The new ultra-modern campaign ship of Greenpeace, the Rainbow Warrior III, has made its maiden voyage on Wednesday in Bremerhaven. “It’s a beautiful boat,” said captain Joel Stewart as the ropes were untied to launch the 58-metre (190-foot) long sailing ship. The boats hull is green, with a colourful rainbow and a white dove on the side. The first ride took the Rainbow Warrior III into the River Weser towards the northern German port of Bremerhaven.

The third boat was build twenty-six years after the original Rainbow Warrior was sunk by French agents in New Zealand. There Greenpeace attempted to stop France’s nuclear testing in the Pacific. The ship was constructed with the help of three million donors, who contributed to the initially estimated 23 million euros (32 million dollars) needed for the construction work. Brigitte Behrens, Greenpeace’s director in Germany said, that this was a very important day. “We are continuing what colleagues began many years ago by using a boat to denounce attacks on the environment,” she added.

The new ship was due in Hamburg Thursday and in Amsterdam — its home port and Greenpeace’s headquarters — on October 28.
After an initial tour in Europe, the 680-tonne ship’s first mission will be to set sail for the American coast before heading along the Amazon in Brazil to campaign against climate change.

By the year 2050, there’s expected to be 9 billion people living on our planet. Can we feed all those people without destroying the earth? That’s the question a new report is trying to answer. A team of researchers from the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Germany worked together on a major article that will be published in Nature journal in a few days, and their conclusion is this: the only way forward is to create a global plan for sustainable agriculture.

What is that plan? According to the researchers, it will include key steps like halting farmland expansion into our tropics, using existing farmland more effectively, changing our diet patterns and cutting down on the food waste we produce. And those steps are crucial to keeping the planet healthy. Farm land and pastures now cover about 40% of our planet and agriculture accounts for a third of all the emissions produced around the globe. If there’s a sustainable solution to the future of farming and producing food, it could mean a major breakthrough for our environment.

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture just released a report that shows that the cocoa supply in West Africa is under threat. As our climate gets warmer and warmer, the soil heats up, and the normal patterns of rainfall are also changing quickly. Why is that important? Because Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are home to half of the world’s cocoa supply.

According to the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, which is based in Cali, Colombia, by the year 2050 the amount of land that’s now used for cocoa production will be drastically reduced, and instead moved to different plots of land that don’t offer suitable growing conditions. And since the demand for chocolate is on the rise but production is falling, we’ll probably end up paying a lot more for the sweet treat.

The study’s authors recommend finding cocoa plant varieties that are heat-resistant and can adapt to changing climate conditions.

Jeremy Rifkin is the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, he has written seventeen books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. GLOBAL IDEAS talked to him about ways to stop global warming, his new economic visions and the way we maybe need to change our way of life.

Disposable diapers may be a blessing for new parents. But they’re an environmental nightmare. They end up in landfills by the millions and the plastics in them can take hundreds of years to decompose.

To combat the problem, the UK’s first diaper recycling plant has opened in West Bromich in the Midlands.  It will work with local operators who collect waste from hospitals, nursing homes and  child care facilities.  Operated by Canadian company Knowaste, the facility is to use technology to sterilize and separate the materials to recover plastic and fiber that can be used for making new products such as roof tiles and commercial tubes.

The company estimates that the plant, which will also recycle female hygiene products, will save about 110,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year. It plans to open a further four facilities in the coming years.

What do you think? Could something like this  help to reduce the planet’s plastic footprint?