Mass production

“I’m on this quest to dump out any water that gets trapped in plastic, because once it’s trapped in these plastic bottles, we have now lost it basically forever”

Police in Crete have opened a murder inquiry after staff at a trash sorting plant in Hania found a human head in a plastic bag traveling down the conveyor belt.

The head was initially thought to belong to a woman, on account of its long black hair, though an expert later confirmed that it belongs to man in his 30s or 40s, possibly of Asian descent.

India imposed a ban on many single-use plastics on July 1 in a bid to tackle waste choking rivers and poisoning wildlife, but experts say it faces severe headwinds from unprepared manufacturers and consumers unwilling to pay more.

What can be done to prevent Africa from becoming the world's biggest dumping ground for plastic?

That's one of the big questions facing United Nations members next week at a stock-taking on Earth's environmental woes.

From Antananarivo to Dakar via Nairobi and Conakry, African cities are scarred by huge landfills where plastic waste is measured in the thousands of tonnes.

Turkey's competition watchdog will soon announce its decision in a probe into automotive companies, Birol Küle, the head of the Competition Authority, said on Jan. 19. 

"We may announce the result of the investigation on automotive companies next week," he told private broadcaster CNN Türk.

Automotive production in Turkey, including light commercial vehicles, tractors, and automobiles, totaled 211,877 million units in the first quarter of 2021, a sectoral report revealed on April 12. 

The Automotive Manufacturers Association said that in January-March, the figure had slipped by 10% from a year ago.

The joint venture which will produce Turkey's first locally made car has appointed a former employee of France's Groupe Renault as its Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

Talin Yıldız was the Global Marketing Director of the French automotive giant, according to her LinkedIn profile. She has taken the position of CMO at Turkey's Automobile Joint Venture Group (TOGG) as of April 1.

China will ban non-degradable plastic bags in big cities. The restaurant industry will also be banned from using single-use straws by the end of this year in an effort to reduce waste.

The country is one of the largest plastic consumers in the world, and the plan aims to reduce 30% non-degradable single-use packaging in large cities' food establishments within 5 years.

The Ministry of Environment and Urbanization has decided to collect taxes from manufacturers and importers of oil, electronic goods, pharmaceuticals and beverage packaging under the name of "recovery share."

Since Turkey banned the handing out of most free plastic bags nearly a year ago, usage of the bags has fallen by over three-fourths, according to government data.

With usage dropping 77.27%, some 150,000 tons of plastic have been saved over the last 11 months, said Environment and Urbanization Ministry officials.