14 January, 2025

Martha Henriques As fires continue to burn in LA, we hear from Lucy Sherriff, a member of our team who reports on climate change. This time, Lucy had to face the devastating impacts of an extreme weather event in her own backyard. Also this week, we address one of the urgent changes that Future Earth readers want to see for the climate and nature in 2025: dealing with plastics. There will be more responses to readers' climate hopes in the coming weeks.

THE BIG PICTURE 'I have nothing to go back to' The remains of BBC reporter Lucy Sherriff's home in LA. Credit: Lucy Sherriff/BBC Lucy Sherriff was among many LA residents who had to evacuate not once, but multiple times as wildfires spread uncontrollably through the city. She found out about the mandatory evacuation for her area via neighbours, rather than by a formal alert. Returning to the city to report on the blaze, Lucy found her own home had been destroyed. Once she'd evacuated, she like millions of other LA residents received an evacuation notice – though this one was later retracted as a false alert. Read Lucy's first-hand account here.

CLIMATE CONVERSATION  Can we make less plastic in 2025? Plastic pollution has made its way to some of the world's most remote places. Credit: Getty Images Many readers wrote in with serious ambitions for ways you'd like to see the climate and nature crises addressed this year – thank you to everyone who contributed. As well as high hopes, some readers expressed frustration at the pace of climate action, and scepticism about how much change we will see this year. ‌ A common theme is that many of the solutions you wanted to see more of are already within our reach. From better housing insulation, to curbing urban sprawl, to reducing reliance on single-use plastics – many effective solutions already exist. Other readers were interested in solutions we haven't yet mastered, but have enormous potential – such as the clean energy promise of nuclear fusion. We'll hear more on that in the coming weeks. ‌ Today, though, we hear from the first of our readers, Daisy Ana, based in New Mexico in the US. Addressing plastic pollution is top of Daisy's mind, particularly holding the petroleum industry accountable. ‌ I've been through our archive to find stories that might provide some useful reading for those wishing to delve deeper on plastics solutions, from cutting production to tackling greenwashing.

Many types of plastic produced today are very hard to recycle. Credit: Getty Images Writer Kelly Oakes underlines the value of imagining a world where we no longer rely on plastics. As she writes, "imagining how our lives would change if we suddenly lost access to plastic can help us figure out how to forge a new, more sustainable relationship with it". ‌ For transformative real-world action on plastics, you could look to Vanuatu. The Pacific island nation began banning single-use plastics in 2018, starting with plastic bags and straws. Life soon transformed on the island, as lagoons that had been chronically choked with plastics began to clear. ‌ Next, Vanuatu expanded the list of banned items to include mesh nets for packaging fruit, Styrofoam trays, disposable plastic cutlery and plates, coffee and tea stirrers, single-use plastic cups, plastic egg cartons and plastic flowers. And the island appears far from finished – plastic bottles could be next in line. Watch Vanuatu's early transformation. ‌ Dialling down production One key factor to note is that there are no plastics producers on Vanuatu – all the island nation's plastics are imported. But what about tracing the problem back to producers, and the petroleum industry that supplies their raw materials? ‌ Global plastics negotiations got stuck on this point in December 2024, when the UN talks aiming to reach a global plastics treaty fizzled out. Oil-producing nations resisted calls for a reduction in plastics production. These nations preferred a focus on recycling and reuse. Higher-ambition nations wanted a legally binding pledge to cut production. Read Esme Stallard's report on the talks' collapse here. But a treaty isn't out of the question: you can expect negotiations to resume this year, and you can look out for action at national level too. ‌ And in the meantime, for those wishing to know if the "plastic-free" or "biodegradable" claims made on packaging are true, here's our guide to spotting greenwashing. ‌ We'll be diving into another reader's climate hopes again next week.