement is reached in the next few weeks.

Until now, insurers have agreed to continue to offer cover to homes at vulnerable areas in exchange for government investment in flood defences.

However, this agreement, known as the Statement of Principles, is due to expire at the end of June.

And currently, insurers say they have no plans to renew the arrangement, as they feel the government is not spending enough on flood prevention.

Government & insurers standoff over flood cover

 

Gareth Lane, is head of home insurance at Confused.com.

He explains: "As things stand, no agreement has been reached between the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and the government."

The ABI is the body that represents the insurance industry.

"Talks are ongoing but without a new agreement the existing arrangement will end next month."

Impact on home insurance costs

 

To date, there has not been any major change in the pricing or availability of buildings insurance, says Lane.

But he warns that expiration of the agreement could have several effects.

"Insurers might significantly raise your home insurance excess – the amount you contribute towards a claim.

"In some cases, a person's excess for flood damage might exceed £10,000."

Equally, says Lane, insurance providers may raise premiums for those living in areas that are at risk of flooding.

"This would create a situation where home insurance becomes a significant household expense – or even unaffordable."

Insurers may withdraw cover entirely

 

In the worst case scenario, there are concerns that insurers may refuse to insure properties in high-risk flood areas altogether.

"This would be extremely serious, as lenders won't offer mortgages to homeowners who don't have buildings insurance in place," says Lane.

"This could affect the housing market negatively in some areas.

"At the very least, properties that are very expensive to insure could be seen as less desirable, and that could be reflected in their value."

Insurers & government say flood talks 'continuing'

 

If insurers no longer guarantee to provide cover in areas where no improvements in flood defences are planned, this could leave up to 200,000 homeowners across the country unable to get affordable home insurance.

This is according to the ABI.

The impact of this would be that these individuals would be unable to remortgage or sell up and move, as lenders won't offer mortgages to homeowners who don’t have buildings insurance in place.

A spokesman for the ABI says: "We continue in discussions with the government on the model we have developed to safeguard the availability and affordability of flood insurance for those at high risk.

"In addition, we need consensus on sustained targeted flooding investment and sensible planning decisions.”

Government 'working with insurers'

 

A government spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says: "We want flood insurance to be affordable and remain widely available.

"We are working with the insurance industry to ensure this will be the case."

What action can homeowners take?

 

However, the end of June is looming ever-closer and, as things stand, there is still no sign of an agreement being reached any time soon.

This leaves those living in flood-risk areas in a potentially precarious position.

"The problem is, there is not much that homeowners can do to directly influence these negotiations – and certainly not in the small time-frame available," says Lane.

"However, if you live in a flood-risk area and come home insurance renewal time you are not happy with the premium or excess offered, you don't have to accept this.

"It's definitely worth shopping around, as other insurers may well offer you a better deal."

How to get flood cover

 

Most home insurance policies will cover flood and storm damage.

But levels of cover do vary between insurers, so dig out your home insurance policy to find out exactly what you are covered for.

Preparation is key so keep abreast of wet weather warnings.


You can register online with the Environment Agency's Floodline Warnings Direct service, which provides flood warnings by phone, text or email.

A similar flood alert service is run by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).

If you live in England or Wales, the Environment Agency produces flood maps which are viewable online. Scottish residents should contact SEPA.

source: confused.com