Fruit farming

The approval of Vietnam’s circular economy development plan, announced in June, aims to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent of GDP by 2030 (as compared to 2014). The commitment at COP26 by Vietnam to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is considered the main call for investment into green technologies and friendly-environmental projects, as well as approval of plans such as the aforementioned circular economy one. These messages have sent a strong signal regarding the country’s direction towards low-carbon, green development, and a circular economy, and could be a new driving force for Vietnam’s sustainable socioeconomic development, helping to improve its competitiveness and foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country. While governments have committed to lowering CO2, companies are also following suit for the good of the planet, Photo: Shutterstock As a result, numerous groups have made decisions in terms of investment and other operations … [Read more...] about Green standards top policies for fresh foreign ventures

That worries me. Seven years ago, I got to spend nine months living and studying in Ghent, a small, beautiful ancient city in Belgium with many well-preserved medieval castles and churches. I rented a cheap room for students. On the first day, the landlord gave me a tour of the house, showed me how to use the heater and kitchen utensils. In the kitchen, there was a corner with two steel frames holding a blue plastic bag and a yellow plastic bag with "IVAGO" printed on them, as well as a cardboard box next to the bags. The landlord told us that our waste must be sorted thus: the yellow bag for daily household waste; the blue for plastic waste, aluminum cans and milk cartons; and the big box for cardboard, pizza boxes and glass bottles, especially beer bottles. Then, after posting a waste collection calendar on the kitchen wall, he asked us to check the dates then decide among ourselves who would take out the garbage on which day. The calendar was colored yellow, blue and … [Read more...] about Will the sorting of waste at source become a non-starter?

In a town in northeastern Scotland, Debbie Banks looks for clues to track down criminals as she clicks through a database of tiger skins. There are thousands of photographs, including of rugs, carcasses and taxidermy specimens. Banks, the crime campaign leader for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a London-based charity, tries to identify individual big cats from their stripes. Once a tiger is identified, an investigator can pinpoint where it comes from. "A tiger's stripes are as unique as human fingerprints," Banks told AFP . "We can use the images to cross-reference against images of captive tigers that might have been farmed." Currently this is slow painstaking work. This photograph taken on April 10, 2019 shows Vietnamese Border Patrol officials holding a confiscated tiger skin and bones while the suspect Pham Van Hiep (2nd R) looks on at a Border Guard station in northern Vietnam's Quang Ninh province. Photo: AFP But a new artificial … [Read more...] about Earning its stripes: tech bid to crack tiger trade