In our spirit of Armchair Travel, let’s head to the United Kingdom to learn about Ellen MacArthur. Dame Ellen MacArthur sailed solo around the world in 2005, setting a new speed record at 71 days. Imagine carrying everything with you that you need and battling the elements on your own, including intense storms near Antarctica. She returned a changed person, realizing that we really do live in a world with finite resources, having increased respect for nature and with a better understanding of systems.
In 2010 she set up the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which has become an internationally respected charitable organization driven to help our world transition from a linear to a circular economy. Here are excerpts taken directly from their website, since I can’t phrase it better than this:
“We’re a charity committed to creating a circular economy, which is designed to eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature. It’s an economic system that delivers better outcomes for people, and the environment.
Our pioneering work on plastics has achieved an unprecedented level of collaboration to eliminate plastic pollution, bringing together more than 1,000 public and private organisations, large and small, from across sectors and industries around the world, including many of the world’s largest producers, users, and recyclers of plastic packaging, to work towards a common goal of creating a circular economy for plastics.”
This organization creates evidence-based original research on the benefits of a circular economy, and how it can contribute to solving global challenges. They partner with many other organizations and groups to collaborate and help accelerate change. There is also a focus on education and awareness to help share the vision of circularity and make information accessible to many.
The foundation also works to drive change through planning and developing concrete actions. For example, consider the following three actions regarding plastics:
• Eliminate all problematic and unnecessary plastic items, for example through re-design.
• Innovate to ensure that the plastics needed are reusable, recyclable, or compostable.
• Circulate plastic items to keep them in the economy and out of the environment as waste.
Dame Ellen MacArthur is truly a role model, and her foundation is helping make great strides in the transition to circularity.
As a perfect example of the circular economy, please come check out our Re-Gift Exchange on November 30 at the Mount Pleasant Community Association. If you have items to bring/donate that someone else may like as gifts, please do bring them along! This is your chance to re-gift that item that you were given, that perhaps you feel guilty about giving away… Someone else may just pick it up and love it or know someone who would! It doesn’t get much more circular than Christmas shopping in your community for re-gifting treasures! However, even if you don’t think you have anything to give away (that’s nice enough to re-gift), feel free to come browse! We’ll also have crafts for kids, and a little café set up! We had really positive feedback about our event last year, so we’re excited to bring it back again, hopefully even better.
If you’d like to find out more about our committee, check out our Facebook page “Green Initiatives” or contact us at [email protected]. If you want to get involved and be a part of making Mount Pleasant a greener community, we would love to have you join the committee.
Have a great month,
The MPCA Green Initiatives Committee
Recommended References:
2. www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org
Click here to the Mount Pleasant Community News home page for the latest Mount Pleasant community updates.
