Environment

How plastic bottle caps became a symbol of EU regulation

In July 2024, a European Union law came into force requiring plastic bottle caps to remain attached to their bottles. The regulation was widely mocked by social-media jokesters and Silicon Valley billionaires alike. This, people said, was Brussels at its worst: bureaucrats micromanaging, treating citizens like children who couldn’t be trusted to recycle a cap.

What went almost entirely unreported was the evidence behind it. Plastic bottle caps have been identified, across decades of coastal cleanup data, as among the top items found littering European beaches. Small, light and made from a different plastic than the bottle itself, the caps float independently once separated, travelling far longer distances than the bottles they came from. They are far more likely to be swallowed by seabirds, fish and marine turtles who mistake them for food.

Now consider what happened next. After lobbying against the rule, some of the world’s largest beverage companies redesigned their caps and adapted. But companies such as Coca-Cola also did something revealing: while they trumpeted the design of the new caps as a sign of their unwavering commitment to sustainability, they maintained the detachable ones virtually everywhere else. Not because the physics of plastic pollution differ across continents, but because no other country, be it the US or in Asia, has passed a national law requiring the change.

The bottle cap story is a parable for a larger fight playing out at the highest levels of European politics. One side claims that EU rules are the problem: a self-imposed burden of standards on business that slow Europe down while the US and China race ahead. The other says those rules are not a handicap but a source of power, the only instrument a continent without a single government possesses to shape its own economic future while protecting its people and the planet.

At present, the first camp is winning. The political coalition behind it is broad, stretching from Brussels to Berlin, Warsaw and Rome. The argument sounds on the surface entirely reasonable. From that diagnosis follows a programme of “simplification” championed by the European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen: cuts to environmental protections, digital rules, consumer and food safety requirements. Standards that Europe spent two decades building are being rolled back, all in the name of competitiveness.

There is one problem at the foundation of all this. The diagnosis is at best questionable and at worst wrong.

The red tape explosion that would allegedly account for the widening growth gap with the US is a fiction. The OECD’s latest data shows that the regulatory burden on European business has arguably risen only modestly over the past 15 years.

Even the landmark 2024 report by Mario Draghi, the former chief of the European Central Bank commissioned by the EU to diagnose Europe’s economic weaknesses, cannot substantiate the claim.

The report’s most-cited figure, that more than 60% of EU companies saw regulation as an obstacle to investment in 2023, turns out on inspection to mean that only about 25% identified it as a major obstacle. This share has since risen but a larger proportion of European businesses remain concerned by other obstacles, such as energy costs. More importantly, Draghi’s central demand was not for a less regulated Europe, but a more coordinated, better-funded and strategically capable one.

And even if you accept the diagnosis, the proposed cure – deregulation – barely makes a difference. The European Commission’s own estimate of the annual savings from its entire simplification programme – the legislative packages at the centre of this agenda – is €12bn, or roughly 0.07% of EU GDP.

Europe’s productivity problem is real. But the caricature of a continent collapsing under regulation is not. Much of the apparent US-European growth gap reflects population growth, purchasing power, working hours and the very different social bargain Europe has chosen to preserve. This suggests that Europe does not need to become the US to become more competitive.

Dismantling Europe’s regulatory framework does not merely fail to deliver growth. It surrenders something that Europe has spent decades building. Consider what the targeted rules actually do. When the EU forced Apple to open its App Store to rival app developers and payment routes, Apple complied – at least in Europe. This reveals how EU digital market rules are not costly tick-box exercises, but the actual reason European consumers now have choices – in apps, in payment and platforms – that consumers in the US still lack. The wider European rulebook is also why Google, Meta and Amazon face limits on how they combine, harvest and monetise Europeans’ data. Weaken them, and US platforms – and their tech billionaires – gain even greater control over Europe’s markets and people.

The timing of this push for deregulation is not a coincidence. The Trump administration formally designated Europe’s digital rules as trade barriers, threatened punitive tariffs if Brussels refused to weaken them and demanded their rollback as a condition for any deal on steel and aluminium. The deregulation agenda playing out in Brussels is precisely what Washington has been demanding through every available lever: weaker European rule-making, greater access for American firms and a continent less able to offer an economic or even ideological alternative to the US model.

Europe’s rules are not necessarily constraints, but at their best, they are instruments of power. They shift the burden of collective choices away from individuals and on to the companies best placed to bear them. That is why those companies so often oppose them and why, once the rules exist, they usually comply.

The bottle cap is still attached to the bottle in Europe. The question is whether Europe retains the will to be itself – a political project that uses rules to protect its people and shape global markets – or whether, in the name of competitiveness, it surrenders that power to exactly the interests that want that power gone.

THE GUARDIAN

Environment

Can anime treat depression?

As a teenager struggling to fit into life in rural Sicily, psychiatrist Francesco Panto found refuge in anime, where he discovered characters that resembled the kind of man he wanted to be.

Now living in Japan, Panto thinks anime can benefit others and is trialling whether it could be used as a method of therapy, particularly for people who would otherwise struggle to ask for help.

“The use of manga and anime supported me so much… they were very important emotional support kind of tools,” Panto told AFP.

“Being raised in Italy, in Sicily, there were very strong stereotypes around gender or self-expression. But when I was 12 or 13 years old I started to play this game called ‘Final Fantasy’… and the male protagonists resonated with me.

“They were so masculine and cool, but in their own way.”

Panto’s six-month pilot study into “character-based counselling” at Yokohama City University ended in March.

As part of the trial, he and his team recruited 20 people aged 18-29 who had symptoms of depression and gave them online counselling delivered by a psychologist who appeared on the screen as an anime avatar with a digitally altered voice.

He believes that the “filter of fantasy” can help put people at ease and aid recognition of their problems – and he’s hoping that the trial results will confirm this theory.

From a steady and trustworthy “maternal energy” figure who brandishes an assault rifle, to an emotionally perceptive “prince-like” male who wears a cape, six different characters were created specifically for the study.

Each is based on a particular archetype in Japanese manga, with trial participants given freedom to choose among them.

“I tried to infuse each character with a specific mental struggle. One character is called Kuroto Nagi. She’s affected by bipolar personality traits,” Panto said.

Others struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety disorders, or experience problems related to alcohol use.

But the idea is for the avatars to be “fun”, Panto explained, and although the psychologist tells the story of their character at the start of the session, they were instructed not to make mental health issues too obvious.

One 24-year-old trial participant explained how they had been drawn to the study by a description of one of the characters, who was said to be “searching for true strength”.

That “made me feel like it might help me get closer to the answer to my own problems,” said the participant, an anime fan and game developer who could not be identified by name under the rules of the trial. Will to live

The phase-one trial – which tracked participants’ heart rates and sleep – is primarily to test whether anime therapy is feasible and if this kind of treatment can reduce symptoms of depression.

Panto is also considering whether the therapy could be delivered using artificial intelligence, without the medium of a real psychologist.

The research project is one of many trying to find solutions to mental health challenges in Japan including “ikizurasa”, a term for people who find it “difficult to live, difficult to survive in society”, said Mio Ishii, an assistant professor helping lead the project.

“There are many young people who cannot go to school or continue working. So, our scope is to give them… new choices to recover from their difficulties,” she said, adding that there was still huge stigma in Japan attached to seeking help.

As of 2022, only six percent of people in Japan had used psychological counselling for mental health problems, according to data cited on the World Economic Forum website. The rate was much higher in Europe and the United States.

“It can facilitate the expression of emotions… (and) identification and communication between the patient and the therapist,” he said.

Under the rules of the study, the 24-year-old trial participant – whose current favourite anime series include “The End of Evangelion” and “Girls Band Cry” – could not comment on the trial itself.

But they said anime had given them the “will to live, seeing characters who are full of life as they work hard toward their dreams”.

Ishii hopes the therapy could help people of all ages across the world.

“Because usually people have stigmas and psychological barriers to ask for help about their mental health,” she said. “But anime or technology can decrease them.”

Environment

The Oscars are leaving Hollywood

The Academy Awards will soon have a new home, one that doesn’t also include an attached shopping center.

In 2029, the Oscars will move from the Dolby Theater in the heart of Hollywood to the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live, a sprawling tourist hub in Downtown Los Angeles, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Thursday.

The Academy said the Peacock Theater, also the site of the Primetime Emmy Awards since 2008, will undergo “comprehensive enhancements” as part of the new deal with sports and entertainment behemoth AEG, which owns L.A. Live.

L.A. Live plaza — whose dining options currently include sports bar restaurant chain Yard House — will be the setting of the iconic Oscars red carpet, the release read.

The venue change will align with the Oscars’ new streaming home on YouTube, also starting in 2029.

Since 2002, the Oscars have been held at the Dolby Theater, formerly the Kodak Theater, on Hollywood Boulevard. It sits next to the famed TCL Theater (formerly the Grauman’s Chinese Theater) and amid the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with clear views of the Hollywood sign if you find yourself in the right spot.

The 3,400-seat theater was built specifically to hold the Academy Awards telecast with design touches that evoke the golden age of Hollywood. Columns that display the names of past best picture winners line the famed steps up to the theater.

While the inside of the theater is a glamorous, bespoke representation of Hollywood in all its glory, the theater sits inside a shopping complex that includes retails stores like Sephora and Lids, a jarring contrast from the black tie-ness of the Oscars.

For those unfamiliar with the landscape, a mall elevator that takes stars from one level to another overlooks a Dave & Busters on their way to the top deck of the Ovation Hollywood complex to attend the Governor’s Ball, the Academy’s official after party.

In many ways, the relocation to L.A. Live has a similar vibe, except instead of retail stores, the Peacock Theater is surrounded by a Lucky Strike Bowling Alley, several smaller theaters and, of course, the Crypto.com Arena, home of the LA Lakers and the Grammy Awards.

The Oscars have been held downtown in years past, having found previous homes at the Shrine Auditorium and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

According to the release, the Oscars will be televised on ABC and held at the Dolby Theater through 2028, the 100th Oscars ceremony, before it’s big move to YouTube and Downtown Los Angeles.

Until then, happy shopping.

CNN

Environment

EV demand rises as fuel prices spike

Car buyers’ interest in electric cars has surged across Europe since the start of the war in Iran, as the rising cost of petrol highlights the cheaper power available from a plug.

Online marketplaces in the UK, Germany, France and Spain reported huge increases in inquiries about electric vehicles since the start of the conflict in February.

The war caused rapid increases in petrol prices and protests around the world, while electricity prices have not been as badly affected.

The first strikes were launched on 28 February, causing turmoil on global commodities markets as Iran effectively shut down the strait of Hormuz, a key route for oil and gas exports.

Mobile.de, Germany’s biggest online car marketplace, said high fuel prices had been a “catalyst” for an “E-Auto-Boom”.

Ajay Bhatia, chief executive of Mobile.de, said the new and used car marketplace had seen a greater than 50% increase in electric car inquiries in March compared with February. Petrol and diesel inquiries dipped during the same period, while inquiries for hybrids combining an engine with a smaller battery edged up by 4%.

Volkswagen’s ID.3 was the most popular battery car. Overall, electric demand has risen compared with last year as well thanks to Berlin’s more generous €6,000 (£5,200) purchase subsidies.

Bhatia said diesel prices of €2.50 a litre in Germany provided powerful motivation for a push to zero-emissions vehicles that has previously struggled in Europe’s internal combustion engine powerhouse. “What the German energy transition couldn’t do, almost the economic reality has done,” he added.

Carwow, which links buyers with dealers in the UK, Spain and Germany, reported 20% to 30% increases in inquiries about electric cars in all three markets between February and March. In the UK, electric demand was up 23% over the month, while hybrid interest was up 19%.

“We’ve seen a shift away from internal combustion engines for quite a while now,” said Iain Read, Carwow’s content director. “But what we’ve seen with the war is it’s accelerating. Consumers are worrying about cost of living and wanting to keep their regular bills down.”

Figures last week from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed that in March battery electric car registrations, based on sales several months before the break out of hostilities, totalled 86,120. This was a jump of 24.2% compared with the same month last year and a record high.

La Centrale, one of France’s largest car marketplaces, said that its searches for electric vehicles had increased by 160% between the start of March and the start of April.

“Drivers are very sensitive to energy prices and they are seeking alternatives,” said Guillaume-Henri Blanchet, La Centrale’s deputy chief executive. “Immediately we saw a reaction from drivers” in looking at battery cars, as well as increased interest in used vehicles.

AutoScout24, another marketplace, said demand for electric cars was up by about 40% in Germany, Austria and Italy, while demand for petrol and diesel was flat or falling.

For the car industry, and particularly for manufacturers who have lobbied strenuously for lower electric vehicle targets, the question will be whether the increased interest will be permanent.

“In my view this is a spike that will go down, but it will not go down completely,” said Mobile.de’s Bhatia. Electric car demand will settle at “a new, higher normal than we had before” – helped by improvements in charging infrastructure and lower BEV prices.

Ian Plummer, chief customer officer at Autotrader in the UK, said that the previous spikes in petrol prices did not lead to sustained increases in electric purchases. He said: “There is still work to do to ensure consumers are confident that electric cars can fit their lifestyles.”

La Centrale’s Blanchet said: “This crisis will leave some scars on consumers.” The Iran petrol price increases have caused “one of the first times that consumers really have an awareness of total cost of ownership”, he added, meaning they are willing to consider a higher upfront cost if prices to power the car will be lower in the long term.

The Guardian