Latest news with #Rochman
National Observer
20-06-2025
- Sport
- National Observer
A new campaign fights for zero waste at FIFA World Cup 2026
With the FIFA World Cup taking place in less than a year, host cities Vancouver and Toronto are working hard to accommodate both the incoming national teams and their fans with new infrastructure. But a conservation group hopes to convince the hosts to consider the tournament's enormous waste footprint, too. Oceana Canada, an independent ocean conservation charity, has announced a campaign to mitigate the waste generated by spectators at the games. Their #ReuseForTheWin campaign calls on MLSE and BCPavco to replace single-use food and beverage containers in Vancouver's BC Place and Toronto's BMO Field ahead of the tournament. According to Oceana Canada, this could avoid the littering of 2.3 million single-use items over the course of the tournament. 'We're asking the question, do you want to have a legacy of trash coming out of the venues? Or do you want to have these stadiums upgraded [so] that you can say we've set the new global sustainability sports standard?' said Anthony Merante, senior plastics campaigner at Oceana Canada. With Toronto's landfill nearing maximum capacity, and questions on how future waste is to be managed, an abundance of single-use items is daunting. Incorporating reusable food and beverage container systems turns off the tap of the overflowing waste-tub, says Merante. 'It puts less things in the landfill. It costs less for waste management, costs [less] for taxpayers, and it costs less directly for the city to clean up a lot of this garbage if we don't make the garbage in the first place,' Merante said. A large proportion of waste that doesn't make it to the landfill and instead enters water systems are 'single-use foodware,' says Chelsea Rochman, associate professor at U of T and director of Rochman Lab. Rochman, who studies plastics that end up in Lake Ontario, found that a quarter of litter in the lake comes from cups, bottles, fast-food packaging, straws and the like. As part of her research, Rochman also works with restaurants to transition take-out orders away from single use and toward reusables. Implementing reusables in an open system where people either bring their own containers or use reusables to be returned, has proven difficult. But with closed-loop systems, like stadiums, implementing reusable foodware systems is more plausible. With the FIFA World Cup taking place in less than a year, host cities Vancouver and Toronto are working hard to accommodate both the incoming national teams and their fans with new infrastructure. But a conservation group hopes to reduce waste. 'With an event, the people are there. They usually throw the material away on site, and they do produce a lot of waste,' Rochman said. 'There is a huge opportunity to make a change, because people will return [their reusable dishes]. They're not leaving with their foodware.' BC Place, one of two Canadian stadiums hosting World Cup matches, introduced reusable cups last year, as part of a pilot program in collaboration with ShareWares. Limited to premier suits and some other segmented areas, the program replaced around 20,000 single-use cups over a six month period. Return rates were only around 70 per cent in the pilot project, so a stadium-wide expansion would require more widespread, highly-visible bins and more education for attendees. But these fixes have produced better return rates at other events like Pride Toronto, said Emily Alfred, waste campaigner for Toronto Environment Alliance. '[Pride Toronto] lost about 30 per cent of their cups in the first year. They made some changes, and they only lost 15 per cent in the second year,' Alfred said. 'And they realized, okay, we need to make it clear that these aren't souvenirs. … They changed how they gave out the cups and how they took them back, and they cut their loss rate in half.' Alfred said with the right policies, World Cup 2026 could be remembered for its zero-waste legacy. Requiring that stadiums and event spaces provide access to water-refill stations and allow people to bring empty bottles will reduce waste from single-use water bottles. And enforcing reusable foodware in spaces where people dine-in, which includes stadiums, would round out the zero-waste project. 'If they can do it at FIFA [WC],' Alfred asked, 'why couldn't we have this in every stadium all the time? Why couldn't we have it in every movie theatre? Every McDonald's could have reusable dishes.'
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former NM Democratic Party official wants a Hispanic person to replace her
Julie Rochman. (Courtesy photo) It remained unclear on Friday who will become the treasurer for New Mexico's ruling political party, following the previous treasurer's resignation after just one month on the job. Julie Rochman, of Albuquerque, resigned as treasurer for the Democratic Party of New Mexico on Wednesday, in a resignation letter addressed to all of the party's members, who elected her and the rest of its leadership on April 26. Rochman wrote she is concerned DPNM's officers don't reflect New Mexico's diversity. Including herself, three of the four officers are not originally from New Mexico, two are older white women, one comes from a rural area and none speak Spanish, she wrote. 'Most distressing to me, in our minority-majority Hispanic state, is DPNM's lack of a single Hispanic executive,' Rochman wrote. 'This is a glaring deficit and strategic negligence.' Rochman wrote the party should replace her with 'someone who represents the very people we've overlooked for too long — ideally a Hispanic leader rooted in a rural space.' DPNM spokesperson Daniel Garcia told Source NM on Friday party rules do not determine a timeline for replacing its treasurer, however, 'DPNM wants to move expeditiously in finding a replacement to fulfill the position's work without interruption.' The new treasurer will be selected by the party's officers, Garcia said, including Chair Sara Attleson, Vice Chair Cam Crawford, Secretary Brenda Hoskie and the three congressional district vice chairs. 'Right now there are not specific individuals under consideration, but the process will be conducted in a thorough, transparent process,' Garcia said. Rochman wrote that Attleson and Crawford 'have squashed efforts for all officers to work together as a team' and 'intentionally excluded' her. 'They don't inform or engage with me,' Rochman wrote. 'In short, they've made clear that my expertise and input are unwelcome.' In a statement, Attleson denied Rochman's allegations that she wasn't welcome in the party, and defended its leaders' diversity. 'Contrary to her letter, we welcomed Julie to be a part of the movement we're building,' Attleson said. 'Unfortunately, shortly after the election, she decided this team wasn't an ideal fit for her.' Attleson pointed to the majority of New Mexico's statewide and federal elected leaders being Hispanic, including Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, along with several of the congressional district vice chairs. Rochman told Source NM it is great that so many elected officials in New Mexico are Hispanic, 'but it doesn't excuse the fact that the party doesn't look like the state.' Attleson also pointed to Crawford's background as a young Black man, and Hoskie's membership in the Navajo Nation and fluency in Diné. 'New Mexico Democrats proudly draw our strength from our diversity, which is apparent in our leadership,' Attleson said. 'At a time when billionaires are dictating public policy and Donald Trump is eliminating essential services, we have to stay focused on fighting for working class New Mexicans, not turning on each other.' Rochman wrote that she received a nondisclosure agreement in late May after weeks of no communication about ongoing party affairs and strategic planning. Rochman told Source NM in an interview that Sean Ward, the party's executive director, asked her to sign it. A copy of the unsigned NDA shows it would have barred Rochman from saying or doing anything that would damage the reputation of any of the party's officers, staff or volunteers. Rochman wrote in her letter that the NDA is inconsistent with her values and undermines her right to free speech and her obligation to speak truth to power. 'Essentially, it would be a gag order for the rest of my life,' she wrote. Rochman told Source NM that she feels the document's non-disparagement language 'was very targeted' at her because she doesn't get along with Attleson. 'It seemed very Trumpian to me,' Rochman said. 'There had been some other things that were rather Trumpian, and I just didn't want to be associated with an administration that was going to govern that way.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
National Observer
20-05-2025
- General
- National Observer
Simple store solutions could stop plastic produce bag waste
While plastic bags have bit the dust in Canada at grocery store checkouts, a Toronto study is looking at how increasing the use of reusable bags in the fruit and veggie section can slash a lesser-discussed polluter: single-use plastic produce bags. Undergraduate researcher Diego Arreola Fernández, supervised by Chelsea Rochman of University of Toronto's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, hopes his findings on alternatives to plastic produce bags can inform policy change for grocery chains and the federal government. Arreola Fernández, part of the U of T Trash Team led by Rochman, started last June visiting 29 grocery stores in downtown Toronto representing 11 major chains, including Loblaws, Metro and Longo's. Inside, he counted the plastic produce bags taken from dispensers every 10 minutes. 'We also looked at specific customer behaviour, so discreetly observing customers as they shopped for produce to see how many bags each one of them used, for what items, if they were using reusable bags or if they just put the things in their cart,' Arreola Fernández said. The analysis concluded that about 2,000 plastic produce bags are used every day at every grocery store. 'When we scale it to all the stores in [Toronto], it's hundreds of thousands of bags used in one day,' he said. 'The few stores that offered [reusable produce bags] had them in the corner, hidden,' researcher Arreola Fernández said. 'That's why we wanted to put them everywhere, to see if that could change.' Nationally, that's millions upon millions — and they're effectively all headed for the landfill. A 2021 Canada Plastics Pact study estimated only three per cent of film plastics in the country get recycled, including single-use produce bags. 'People don't think they can recycle them,' Rochman said. 'People reuse them often for dog poop, and then of course it's going to go into [the] landfill. But I also think that there's not a good market for recycling them because they're so thin.' How to change habits Phasing out single-use plastics at store checkouts has been a win for Canada this decade, but Arreola Fernández said plastic produce bags are still valued for their perceived food safety value, even though that argument doesn't hold water. 'For oranges, for avocados, for pineapple, for lemons, you're not going to eat the peel,' he said. 'You just literally cut it and then throw it away.' Along with shoppers' overreliance on these bags, Arreola Fernández said the stores were setting themselves up to fail. 'A lot of them had single-use produce bag dispensers in front of produce that arguably did not need them,' Rochman said. She and Arreola Fernández worked with Longo's from July to September to test how signage could get customers using fewer plastic produce bags. A 2023 study by Canadian researchers helped them pick more positive signage, such as telling customers that not grabbing plastic produce bags reduces waste and protects wildlife, and asking customers to consider putting produce in reusable bags or their cart. 'They showcased that the positive messaging was the one that worked the best,' Arreola Fernández said. After just testing signage, they added reusable mesh produce bags for purchase alongside plastic bag dispensers, at about a dollar for six bags. Only four of 11 grocery chains they consulted carried reusable bags, and in those stores that had them, they weren't prominent. 'The few stores that offered [reusable produce bags] had them in the corner, hidden,' Arreola Fernández said. 'That's why we wanted to put them everywhere, to see if that could change.' Lastly, they made the reusable bags free and ready for immediate use. Longo's stores saw doubling or even quintupling usage of the bags. 'All or nothing' At the store level, Rochman said every chain the study consulted was onboard with banning plastic produce bags. The problem, she added, is nobody will ditch them without a policy requiring all stores to follow suit — because they fear losing customers to chains that keep providing them. 'In Mexico City, we have paper,' Arreola Fernández said. 'They banned the [single-use plastic] produce bags.' They're not alone. California started its ban of plastic produce bags in January — the first US state to do so. 'It has to be all or nothing,' Rochman said. 'People aren't just going to voluntarily take them out of their store.' Still, Arreola Fernández was pleased by the initiative he observed Toronto shoppers taking to slash their plastics use. One man brought reusable produce bags to help his elderly mother shop, and one girl grilled her father to take fewer plastics. He and Rochman will return to each chain with the findings from their stores, and they'll also contact Environment and Climate Change Canada about presenting their results to federal plastics policymakers. Canadians will see whether the country's existing plastic bag ban remains in place under Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberal government, particularly as the plastics industry continues its push to upend it. One possible sign of things to come is Carney's appointment Tuesday of Julie Dabrusin, who has worked on the federal ban and campaigned against the negative health impacts of single-use plastics, as environment and climate change minister. In 2021, plastic manufactured items were labeled 'toxic' under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. However, the industry sued the federal government in a bid to disprove that plastic bags themselves are toxic, and won in court in fall 2023. Canada managed to keep the existing plastics ban and appeal the ruling last summer, with the federal court expected to release its decision this year. If the policy stays, Canada will regain power to decide which types of single-use plastics to remove from grocery stores next — including plastic produce bags. Arreola Fernández and Rochman hope to release their study findings this summer, to encourage more chains to reduce plastic bag dispensers, distance them from items that don't need packaging, and offer visible and affordable reusable produce bags. 'Soon, we could also see some changes with these stores that we collaborated with, hopefully as they implement some of the recommendations,' Arreola Fernández said.
