United Nations’ Green Game Jam follow up, plus EU ban on single-use plastic items begins now!!!! It’s climate champion Jerome Foster, II and the Well Done Foundation.
UN Green Game Jam Winners Announced, EU Ban on Single Use Plastic Begins Now, Meet Jerome Foster, II and the Well Done Foundation
UN GREEN GAME JAM WINNERS ANNOUNCED
Back on June 16th, The Climate Daily reported on the UN’s 2nd annual Green Game Jam. The UN’s Playing For The Planet Alliance launched its 2nd annual Green Game Jam on June 5th, (World Environment Day).
Over 25 studios from around the world – with a collective player base of over one billion – have collaborated and committed to implementing green activations in and out-of-game such as new modes, maps, themed events, storylines and messaging. Guiding the studios is a theme centred around conserving and restoring forests and oceans.
We reported on Green Game Jam on June 16th because that was the day the gaming public could begin voting on their favorite activations, judged across five categories, including a “Player’s Choice” award.
Well the winners were finally announced, and a huge congratulations to Wooga Studio for nabbing the top spot for their green activation in the Game June’s Journey with 69,988 votes!
Rounding out the Top 5 were:
June’s Journey Wooga
Hungry Shark World Ubisoft Future Games of London
Anno 1800 Ubisoft Mainz
Hungry Shark Evolution Ubisoft Barcelona
Big Farm: Mobile Harvest Goodgame
We can’t wait to see all of these great ideas live in game! And there are more Awards to come! Participant Choice, UNEP Choice, Most Adoptable and First to Implement.
Stay tuned.
DEEPER DIVE: Playing4ThePlanet, GreenGameJam Winners
E.U BAN ON SINGLE-USE PLASTIC ITEMS BEGINS NOW!!!!
A lot of us think of July 4th, Independence Day as a uniquely American thing. Well as of this year, humans can now think of July 3rd as EU’s Independence Day — from single-use plastics. The EU no longer allows 10 single-use plastic items. The 10 items–
- cotton bud sticks
- cutlery, plates, straws and stirrers
- balloons and sticks for balloons
- food containers
- beverage cups
- beverage containers
- cigarette butts
- plastic bags
- packets and wrappers
- wet wipes and sanitary items
This has been a three-year process beginning with the publication of the EU plastics strategy where EU Member states outlined the need for a legislative proposal on single-use plastics.
And why does this ban matter to us, non-EU citizens? Well, the goal of this ban is to reduce the impact of marine litter in Europe. And if it can happen there, it can here.
How will this work? After all, the EU is a 27- nation confederation. For example:
As part of France’s ‘law on the circular economy and the fight against waste‘ adopted in February 2020, most fruit and vegetable packaging will also be banned, as will plastic tea bags, confetti and plastic toys offered as part of kids menus.
In Germany, measures approved in November added EPS polystyrene food containers to the single use plastics included in the directive. In Luxembourg, SUPs have been banned from being sold at festivals as of July 3rd. In Greece, meanwhile, they’ve been outlawed from use in government agencies since February, the first ban of its kind. Other countries like Italy and Belgium are also introducing a plastics tax or levy to disincentivize the use of plastics.
DEEPER DIVE: Implementation Plan, EC.Europa, MyModernMet
CLIMATE CHAMPION JEROME FOSTER, II
Not long ago, The Climate Daily reported on a nifty online magazine called The Climate Reporter. In that piece, I praised the great articles and videos the contributors to The Climate Reporter submitted, and I also lamented about how The Climate Reporter went on hiatus. I ended my reporting hoping against hope for the end of its hiatus. Well now we’ve discovered why the hiatus in the first place.
Jerome Foster, II, The Climate Reporter’s founder, was busy being a freshman in college! Oh and also he’s been busy as executive director of OneMillionOfUs.org. The mission of One Million of Us is to educate and empower young people to become civically engaged and to vote.
Foster began his climate activism in middle school, but only after realizing adults weren’t going to fix the problem. In an interview with People Magazine, Foster talked about seeing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth as a little boy. He said, “By middle school, I saw the urgency wasn’t being met.” His own sense of urgency led him to start an Instragram where he sought to educate his classmates on climate change. That evolved to organizing Fridays for Future school strikes in Washington, DC, founding a VR company to create dire global warming VR experiences and of course, The Climate Reporter.
When asked if this was always his goal-climate activism, Foster said, “I wanted to do astrophysics and coding. But there’s no future to plan for when you’re seeing the climate get worse and nothing’s being done. It’s up to us to save our future.”
THE WELL DONE FOUNDATION
An old Greek proverb says, “Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,”
Perhaps that was on the mind of former oil and gas executive Curtis Shuck when he wandered through the Golden Triangle region of Montana and was struck with the idea to cap the orphan wells littering the otherwise beautiful countryside.
The joke is, “if you have a great idea, lie down, take a nap. It’ll pass.” Shuck didn’t. Instead, he founded the non-profit Well Done Foundation in 2019 to cap methane gas-spewing, orphan wells. The foundation’s mission is to fund awareness, plugging and land-resurfacing work necessitated by orphaned oil and gas wells, according to its website.
Orphan wells are the boreholes left behind when the well becomes too unproductive to continue, and runs dry, or when the company in charge of the well goes bankrupt. Often found alongside oil and natural gas are deposits of methane gas. It’s the methane gas that continues to spew into the atmosphere long after an orphan well runs its course.
Why does this matter to us? Methane gas is a super GHG—capable of trapping atmospheric heat an order of magnitude greater than CO2, that’s why. The average American car emits the equivalent of 4 tons of CO2 from its tailpipe annually. The average orphan well emits about 2,500 tons CO2 equivalent per year. IOW, each well emits about as much GHG as 600 cars. U.S. state environmental regulators estimate 56,000 uncapped orphan wells exist on American soil. The federal government and environmentalists put that number closer to 3.2 million.
Shuck funds his foundation’s work through the sale of carbon credits and from donations. At an average cost of $30K and with an average crew of 4 people, capping orphaned wells is a green growth industry, providing well-paying jobs for decades to come. Yet another reason this matters to us.
Oh, and why the quote? Because Shuck is well aware he may die before all the orphan wells are capped, but he also knows that’s not a reason not to try.
DEEPER DIVE: The Conversation, Recycling Today, WellDoneFoundation