Archived link

As we head into fashion month, we’re taking a step forward to also highlight the impact of our clothing with The Last Stop, a package emphasizing the long journey of our discarded clothing and their often forgotten final stage – somewhere across several cities in the Global South where communities are tasked with the brunt of the impact. In this series, we meet upcyclers and resellers who are at the center of the clothing waste crisis, hear from garment workers who know firsthand how much clothing is being made, and we offer steps you can take to help the problem.

...

The declining quality of clothing is working in tandem with insatiable consumption habits to exacerbate the global fashion waste crisis. While we are buying more fast fashion than ever — a report released by the United States Slow Fashion Caucus found that in the last eight years, the rate of textile waste grew 50% — clothing is being made with cheaper, fossil fuel-based materials and with poorer construction due to cost-cutting measures at factories. The Slow Fashion Caucus report also pointed specifically to fast fashion brands that are intentionally making cheaper clothes so consumers will continue to buy more and more.

Says Branson Skinner, cofounder of the Or Foundation, a nonprofit based in Accra working on solutions to problems caused by overproduction, “Certain communities have tried to recirculate clothes, but they are getting less and less material they can do that with — which is ultimately impacting the quality of clothes here too.”

...

Even with innovative ways to resell or repurpose textile waste, often it’s not enough. More discarded clothing is coming into Accra [in Ghana] than the community can manage. The lack of landfill infrastructure and the fact that recycling solutions for textiles, especially polyester, are poor at best means clothing ends up in the streets, in water systems, and in small neighborhoods where it piles up or gets burned.

In Chile, a massive fire fueled by fast fashion waste sent plumes of toxic smoke into the environment. And in Indonesia, where more than 2.7% of the globe’s textiles are made, garment workers know that the volumes they are tasked with producing contribute to an issue that will harm their own communities, but they have little choice.

This has become a dire issue across the Global South — and it just got more urgent. On January 2, a massive fire tore through the Kantamanto Market, devastating 60% of stalls, including Grace and Janet’s, and taking the livelihoods of thousands of sellers. Sellers have been trying to manage the textile waste that chokes Ghana's shores, but their ability to do so is even more hindered, a disaster for the environment and the families who now have no source of income. ...

Archived

Recovering South Korean shopaholic-turned-climate activist Lee So-yeon used to buy new clothes almost daily – until a $1.50 winter coat triggered an awakening that stopped her shopping entirely.

While looking at the ultra-cheap padded jacket at an H&M shop in the United States, where she was working at the time, Lee asked herself how any item of clothing could be sold so cheaply.

The 30-year-old embarked on a deep dive into fast fashion production methods and was horrified at the human, social and environmental toll hyperconsumerism is having on the planet – and on the mental health of women who make and buy cheap clothes.

[...]

The reason the clothes are so cheap, Lee learned, is because the women who sew for companies are paid little, while the business model itself is causing significant environmental harm.

[...]

Lee now organises clothing swaps with her friends and family, and has written a book to promote the idea of valuing garments for “the story behind it”, rather than chasing ephemeral trends.

She is part of a small but growing global movement seeking to promote second-hand clothing and help people – especially women – opt out of the cycle of over-consumption.

The app Lucky Sweater provides a platform for users to trade items from their closets with each other, focussing on sustainable brands, founder Tanya Dastyar [said].

[...]

Archived

The European Union and Moldova on Tuesday agreed on an energy security plan aimed at weaning the country off its dependence on Russian supplies and integrating it into the 27-nation bloc’s network.

The EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, said that Moldova would receive 250 million euros ($258 million) this year — 40% of it by mid-April — after Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom cut supplies on Jan. 1.

Daily electrical outages were imposed after hundreds of thousands of people in Moldova’s separatist pro-Russian Transnistria region were left without heating and hot water last month over an alleged $709 million bill for past supplies to Moldova.

The decision by Gazprom, which came into effect a day after a gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expired, halted gas supplies to Transnistria’s gas-operated Kuciurgan power plant, the country’s largest, which provided a significant portion of Moldova’s electricity.

The commission said that its financial package will provide support to consumers in Moldova – a candidate country for EU membership – to help pay their rising electricity bills. Some 60 million euros ($62 million) is earmarked for 350,000 people left in the cold in Transnistria.

...

Archived

Greenland’s legislature debated Tuesday whether to prohibit political parties from receiving contributions “from foreign or anonymous contributors” after President Donald Trump laid out ambitions for the United States to take over the vast island that belongs to Denmark.

Inatsisartut, Greenland’s parliament, discussed the proposal that would also ban any single party from receiving domestic private contributions that exceed 200,000 Danish kroner (about $27,700) in total, or 20,000 kroner (about $2,770) for a single contributor.

The government of Greenland asked the parliament’s five-member presidency to consider a bill aimed to “protect Greenland’s political integrity” that would take effect immediately.

The bill “must be seen in light of the geopolitical interests in Greenland and the current situation where representatives of an allied great power have expressed interest in taking over and controlling Greenland,” according to a translation of a parliamentary document in Danish outlining the measure.

The move comes ahead of parliamentary elections that must be held no later than April in Greenland.

Kent Fridberg, a senior legal officer at parliament, said he did not know whether any such foreign donors had already contributed to Greenland’s political parties and the idea for the bill was “basically a preventative measure.”

...

Fridberg noted Trump’s expressed interest in Greenland — and said some Russian politicians had voiced a similar interest — and that parties on the island are generally funded by public means.

...

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17978607

Archived

...

A European alliance has emerged with an alternative to tech’s global order.

They call their project OpenEuroLLM. Like DeepSeek, they aim to develop next-generation open-source language models — but their agenda is very different. Their mission: forging European AI that will foster digital leaders and impactful public services across the continent.

To support these objectives, OpenEuroLLM is building a family of high-performing, multilingual large language foundation models. The models will be available for commercial, industrial, and public services.

Over 20 leading European research institutions, companies, and high-performance computing (HPC) centres have enlisted in the the project. Leading their alliance is Jan Hajič, a renowned computational linguist at Charles University, Czechia, and Peter Sarlin, the co-founder of Silo AI, Europe’s largest private AI lab, which was acquired last year by US chipmaker AMD for $665mn.

They’re joined by an array of European tech luminaries. Among them are Aleph Alpha, the leading light of Germany’s AI sector, Finland’s CSC, which hosts one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers., and France’s Lights On, which recently became Europe’s first publicly-traded GenAI company.

...

Archived

...

A European alliance has emerged with an alternative to tech’s global order.

They call their project OpenEuroLLM. Like DeepSeek, they aim to develop next-generation open-source language models — but their agenda is very different. Their mission: forging European AI that will foster digital leaders and impactful public services across the continent.

To support these objectives, OpenEuroLLM is building a family of high-performing, multilingual large language foundation models. The models will be available for commercial, industrial, and public services.

Over 20 leading European research institutions, companies, and high-performance computing (HPC) centres have enlisted in the the project. Leading their alliance is Jan Hajič, a renowned computational linguist at Charles University, Czechia, and Peter Sarlin, the co-founder of Silo AI, Europe’s largest private AI lab, which was acquired last year by US chipmaker AMD for $665mn.

They’re joined by an array of European tech luminaries. Among them are Aleph Alpha, the leading light of Germany’s AI sector, Finland’s CSC, which hosts one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers., and France’s Lights On, which recently became Europe’s first publicly-traded GenAI company.

...

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17863364

A court [in the UK] has ruled that consent for two new Scottish oil and gas fields was granted unlawfully and their owners must seek fresh approval from the UK government before production can begin.

The written judgement on the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields [off Shetland] came after a case brought by environmental campaigners, Uplift and Greenpeace, at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

In his judgement, Lord Ericht said a more detailed assessment of the fields' environmental impact was required, taking into account the effect on the climate of burning any fossil fuels extracted.

...

Shell's Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea was originally approved by the previous UK Conservative government, and the industry regulator, in summer 2022.

Permission for the Rosebank oil development, 80 miles west of Shetland in the North Atlantic, was granted in autumn 2023.

In a 57-page judgement, Lord Ericht wrote that there was a public interest in having the decision "remade on a lawful basis" because of the effects of climate change - which he said outweighed the interests of the developers.

...

A court [in the UK] has ruled that consent for two new Scottish oil and gas fields was granted unlawfully and their owners must seek fresh approval from the UK government before production can begin.

The written judgement on the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields [off Shetland] came after a case brought by environmental campaigners, Uplift and Greenpeace, at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

In his judgement, Lord Ericht said a more detailed assessment of the fields' environmental impact was required, taking into account the effect on the climate of burning any fossil fuels extracted.

...

Shell's Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea was originally approved by the previous UK Conservative government, and the industry regulator, in summer 2022.

Permission for the Rosebank oil development, 80 miles west of Shetland in the North Atlantic, was granted in autumn 2023.

In a 57-page judgement, Lord Ericht wrote that there was a public interest in having the decision "remade on a lawful basis" because of the effects of climate change - which he said outweighed the interests of the developers.

...

...

Of the 2,206 active leases in the Gulf of Mexico, only a fifth are producing oil, according to records from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which regulates offshore drilling. Oil industry executives and analysts say the current number of 448 oil-producing leases is unlikely to grow significantly, even if Trump makes good on promises to expand leasing opportunities and expedite drilling permits.

The market is saturated with oil, making companies reluctant to spend more money drilling because the added product will likely push prices down, cutting into profits.

“It’s not the regulations that are getting in the way, it’s the economics,” said Hugh Daigle, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. “It’s true that there are a bunch of undeveloped leases in the Gulf, and it’ll stay that way if we continue to see low or stagnant oil prices.”

...

Archived

The head of mining giant Rio Tinto has once again underlined his company’s commitment to renewables, but questions remain about the future of its giant smelters and refineries in Queensland after the new LNP state government put a halt to new wind farm approvals.

The decision by the Queensland LNP – first reported by Renew Economy last week – puts a pause on the approvals of four major wind projects in the state – including the 1.4 gigawatt Bungapan wind project that is essential to Rio’s plans to wean its energy intensive industries off its dependence on coal.

The decision by the Queensland LNP, which follows their refusal in opposition to endorse the previous Labor government’s renewable energy targets, has rattled many in the energy industry.

The state has the lowest share of renewables of any in the country, a situation that would have been unchanged even with Labor’s target of 80 per cent renewables by 2030, but the LNP intervention seems sure to make it even more of a laggard.

...

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17862588

Archived

In a landmark move reinventing the working week in the United Kingdom, at least 200 British companies have signed up for a permanent four-day working week for all their employees without any loss of pay.

Together, these 200 companies employ over 5,000 people, and among these charities, marketing and technology firms are the best-represented, a report by The Guardian said quoting the 4 Day Week Foundation.

...

The change was first adopted by around 30 marketing, advertising and press relations firms. The suit was followed by 29 charity, NGO, and social care industry-based organisations, and 24 technology, IT and software firms. Later, another 22 companies in the business, consulting and management sectors also joined the bandwagon and permanently offered four-day weeks to staff, according to The Guardian report.

Archived

In a landmark move reinventing the working week in the United Kingdom, at least 200 British companies have signed up for a permanent four-day working week for all their employees without any loss of pay.

Together, these 200 companies employ over 5,000 people, and among these charities, marketing and technology firms are the best-represented, a report by The Guardian said quoting the 4 Day Week Foundation.

...

The change was first adopted by around 30 marketing, advertising and press relations firms. The suit was followed by 29 charity, NGO, and social care industry-based organisations, and 24 technology, IT and software firms. Later, another 22 companies in the business, consulting and management sectors also joined the bandwagon and permanently offered four-day weeks to staff, according to The Guardian report.