14
Dispatch → Bulletin → News
by 
The Hazy Shade of Winter of Lethodus.
.
170 reads.
Refugia Eco Report - May 2023
Refuge IsleOverview
Hello folks! This was originally intended to be an Earth Day Special, but between Cat (Tiralta) getting a new job and Argo (Lethodus) losing their wifi and then being hit with finals week, we’ve missed that by a couple weeks. However, the information contained within this report is still relevant and hopefully fun!
For those new to our region and wondering what this is, Refugia Eco-Reports are a requirement put on the Councillor of Culture by RRS 6(c)(i) to update the region on our progress on reaching the environmental goals outlined in the RRS, these being:
14. The Region defines the goals for both its Members and the Region collectively in the following ways:
a. Reach an average Environmental Beauty score of 1,100 on or before December 31, 2022, and maintained thereafter.
b. Reach an average Eco-Friendliness score of 2,500 on or before December 31, 2022, and maintained thereafter.
Here’s everything you’ve missed since the last eco-report in October!
Competition
As part of this Almost Earth Day Special, we’ve prepared a regional competition! First one to return a completed word search and answer our trivia questions correctly will win the entirety of this Eco Friendly Refugia collection, which features some seriously beautiful environments on S3 cards of our fellow Refugi! The next ten will all get a Thicc Horse, for luck.
Telegram 
Tiralta with your responses!
Word search:
Trivia:
How many species of big cats are there?
What species of amphibians is serpentine and lives in South America, Asia, and Africa?
Election Season
Congratulations to 
Minskievian Refugees and 
Falafelandia who are our new Councillor of Foreign Affairs and Councillor of Operations!
Don’t forget to 
vote for the Councillor of Culture by 26th May!
Eco-Stats
There are two main pieces of data for our eco-report: eco-friendliness, and environmental beauty.
Eco-Friendliness
I’m so pleased to see this graph! We took a pretty big dip in early October as a result of the Tiktok Wave 2.0 nations CTEing (RIP in peace), dropping from 2087.75 to 1652, however we've gone from strength to strength since. We didn't quite meet our goal of 2,500 by 31 December 2022, but we did bring the regional eco-friendliness up to a respectable 2198.25 at that point. What is really fantastic though is that in the early months of 2023 we have now smashed right through that goal and are currently sitting at 2837.95. This is our highest score for eco-friendliness since September 2021, so to pull it back from 1652 which was the lowest score we've had since 2020 is a brilliant achievement! Thanks to everyone in the region for prioritising eco-friendliness so much in the past 6 months. And of course, if anyone wants to try their hand at writing a new goal for the end of 2023, all Member States are welcome to propose an amendment to the RRS! You can draft it as a dispatch and seek feedback and somebody to second it on the RMB, then once you're happy it can go to vote. I look forward to finding out what our next goal will be!
Environmental Beauty
Holy hell I get to talk about an upward trend in Environmental Beauty in an eco-report?? What a blessing! Looking back since the last eco-report in October, we definitely saw a bit of a dip, as Cat also mentioned for Eco Friendliness, but Environmental Beauty has been fairly consistently rising since, getting up to 1,004.62 in April when we meant to release this. This is the highest we’ve seen since…checks watch 2019, when Refugia had 16 nations.
We have lost a considerable number of nations since October, which definitely affected our stats at the time, but we’re managing to maintain a massive number of nations alongside this increase in our eco-stats. Spectacular job everyone!
Shout outs
While we’ve all contributed to meeting those eco goals, there are a couple of people we’d like to shout out!
Tidelia has improved their eco-friendliness and environmental beauty stats by a huge amount over the past couple of months, shooting into the regional top 10% and the global top 2% for both stats, and they are well on their way to joining the 17 Refugi who have a 1% badge in eco-friendliness! Well done, that’s such a great achievement!
Blanka Monte, despite having only been founded a little over a month ago, has done an amazing job at raising their eco-stats. Over the course of a month, they've managed to raise their eco-friendliness from 358.12 to 1,723.34, and have earned a top 10% badge for environmental beauty. Awesome job!
Eco-Advice
Before we get into the new advice, here’s a reminder from the last Eco-Report.
Now, to your regularly scheduled programming…
I’ve been noticing more recently the sheer amount of plastic used in packaging and the like, literally everywhere. We try our best to recycle and try to get some more use out of it, but since plastic breaks down into microplastics, it makes it more and more difficult to actually recycle them into new products. Because of this, the actual recycling rate of plastics is only around 5%, and they end up in landfills or bodies of water, fragmenting into more microplastics from the water and sun exposure.
I’m sure we’ve all heard about microplastics excessively before, but it is a massive concern for our environment. Despite the severity of this issue, plastic continues to be prevalent everywhere, making it difficult to avoid. However, try your best to avoid single use plastics like plastic water bottles, plastic grocery bags, plastic lids, cups, and straws, and lesser known things that contain plastics such as receipts and cigarettes. Even plastics labeled as “biodegradable” aren’t necessarily better as they won’t break down as normal biodegradable items typically would, and they will absolutely remain in bodies of water and environments for ridiculous amounts of time.
On a different note, things are getting a little expensive, aren’t they! Here’s a couple of recipes to maybe save you a little bit of money.
It’s pretty important, but kinda gets up there in price sometimes. Additionally, excess laundry detergent can make its way into soil and waterways, affecting things like salinity and pH, and by extension, the plants and animals that rely on those things!
Once upon a time, there was a recipe I’d use for laundry soap before I went to college, that I can’t find anymore alas, but here’s one that’s very similar, and even a little more environmentally friendly than the one I would use!
It’s occurred to me now who my audience is here…Refugia..yes. This recipe might be useful to a good few of you…
I hope some of this was helpful or informative for some of y’all! Remember, it’s important to do our part, it really does add up, but it’s never just on individuals to fix the environment. Help how you can, and if you’re unable to right now, that’s perfectly fine!
Consider planting some seeds, picking up some litter, and have a great and safe summer!
Eco-Articles
Lastly, some positive environmental news from the real world!
India's tiger population is on the rise - great news for these endangered animals!
A court in Ecuador has revoked mining permissions in one of the most biodiverse forests on earth, which is fantastic news for the indigenous communities who live on this land, the wildlife and of course our planet overall.
In the USA, Illinois passed a bill that will ban single use styrofoam from 2025 - the first part of reduce, reuse recycle is the all-important reduce and this bill should have a great impact on reducing the use of this plastic.
And finally, 1 in 3 homes in Australia now have rooftop solar panels which is a fantastic move towards more green energy being produced there!
It's really heartening to see nations of all ages contributing to Refugia's goals, and we’re so happy to see that we’ve hit our regional goals!
That's it from us! We’re really excited to see where our eco-goals, our planet and the new Councillor of Culture go next!
