In Philadelphia, recycling efforts go to waste

Alarmed by the mountains of plastic waste leaching into Indonesia's waters, two best friends are taking on the environmental menace by turning crisp bags and shampoo packets into paving bricks.

Five hospitals in the United Kingdom have installed new machines from a Cardiff-based company which melts items made of polypropylene, such as face masks, separating out impurities to make plastic blocks recycled into chairs, buckets or 3D-printed items.

Nina Gomes is no average environmentalist. With bright pink goggles and just 4 years old, she picks trash with her father from the water along the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. With Nina in tow, Gomes sets out on a paddleboard into the picturesque but polluted waters of Rio's Guanabara Bay, where she grabs plastic bottles and bags and puts them in a mesh net.

Thousands of tons of refuse are being cleared from Germany's flood-hit regions. Removing unprecedented mountains of belongings is a challenge, but it is also helping residents begin to move forward.

A distillery in the Highlands of Scotland is using waste from its whisky production process to create biofuel for trucks. Managers at the distillery say the fuel has the potential to save about 250 tons of carbon emissions for trucks on the road.

Volunteers from Lima’s soup kitchens are calling on supermarkets to allow them to collect any excess food, to feed the rising number of families relying on their services to survive. In Peru, poverty has risen over the course of the pandemic to affect almost a third of the population.

With greenhouses as far as the eye can see, the southern Spanish region of Andalusia has been nicknamed the "Sea of Plastic". Intensive farming is the norm and it helps feed the European market with fruit and vegetables all year long. It also produces an estimated 33,000 tonnes of plastic waste every year. Until two years ago, this waste was exported to countries such as China, Pakistan and Turkey. But now that these countries are refusing to take rubbish from rich countries, the "Sea of Plastic" is faced with the urgent challenge of recycling its own waste. Our correspondents report.

Syrians use olive waste to create 'birin', a biomass fuel to be used to heat homes during the winter as an alternative to diesel, which few families can now afford in Syria's Idlib province.

The Black liberation group MOVE was founded in 1972 in the US city of Philadelphia. It combined a wide array of ideologies, including environmentalism, animal rights and an end to capitalism. The group's activities were closely watched by law enforcement, at times leading to armed confrontation. Tensions peaked on May 13, 1985, when the Philadelphia police bombed the MOVE house, killing 11 Black people. Despite two grand jury investigations and a civil suit, no one was ever criminally charged for the bombing. More than 35 years later, FRANCE 24's correspondents returned to Philadelphia to revisit the day the city bombed its own citizens.

Tetiꞌaroa, an almost deserted Pacific island northeast of Tahiti, is a sanctuary for birds, sea turtles and all sorts of marine life. The atoll is perhaps most famous for being bought by US actor Marlon Brando. But this picturesque French Polynesian island is being invaded by plastic waste washed ashore by ocean tides. As a result, a team of volunteers have been to Tetiꞌaroa for a clean-up operation. Our colleagues from Polynésie la première report, with FRANCE 24's Jennie Shin.

Award-winning biowaste converters are helping farmers in Ivory Coast turn mountains of agricultural by-products into compost for their fields or gas for their cooking stoves.

An American company has developed a liquid that can extend the shelf life of fruit and vegetables. Apeel is based on natural compounds and controls the factors that cause fruit to age.