i'm going to come to germany. for grandmothers used to work as a swimming instructor. for an hour or 2 children conference to swim back to. your story take part charity on info my parents die. if you can for drive cycle the wall crown parts of germany any time lately you may have come across a huge advertising billboards asking the question if we can stop global warming or create a fair a world and how many of us think about the products we buy where they came from and who made them is it our job the consumer all the responsibility of multi 1000000000

euro corporations shareholder pressure is starting to make boardrooms more accountable and t.v. commercials tugging shoppers clear the trend here in europe at least is towards green and fair. i'm not here to politico heartstrings but any football mom or dad would sleep better at night if they knew their kid was kicking around a soccer ball that had being stitched together by the tiny hands of a boy or girl around the same age on the other side of the world in pakistan where officials have failed after decades of if it's to fully eradicate child labor. soccer is a global sport whether it's children or adults playing for fun all the pros like in the german bundesliga it's a global business with billions but what if the soccer ball went to come from. most of them come from c.l. kit in pakistan for decades the city has been the world's largest producer of

soccer balls thousands of local people work in the industry. in the past all the balls was sewn by hand but times have changed at least at this company . it produces $160000.00 cycles a year many in automated production. the industry used to be in the tourists many workers took the balls home with them with family members including children stitched them by hand. in how to produce everything in-house and we only allow people who work 18 or over to work in our factory. our focus is on producing high quality balls. to achieve that we have to provide more benefits and good wages to our workers are the benefit really speak of me but being in 2015 game i was certified as a fair trade company indicating that it meets international standards for working

conditions. and between different rates have serious rated company has to have a fixed labor contract with all its employees with agreed working hours better working conditions rights to representation within the company all workers are entitled to simulate a maternity leave. and these are all conditions that the whole company has to adhere to. at dell based on the supply for the german bundesliga all the soccer balls are made in pakistan. at peak times the headquarters in germany sends out nearly 100000 balls and the management here is satisfied that its partner company of pakistan does not use child labor. check on that by ensuring that no soccer balls are produced in private homes 20 years ago we opened our own so we were able to monitor the process.

but has the industry really changed even now only a fraction of the. conditions. the mayor of seattle. that working conditions have improved he says there was a lot of international pressure. level of compliance with worker standards and traction of workers rights can't be found anywhere else in pakistan. pay for social security and you will and should benefits for our employees. things didn't exist before. complied with employee protection standards the pricing is becoming more competitive. but the head of. with a trade certification still the exception and 5 to 10 percent more expensive the

bundesliga isn't a fair trade product. fair trade balls is negligible. only make up about 45 percent of overall sales. it's partly because the fair trade c.e.o. is high profile in the industry or amongst the clubs. to be. back to pakistan and. the company says it wants to become a role model for the entire industry. manages hearsay custom is ont always willing to play ball and shell out more for their products. other than european union or scandal more from the european union and the scandinavian countries bias from other regions don't value the fair trade seal more because they don't like the higher price but if you want to continue to be a role model for fair trade offs not only to provide additional benefits for our

workers but also so that our workers put more effort into the fair trade products because they know these provide them with extra benefits and premium sub. extra benefits. despite the lack of industry wide standards it's clear that working conditions insufferable production have improved here over the last decade but then if it's cost money and there's now a very real risk that parts of the production could be transferred to dover weights countries like china only on mom where working conditions may not be. even monitored. and just because it's fair trade isn't 100 percent guarantee their inspectors can't be everywhere all the time now to something that is free it shines from time to time here in germany and the nations being ranked among the world's top installers of solar panels for several years now the stats aren't all that impressive when you take

a look at solar power as chunk of the overall energy makes the same goes for most other countries time to crunch the numbers with. it's astonishing but clean energy from the some solar energy has become the cheapest way to generate electricity it's even cheaper than coal and yet it produces only 3 percent of the world's electricity. while be using way way more of it how did it get so cheap. and what does all this have to do with ducks. let's find out. first let's take a look at how much the price for solar has fallen. that started the job as. 2005 and then i thought it would get less expensive chase just ahead solar analyst at research from bloomberg and he pay about. for the reservoir for solar.

for that same and that is just the last 15 years if you look further back the price drop is even more impressive how did this happen that's been a long story but it's unbelievable up grigory nemat has written a book about there's. no one country did it it was a strange of one country building on another one the us created the technology the modern day solar cell made from silicon was invented in us a 954 but then it mainly got used in the space industry and they're still super expensive but as the technology progressed prices started to fall to germany created a market in 2000 germany passed a law to boost renewable energy developing this was me because they put a fixed price and energy generated from sources like wind or solar people and companies a reason to set up solar panels and for them to do that someone needed to build the

solar panels 3 china made it. once the german laws come into force china really started to pump help us solace. so the whole industry for this on a scale that the west really didn't keep up with. the non existant player 20 years ago in today and they're the biggest producer of solar panels about 70 percent of the world's production so this is how we ended up where we are now clean energy that also makes business sense for solar is so great why don't we rely on it much much more than just switch off all these 30 power plants well sold us always had this one big problem. it only really works when the sun is shining. when it's cloudy or even worse dark even the best solar cells are pretty useless and that's a real shame because that's when we need them the most. let's take

a look at how we use energy in the morning when most people get up and get ready we need energy. the so-called daca of charts our demand for power from nonrenewable sources like coal and gas throughout the day 1st in places without much so after the morning spike it stays pretty level. when people come home in the evening it goes up again and then drops at. this point you might get an idea why they call it the back of because it kind of looks like a duck. anyway in places with lots of solar like california this curve changes the mornings are pretty much the same vendor sun rises and solar energy production kicks in this lets demand from nonrenewable energy drop. until the sun sets the pace. that is when conventional the mud shoots up again way sleeper than in the 1st curve 2 problems with this one traditional power plants suck and ramping

up this quickly that means you have to keep them running at a certain output all day even though there's lots of solar and that means that you could end up with actually more power produced in a. and that leads to the 2nd problem there are limits to how much energy you can put into the grid too much solar could overpower routes so it needs to be thrown away this is always made super difficult to add lots of solar power systems but guess what there is now a solution to this chances are you have part of it in front of you right now a lithium ion battery. or just taking the same construction stringing together many many of those cells and making battery packs that we can use for cars and then we can also. use for stationary power to to go next to or solar farms. quite. well.

in the u.s. for example the state of new mexico just decided to shut down a coal plant that's build new solar farms that store large amounts of the energy they produce and battery. lithium ion batteries have become a lot better and a lot cheaper than expected in the last few years and they're now a viable option for storing and shifting at least a few hours worth of solar energy as needed so the storage problem that's always sad is actually not that much of a problem anymore. sometimes though we might want a longer term storage places without much sunshine for example and that's why companies are offering other solutions let's just run through. another type of battery battery separates the charging outside. that has 2 advantages it can store more energy and for longer the problem is still relatively

expensive. hydro storage which is already used quite a bit you need. one of them needs to be on a hill during the day use solar energy to pump water from the lower leg to the. need. to find legs. the hill. another solution using gravity comes from. working on a. building blocks with solar energy and then releases the energy. to space also the option of using solar to produce hydrogen and with that hydrogen. fuel costs or even make steel but the whole process pretty costly i think that the . batteries are becoming. expensive. but they

do have other attributes like. which could turn out to be. cheap and has pretty much fixed the problem so what's next. i would not be surprised if by 2030 we're talking about doing a large part of the world's election season. but now that the technologies in place it really looks like it's time to shop. if you like this piece similar topics and make sure you visit our planet a you tube channel. but when it comes to investing your money how much of it supports green initiatives especially if you leave it up to

a hedge fund or exchange traded fund reporter the frankfurt stock exchange chelsea delaney took a look at how easy or hard it is being green. list stretches of cream. and tundra of our tech. lash south american jungles this is what climate activists want to say from destruction but can fighting against climate change also make you rich. my friend lizzy's started investing last year through a trading at mostly buying popular tech stocks but she also cares about the environment and she once turned vestments to reflect that. and it's not just her. millions of people have taken to the streets in recent years to protest climate change and that movement has also found its way into financial markets many no longer just want investments to make money they also want them to make the world

a better place. in the past 3 years investments into sustainable assets have searched by almost 400 percent here in europe. but what does it really mean to an ice cream and is this promise that you can make money while also saving the planet too good to be true. to answer that question i'm on my way to see one of germany's green investing heavyweights. called book fitz manages sustainable stock portfolios for the german asset manager detest us he's been very busy lately thanks and large part to my generation. we have the 1000000 youth they are now represent 50 percent of the global workforce and for them sustainability is very important so they will invest their money in a different way through their parents for example there was green investing profitable a couple of years ago it was always like oh if you want to. invest in

a sustainable manner or green then. you might surprise performance for that but now it's the never to. it's turning into if you want to make performance you better invest in a sustainable manner or you invest green because especially last year we have seen that most of the sustainability funds passive and active outperformed the broader market so i'm looking here at one of the top european sustainability stock funds it includes about $400.00 different companies that all are lean as maybe you are the no this acronym stands for and mental social and governance and basically these are companies that are committed not just to environmental sustainability but also to taking care of their workers and to being governed in an ethical way. some of these names might surprise you and finance sustainable doesn't just mean for example a wind turbine maker it can also need a company like nestle which has been increasing its use of renewable energy and

introducing more recycled packaging like for the smarties can ease. but we total isn't oil drilling or rio tinto is the metals miner b.p. was behind one of the biggest oil spills in history how can any of these companies possibly be considered sustainable 1st of all i recommend every investor before investing understand you investment and i ask you it wise and especially about those 2 that you find in those e.t.f. or why is this oil company for example in the fund. but the the space is very diverse and there are many strategies so there's no one solution for although it's not no shortcuts you have you make up your own mind so how do you decide what is considered green so what we're doing is when we want to evaluate investments we're using to support 3rd party data provider if every data provider saying all right this is really a green company then that is quite high that is really the truth. here's an example

of how that might work for you companies dependent on coal or other fossil fuels. do your employees work and dangerous conditions are all of your executives middle aged white man and if so you might end up with a failing sustainability grade. the problem though is that these readings aren't always scientific they can be based on a company's pledge to someday become more sustainable it's based on a promise and promises are easily broken. look at burra as a critic of green investing she says the end history is overrun with green washing or labeling non-green assets as green to make money and my question will be who will define as green it cannot be that we believe that there is of the greening finance agenda to private finance because it's in the same way to me if you left. i don't know their health agenda to tobacco companies what the. it's the same for the private finance company then he said he needs to continue with practices that generate profits and community. regulatory reach of this thing that's not

to say that there aren't environmentalists sustainable assets out there it's just investors responsibility to find them and luckily it is getting easier. as that managers like paul booklets and companies are being forced to disclose more data about the climate and packed up their prison service and that is a step in the right direction. but it's green investing a really powerful enough to turn the tide of climate change. after this i'm skeptical and so is daniella. over the last 5 years what we thought was a lot of good ground that we had gay it looks like it's a lot of ground that we are losing but we need to be lies beyond thinking that was my individual financing decisions or with my individual savings decision i would make a difference i don't think that's the one that will get those wonderful. lizzie is

more optimistic she hasn't given up on the green investing but she's going to do a lot of research maybe it's not a silver bullet but as we wait for politicians to get serious about climate change even the smallest and divisional action is better than sitting on the sidelines. watching the devastation of our environment. an important part of sustainability is how we deal with trash since the start of the coronavirus pandemic mosques and generated a lot of waste that if you did not supply and have a quick turnover last year germany imported $6000000000.00 euros worth of masks mostly from china and from march to december of last year china exported a whopping $224000000000.00 masks all over the world that's equivalent to $43000000000.00 euros so it's big business but what's the impact on the environment and can mosques really be recycled. the

soco islands at the far southwest of the territory comprising hong kong the waters here have long been polluted but with the pandemic a new form of waste has turned up masks and now we have this to contend with. we have a current of virus in all these masks and now we're building. these images make me start to wonder how much of a hazard are these masks for our planet it's an item that many of us now where every day. and why do so many of them end up in the ocean instead of being disposed of through the normal channels and what's the right way to dispose of a mask any way. it must whether it's the higher grade respirator masks or the more basic surgical wants or rubber gloves that people are

also using now they all belong to the live trap but it's even aren't suitable for recycling because they're medical which type believe in you so they need to be incinerated and bought for country. ok but clearly not all masks end up in incinerators as our oceans are littered with them how dangerous is that for marine life and what material are the masks made of to find out i bought an f. and f p 2 respirator mask from a pharmacy. and another one from a supermarket in berlin. i then went online and ordered 2 more mask types. finally i packed up all my purchases and sent them off to a textile laboratory for analysis. they'll be able to tell me what exactly the masks are made of and how hazardous they are for the environment.

2 weeks later i hear back from the lab the good news is wearing a mask isn't harmful for us humans having a mask on for 8 hours a day is fine but for the environment it's a different story. well you can throw a mask away in the countryside somewhere it's not initially harmful for the environment the disadvantage is that some substances in the masks like polypropylene take a long time to decompose that's the big downside and the reason why masks should always be disposed of properly. if everyone just throws their mask way in some forests that waste will be around for a long time to come. at some stage you end up with micro plastic that's what makes the masks bad for the environment along the coast of hong kong scientists are finding a growing number of them they estimate that around 1500000 masks entered the scene

last year. we need to reduce the single use number one but then also it comes down to governments and you know how they handle their waste management facilities like half the garbage bins the rubbish bins in the street they have very wide openings on let's fall and people just put their mosques and think you know doing the right thing and they get blown out rather easily anniston is out there on the street they go down the drains they go down the drains know the drains leave the ocean. if it's a joint effort and it's the government level as well as individual. it looks like the masks won't be disappearing from our lines any time soon they're already far too many on the scene but if we all do our part we can at least prevent a further escalation of the problem. exactly sustainable solutions may cost more at 1st but once everyone joins in the price of the stock think about

a plan of what you're creating for generations to come. joining us by.

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. says dark times in the coastal city of marcel your days on the whole ice and. you know social policy. digital currency and charity projects are shining a small light in the dark skies of the pandemic. the muslims. can come to minutes on w. . ready to go to the extreme blames places in europe or smashing all the records to a step in june but the church. just don't lose your grip it's interesting the modern globe trotters discover some of europe's record

breaking sites. to know also in book form. people in trucks injured when trying to flee the city center odds and more refugees are being turned away from the more an odd place the bomb attacks in syria plays predominately we look at the demonstrators lucky for me in a big screen translating 200 feet. below more than 300 feet. or seeking. life because no one should have to sleep. make up your own mind. w. . need for minds.

this is deja vu news live from berlin israel and palestinian militants move closer to full blown hostilities as violence escalates hamas the bard's tel aviv with deadly rocket fire after israeli airstrikes level in apartment complex nigga strip israel's prime minister says a mosque will pay a heavy price. also coming up shock and grief after a school shooting in russia several children and 2 staff members were killed in the city of ca's on a teenage gunman is in custody. plus after me.