Gojek expands eco-friendly initiative with special

GoFood bags
The special bags have been given to more than 700 selected drivers who have ncompleted more than 10,000
GoFood orders. (Gojek/File)

Homegrown on-demand multi-service platform and digital payment technology group Gojek has equipped some
of its food delivery driver-partners in Greater Jakarta with special bags in a bid to reduce single-use plastic
bags.

A part of the group's #GoGreener initiative, the bags are said to have been given to more than 700 selected
drivers who had completed more than 10,000 GoFood orders.

Gede Manggala, Gojek's VP regional and Greater Jakarta operations, said the bags had larger compartments and
were designed to store and deliver hot as well as cold food.

"[The bags are] water-resistant and foldable to ensure flexibility when the drivers are picking up passengers,"
added Gede in a statement received by The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

The special bags are expected to encourage customers to reduce their daily disposable plastic bag use and cut
down on plastic waste. Plastic bags are persistently cited as a scourge on Indonesia’s environment, for example,
clogging up rivers.

Jakarta Environment Agency head Andono Warih said in the statement that the agency welcomed the initiative,
which is in line its campaign. “Hopefully Gojek and their driver-partners can be an example for other business
players."

Launched in 2019, the #GoGreener initiative aims to encourage all Gojek ecosystems, including drivers and
business partners and customers, to adopt an eco-friendly lifestyle.

Last year, the company claims that more than 97 percent of GoFood customers had opted to not buy single-use
cutlery when ordering foods at merchants who took part in the initiative, which resulted in saving over 3 million
of such cutlery, which would weigh 6.2 tons in total or translates to 3,000 times higher than the 132-meter-tall
National Monument. (wir/kes)
Lego's colorful plastic bricks to go green
A human sized Lego figure is on display at the Lego building event in Helsinki, on September 28, 2019.
(AFP/Alessandro Rampazzo)

There may be a global revolt against plastic, but Danish toymaker Lego, famous for its multi-colored plastic
building bricks, remains a raging success, even if it, too, aims to go green.

Once revolutionary, then a ubiquitous material, plastic is increasingly being shunned due to the lasting harm its
chemical components do to the planet. 

As a result, Lego has vowed that its iconic bricks will be 100 percent sustainable by 2030.

With pieces that are virtually unbreakable and reusable for generations, Lego -- whose name is a contraction in
Danish for "Leg Godt" or "Play Well" -- has always had sustainability as a leitmotiv, Tim Brooks, head of
corporate responsibility, told AFP.

Now, the company just has to adapt to environmental and consumer demands.

A study by the NPD market research group showed that 47 percent of Christmas shoppers worldwide chose not
to buy a toy due to sustainability concerns.

"Toy manufacturers are really embracing this topic... There's a lot of innovation in both packaging and material
for toys," Frederique Tutt, a toy industry expert at NPD, told AFP.

Lego, based in the western Danish town of Billund, has no plans to abandon plastic. Rather, it aims to improve
on the materials it uses.

Currently, most of its pieces are made of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), a petroleum-based substance
also used to make household appliances.

"We want to use plastic in a responsible way, and particularly where it is in a high quality, durable and reusable
application. And that's what Lego bricks are," said Brooks.

For now, two percent of its plastic pieces, or 80 of the around 3,600 construction pieces, are made of a
biosourced material, a sugarcane-based polyethylene.

These pieces are mostly trees, leaves and bushes in the kits, which do not have to meet the same durability
requirements as bricks, which have to stick together tightly.

It is a technical challenge, as Lego wants to ensure that customers do not notice any difference between the old
plastic and any new materials.

"We don't want you to notice it," Brooks insisted.

New pieces must have the same physical properties as the old ones: strength, color fastness and sticking power,
in order to remain compatible with older pieces.

Passing the brick

Over the years, the Danish company has evolved from simple brick kits to complex designs, such as its Harry
Potter or architecture themed kits, and has made a strong foray into video games, apps, movies, cartoons and
amusement parks.

That diversification has helped the group recover from its financial woes in the early 2000s. In 2019, it posted a
six-percent rise in sales.

Lego encourages customers to hand down their bricks to younger generations.

"The brick has been compatible since 1958. You can buy something from the shelves today that works with
something from the late 1950s," Brooks said.

The company estimates that 96 percent of consumers either hold on to their Lego kits or pass them on, stressing
the distinction between Lego's bricks and single-use plastics.

Recycling and wind farms

In addition to developing bioplastics, Lego, which is leading a project in the US providing second-hand kits to
disadvantaged children, is making cautious advances in the field of recycled plastic.

"Recycled materials is a very interesting area but you need to understand where that material comes from,"
Brooks said.

The company refuses to divulge its production secrets, but insists it reuses its own plastic waste products in its
production.

In 2014, Lego vowed to reduce its carbon footprint, partnering with the environmental group WWF. It says it
has relied solely on renewable energy sources since 2017.

"They made climate savings and shifted to more windcraft, now they're looking into alternatives to their
plastic," said the head of WWF Denmark, Bo Oksnebjerg, of the company's efforts.

Kirkby, Lego's parent company, has meanwhile invested almost $1 billion in wind farms.

Lego is also working to improve its packaging, reducing the amount of plastic bags separating pieces and
slashing the size of its boxes to reduce transport volumes.

It aims to use only recycled or renewable materials by 2025.

Antidia Citores, spokeswoman of the environmental group Surfrider Europe, stressed meanwhile that Lego
needed to also look at the production end, as replacing one plastic with another would not reduce emissions. 

"Changing one plastic for another is not a revolution, not in terms of pollution or carbon emissions," she said.

 Topics : Lego environment eco-friendly toys denmark

Bugatti touts green ambitions while storming full
speed ahead
Supercar manufacturer Bugatti, fresh off one of its best years, wants the world to know it has taken
environmental concerns to heart even as it prepares a next generation of heart-pounding -- and gas-guzzling --
speed machines.

The French automaker has implemented a series of measures to offset the carbon emitted by the 81 racers it
produced last year, including a shift to biogas and other green energy sources to power its manufacturing
facilities in northeast France.

But will Bugatti, which has hinted at "surprises" this year, be joining other luxury carmakers in shifting to
electric or hybrid models? 

The short answer: Not right now.

"For the next 10 years to come, only the W16 motor provides the emotion and the passion expected by our
supercar clients," Stephan Winkelmann, the firm's chief executive, said recently in reference to its massive 16-
cylinder engine.

Nonetheless, the Volkswagen-owned brand believes it can offset its own greenhouse gas emissions as well as
those of its clients, a challenge admittedly made easier by its limited production runs.

Fewer than 700 Bugattis are in circulation worldwide, and on average they are driven just 1,200 kilometers a
year.

That's probably because the average Bugatti owner has a collection of 42 cars to choose from, the brand says.

"In 2018, that represented the equivalent of 1,380 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted by Bugatti and its clients,"
the firm's managing director Christophe Piochon told journalists this week.

'Our responsibility' 

The firm has employed a full-time environmental coordinator since 2016 to oversee a range of carbon-offset
efforts, including buying up parcels of the Amazon rainforest to prevent them from being cleared by loggers or
farmers.

It has also planted 4,000 trees to help forests in its native Alsace region recover from a devastating infestation of
bark beetles in recent years.

"Bugatti is a highly visible brand, so it's important for us to take these steps and set an example for the
industry," Winkelmann said.

While big business has jumped on the tree-planting bandwagon, the science underpinning it is under question,
and such offset schemes have been derided as greenwashing that allows them to continue pumping CO2 into the
atmosphere.   

The car industry has come in for particular criticism as it is estimated to account for nine percent of total annual
greenhouse gas emissions, with a recent Greenpeace report accusing it of trying to delay fundamental change
towards zero-emission cars while raking in money with highly-polluting vehicles like SUVs. 

While the typical Bugatti buyer is no eco-warrior, "lots of them donate to environmental causes, even though
most people might not know it," said Tim Bravo, the firm's head of communications.

Green concerns certainly aren't weighing on its business yet.

"2019 was an excellent year for Bugatti, the best since 1998 in terms of revenue, deliveries and earnings,"
Winkelmann said.

Bugatti buyers -- a Chiron sells for 2.5 million euros ($2.8 million) before taxes while the Divo speedster goes
for a cool 5 million euros -- are shelling out for performance as well as luxury.
'Depends how you're driving' 

Bugatti does not reveal the names of its buyers, though some have shown off their prizes on social media, such
as football stars Cristiano Ronaldo or Karim Benzema, or the American boxing champion-turned-promoter
Floyd Mayweather.

When clients come to pick up their cars at the firm's headquarters in Molsheim, they get a demonstration of
what the 1,500-horsepower cars can do from one of Bugatti's in-house drivers.

One is France's Pierre-Henri Raphanel, an ex-Formula One and 24 Hours of Le Mans driver; the other is former
British racing champion Andy Wallace, who recently hit a record 490 km/h (300 miles per hour) in a Chiron.

As for fuel economy, "it depends on how you're driving," Wallace said, recounting a recent trip to pick up a
journalist at the Bale-Mulhouse airport some 115 kilometers away.

"In dense traffic and driving normally, I was at 13.5 liters per 100 km, which is pretty reasonable for a car like
this," he said.

But he admitted that's not the figure most buyers are likely to worry about.

"If you had a perfectly straight 60-kilometer road and you kept your foot down the whole way, you would
empty the 100-liter tank in seven minutes," Wallace said.
Reading a good book each day could boost kids’
academic performance
 

A new European research has found that reading high-quality books daily could boost a child’s academic
performance.

Led by the University of Malaga and University College London (UCL), the new study looked at questionnaire
responses from more than 43,000 Spanish children, which were completed when they were aged 10 to 11 and
again when they were 13 to 14.

The questionnaires asked the children about what they read (such as books, comics, short stories, newspapers
and magazines), how much time they spent reading, their attitudes toward school, and their achievement levels
in school. The children’s parents were also asked about their own reading habits and how involved they were in
their child’s education.

The findings, published in the journal Oxford Review of Education, showed that the more frequently children
read books at age 10 to 11, the better they performed in school tests at age 13 to 14.

More specifically, the pupils who enjoy reading high-quality books every day or nearly every day scored higher
by an average of 0.22 points overall on literacy tests than those who read books almost never, which the
researchers say is the equivalent of three months’ worth of additional secondary school academic growth.

Regular reading also appeared to have a positive effect on other academic tests, with these children also
showing a difference of around 0.20 standard deviations in mathematics.

“Although three months’ worth of progress may sound comparatively small to some people, it equates to more
than 10% of the three academic secondary school years measured—from when these young people are aged 11
years old to 14, which we know is a hugely developmental period,” explains co-author Prof. John Jerrim, of the
UCL.

However, the researchers found no benefit when children read newspapers, comics or magazines on a daily
basis and only a small benefit from reading short stories.

“In an increasingly digital world, it’s important that young people are encouraged to find time to read a good
book,” said Jerrim. “Other less complex and less engaging forms of reading are unlikely to bring the same
benefits for their cognitive development, and shouldn’t be counted as part of their reading time.

“This is particularly important for low achievers, where any association is likely to be strongest.”

Lead researcher Luis Alejandro Lopez-Agudo, of the University of Malaga, also added that “reading is a
fundamental skill that plays a key part in all our lives.”

“Our results provide further evidence that it’s not only whether young people read or not that matters—but also
what they read.”