Being Green

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Cassie Carstens of BirdLife South Africa about its Bird of the Year, the endangered Cape Parrot, and a project that aims to increase its numbers in the wild.

The popularity of e-cigarettes continues to grow in South Africa with estimates suggesting that close to half a million people are now vaping. In Australia, the situation is pretty much the same, and environmental organisations there have sounded the alarm saying the sharp increase in the number of people vaping, presents “a new and serious environmental issue. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook is joined by Keith Anderson, CEO of the e-Waste Association of South Africa (e-WASA), to discuss the most environmentally-friendly way to dispose of an e-cigarette.

There has been a lot of talk this summer about the temporary closure of several Cape Town beaches due to pollution from sewage spills. The City pumps millions of litres of raw sewage into the sea every day from marine pipelines in Green Point, Camps Bay, and Hout Bay. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Dr Kevin Winter, a researcher at UCT’s Water Institute, about whether there is a better way for Cape Town to deal with its sewage. www.groundup.org.za

Global warming, combined with the fact that there tend to be fewer shaded areas and more heat-absorbing surfaces in cities, results in a phenomenon known as urban heat islands, which can have a negative impact on our health. But a new modelling study, led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health published, has found that planting more trees could decrease deaths from higher temperatures in cities by as much as a third. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to co-author of the study, Mark Nieuwenhuijsen.

The Amazon rainforest is seen as vital to curbing climate change. But in Brazil, under the leadership of former President Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation accelerated reaching record levels. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Dr Erika Berenguer, a forest ecologist at both Oxford and Lancaster Universities, about how this might change under newly installed president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has promised to end deforestation and make Brazil a green superpower.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to University of Pretoria meteorology professor, Willem Landman, about forecasts that the El Niño weather phenomenon will likely make a return later this year, resulting in unprecedented heatwaves and an increase in extreme weather events.

Twenty or 30 years ago, one of the most feared problems facing mankind was the increasingly large hole in the Earth’s ozone layer. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to environmental lawyer, Ernesta Swanepoel, about the good news that it is healing. A United Nations report published this week shows that, thanks to international action, the ozone layer is on track to be fully recovered across most of the world by 2040.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Dr Katharina von Dürckheim, leader of Wildlife Free to Roam research programme at Stellenbosch University about her research into the African elephant’s extraordinary sense of smell.

As you hit the beaches or swimming pool over the holidays, did you know that the materials most commonly used to make your bikini or swimming trunks - nylon, polyester, and spandex - are plastic based? And that while there are alternative biodegradable fabrics, like organic cotton and viscose, currently there isn’t one that has all the performance qualities needed for a swimsuit. As a result, many eco-friendly brands are relying on the next best alternative, fabric made from recycled plastic, including Cape Town based label, Gabrielle Swimwear. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to its designer and managing director, Gabrielle Kool.

Globally, the agriculture sector is responsible for around one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, and the biggest chunk of that comes from livestock. Many scientists believe eating less meat is an important step to reducing the environmental impact of the methane-rich belches of sheep and cows. So does this mean you have to abandon your favourite burger treat? Not if a Cape Town company has any say in the matter. In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Brett Thompson, CEO and co-founder of Woodstock-based Mzansi Meat, that earlier year produced Africa’s first cultivated beef burger.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Ian Michler, co-author of the book “Living in Two Worlds: Addressing Humanity’s Greatest Challenges”. It documents the four-month non-motorised journey he and fellow conservationist, Ian McCallum, took across six southern African countries, the insights they gained, and the questions their journey raised about how we are protecting the animals that share this world with us.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Dr Robin Fears, project leader of the InterAcademy Partnership, a global network of academies of science, medicine and engineering, who was one of the speakers at a World Science Forum panel on the impact of climate change on health.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Talitha Noble, conservation manager at the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation, about its sea turtle programme which is the beneficiary of a charity event taking place this weekend. The DELI2SEA ocean awareness fun run is taking place on Sunday from the Chardonnay Deli in Constantia to the Dalebrook tidal pool and café in Kalk Bay. Tickets on Quicket, and the charitable entry includes a donation to the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation, in particular, its turtle programme.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Eben Olderwagen, the environmental project manager at Vergelegen Wine Estate, about its involvement in the Quagga Project and the imminent birth of a foal on the farm.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Dr Nicholas Simpson, Senior Advisor and Lead for Knowledge and Practice at the African Climate Mobility Initiative. He delivered a paper earlier this week at the United Nations Climate Conference, COP27, which says that by 2050, 113 million people across Africa will be forced to move because of climate change.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Soil for Life’s CEO, Cindy Buské, and Fine Music Radio’s station manager, Eon de Vos, about a joint project to plant an FMR vegetable garden at WIN Educare in Delft on the Cape Flats. To find out more or make a donation, visit: www.fmr.co.za/soil-for-life/.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Olivia Rumble, a director of Climate Legal who specialises notably in environmental law, climate change, climate finance and development, about the financial expectations of Africa’s negotiators attending this year’s edition of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP27, which gets underway on Sunday.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to 24-year-old Capetonian Gabriel Klaasen, who is Youth Coordinator at the African Climate Alliance about the message young South Africans will be taking to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) which gets underway on 6 November in Egypt.

In this week’s edition of Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to Keith Anderson, CEO of the e-Waste Association of South Africa (e-WASA) about which electronic items in our households are potentially dangerous for the environment, and how to correctly dispose of them.

In Being Green, Glynis Crook speaks to David Parry-Davies, founder and director of the annual Eco-Logic Awards about this year's winners.