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Finally – PR & Media Together Are Making The Right Headlines About Climate Crisis

 

There’s not a day that goes by when we don’t see a climate, environmental or sustainable story making the headlines. I think it is safe to say that these topics are now high on the daily news agenda and it is about time. I have been actively involved working on raising the profile of the issues surrounding climate change, the impact of humans on the plant and sustainability for the last two decades…and during this time it has been a hard PR slog. As till now there has been a lack of apathy with the UK media.

I recall an environmental journalist working on one of the national broadsheets in the 90’s explaining to me his challenge of convincing his news editor to run a climate change story, that I was working on at the time. He said that unless it was directly affecting people here in the UK, it wasn’t a strong story for his editor – a story about climate change in Africa wasn’t going to interest his paper. Well fast-forward to 2019, where we are all experiencing the global butterfly effects of climate change or should I say what has since been upgraded to ‘climate crisis’ and what is happening in Africa, India, Singapore or any other part of the world is now our news.

Recently, The Guardian announced that it was updating its style guide to introduce terms that more accurately describe the environmental crisis facing the world. Where instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”, although the original terms are not banned. “We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” said the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. “The phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.”

This news narrative is also being driven by the private sector, as corporations have started to wake up to the long-term implications for their businesses of global warming. Companies, such as Coca-Cola, Google, Apple and Tesla are vocal about climate change and their pursuit of sustainability; and this is also changing PR.

However, some argue that this kind of media reporting creates public fear and that a ‘war on the climate crisis’ is not a positive or a balanced media response.

I say that we have wasted the last twenty years trying to put this issue on the news agenda in order to raise public awareness about the state of the climate, an issue that affects us all. We are now at a tipping point and according to the eminent, Sir David Attenborough we only have ten years to make the planetary changes that we need to survive.

At last the PR and media industry are together making the right headlines about climate crisis. It’s a start. We need consistency across all media channels. The clock is ticking.

 

#WorldEnvironmentDay2018

If you did not know already, today is World Environment Day – to raise awareness about protecting the environment, United Nations (UN) has designated June 5 as World Environment Day. Each World Environment Day is organised around a theme that focuses attention on a particularly pressing environmental concern.

The theme for the World Environment Day 2018, “Beat Plastic Pollution”. Every World Environment Day has a different global host country, where the official celebrations take place. This year it is India.

We’re all guilty of using too much disposable plastic – and despite the EU’s plans to end all non-recyclable plastic by 2030, change can’t happen soon enough. So with the theme #BeatPlasticPollution – here’s four simple things we can all do to help clean up the planet:

 

  1. Invest In  A Canvas Bag
    Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags with each one taking an average of 100 years to decompose and that’s only if it’s exposed to sunlight and air, which landfill rubbish often isn’t. That means that plastic bag you are using will probably outlive us all. Instead carry a canvas bag.
  2. Say No To Straws
    Straws are the fifth most common item of rubbish – taking up to 500 years to break down! Only a fraction of plastic straws that we use for our drinks are recycled and the majority end up in landfill, in rivers and the sea, where they seriously damage marine life. The EU has proposed a total ban on plastic straws and cutlery, and many restaurants and bars have already switched to biodegradable options in a bid to help the environment.
  3. Use A Reusable Cup
    Only one in 400 coffee cups are recycled in the UK and many can’t be reprocessed due to their inner plastic coating, designed to stop the liquid making the cardboard soggy. Now coffee shops are rewarding customers for bringing in their own reusable cups. Starbucks offer customers with reusable cups 25p off their beverage, they also sell reusable cups for £1, and will soon begin to charge 5p more for takeaway paper cups; Pret and Costa give 50p off any hot drink; while Caffé Nero gives double loyalty stamps; and independent shops have their own discount schemes.
  4. Drink Tap Water
    Globally, we buy 1m plastic bottles every minute and each year 17m barrels of oil are used to produce them. Instead, invest in a reusable water-bottle.

 

 

Photo Credit: Wikipedia/Jedimenta44