This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience while browsing it. By clicking 'Got It' you're accepting these terms.
Most recent
Trending
The best of EcoWatch, right in your inbox. Sign up for our email newsletter!
Acquaman Actor Jason Momoa Shaves His Beard to Promote Aluminum Cans Over Plastic Bottles
From Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones to Aquaman, some of actor Jason Momoa's most iconic roles have been linked to the beard he has worn since 2012.
But on Wednesday he decided it was "time to make a change," for himself and for the planet. A video posted on Instagram showed him beginning to shave his beard in a bid to raise awareness about plastic pollution, the Huffington Post reported.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jason Momoa (@prideofgypsies) on
"I just want to do this to bring awareness that the plastics are killing our planet," he said in the video.
Momoa also proposed a solution to the problem.
"There's only one thing that can really help our planet and save our planet, as long as we recycle, and that's aluminum," Momoa said.
Momoa went into more detail, and showed off his newly clean-shaven face, in a YouTube video posted the same day. In the longer video, Momoa said 75 percent of aluminum ever produced was still in circulation and that it was 100 percent recyclable.
Towards the end of the video, Momoa also showed off a line of canned water he is developing with Colorado-based Ball Corp. which bills itself as the world's largest supplier of metal cans, The Mercury News reported. Neither Momoa or Ball Corp. provided any details about the cans' logo, price point or launch date.
"Please, please, there's a change coming. It's aluminum. We gotta get rid of these plastic water bottles. Aquaman is trying to do the best he can — for my kids, for your kids, for the world. Clean up the oceans, clean up the land. Love you guys," Momoa said at the end of the longer video.
His announcement comes about two weeks after a study found that plastic bottles were the number one single-use plastic item clogging European rivers and lakes. But are aluminum cans really a better choice? In a comparison of the three single-use beverage containers — glass, plastic or aluminum — Grist's Ask Umbra® concluded that cans were probably the best choice if recycled:
If we're talking virgin cans, things look dull for this shiny metal: Making it requires polluting bauxite mining and is twice as energy-intensive as manufacturing glass. But it's also infinitely recyclable, and doing so even more significantly lowers a can's carbon footprint. What's more, aluminum is very valuable to recyclers (who also sell it to the auto industry), helping make it one of our more popular recycled items (67 percent recovery rate, baby). That, in turn, helps push the average aluminum can to about 68 percent recycled content. Oh, and it's also nice and light, and squat little cans are more efficient to ship than narrow-necked bottles.
Ask Umbra® said the best portable drink choice was always a reusable bottle.
Fans took to social media to express sorrow at the loss of the 39-year-old actor's beard, Newsweek reported.
One lashed out angrily at the environmental inaction that had motivated him to take this step, tweeting, "can't believe i have to deal with a dying planet and now jason without a beard."
- Check Out the Greenest Looks From This Oscars' Red Carpet ... ›
- Christopher Walken, Christina Ricci to Star in Anti-GMO Movie ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Carlo Ratti, Ida Auken
On the window of a bike shop in Copenhagen, a sign reads: Your next car is a bike.
By Carey Gillam
For the last five years, Chris Stevick has helped his wife Elaine in her battle against a vicious type of cancer that the couple believes was caused by Elaine's repeated use of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide around a California property the couple owned. Now the roles are reversed as Elaine must help Chris face his own cancer.
The last 50 years have been brutal for wildlife. Animals have lost their habitats and seen their numbers plummet. Now a new report from a British conservation group warns that habitat destruction and increased pesticide use has on a trajectory for an "insect apocalypse," which will have dire consequences for humans and all life on Earth, as The Guardian reported.
Sales of electric cars are surging and the world is generating more and more power from renewable sources, but it is not enough to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to stop the global climate crisis, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Trending
By Jake Johnson
A Greenpeace report released Tuesday uses a hypothetical "Smart Supermarket" that has done away with environmentally damaging single-use plastics to outline a possible future in which the world's oceans and communities are free of bags, bottles, packaging and other harmful plastic pollutants.
By Irene Banos Ruiz
Pediatricians in New Delhi, India, say children's lungs are no longer pink, but black.
Our warming planet is already impacting the health of the world's children and will shape the future of an entire generation if we fail to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (35.6°F), the 2019 Lancet Countdown Report on health and climate change shows.
Trending
The FBI is looking into how the state of Pennsylvania granted permits for a controversial natural gas pipeline as part of a corruption investigation, the AP reports.
Three cows who were washed off their North Carolina island by Hurricane Dorian have been found alive after swimming at least two miles, The New York Times reported Wednesday.