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May 31, 2016
Richard C. Paddock
PUBLISHED MAY 31, 2016
KEBASEN, INDONESIA Smoke billows from the chimney of the small battery smelter, carrying particles of lead, plastic, and sulfuric acid into the air. More dense smoke pours from the open furnace into the smelter’s main room, threatening to engulf two workers as they shovel the lead cells of car batteries into the glowing fire.
The gray cloud drifts over the countryside in Central Java, landing on rice fields and villages. Nearby residents complain that the haze burns their eyes, makes them dizzy, and gives them headaches.
“We are upset about the smoke,” says Samsuri, 40, who lives in the farming village of Tegalwangi, about half a mile from the recycling compound, run by Lut Putra Solder. “It makes it difficult to breathe and sometimes makes us sick.”
The Garuda Jaya plant in Kebasen is one of three battery smelters operating at the compound on the outskirts of the Central Java city of Tegal. None has scrubbers on the chimneys to trap the lead dust or other hazardous materials. Nor do they have permits to operate, authorities say.
Smelters like this are notorious for emitting high concentrations of lead and other toxic substances into the air. Lead, a major component of vehicle batteries, has long been known to harm brains, with even low doses linked to learning and behavioral problems in children.
Read more at National Geographic.
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category : Topics
May 30, 2016
Today, large quantities of CO2 are emitted when we extract raw materials for the production of consumer goods. After use, most of these products end up in landfills as wasted resources. Among other drawbacks, this linear, take-make-waste system harms local environments and economies, and exacerbates climate change.
An enzyme-based technology called REnescience extracts valuable resources from waste, thereby reducing CO2 emissions. The Danish company behind the invention, DONG Energy, is sending a mobile test plant to Malaysia to examine the potential of the technology to help solve the country’s waste challenges.
According to the World Bank, waste volumes worldwide will have increased by 70 percent in 2025 compared to 2012. This increase will be significant in countries such as Malaysia, where the capacity to handle waste is already limited. The REnescience technology is able to sort waste for recycling, thereby turning a problem into a resource.
That is why DONG Energy sees a large potential for the technology in Malaysia, as well as in other Asian countries.
Thomas Dalsgaard, EVP at DONG Energy, says: "Malaysia is a very interesting market for our technology as there’s a growing need for exploiting the resources in the increasing waste volumes.”
Read more at Sustainable Brands.
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category : Topics
May 29, 2016
Maxine Perella
Sunday 29 May 2016 08.00 BST
Instead of killing animals, our packing design will provide them with food, explains Saltwater Brewery co-founder Chris Gove of his company’s biodegradable, edible beer pack rings.
The rings, made from wheat and barley waste – natural byproducts of the beer-making process – are being touted by the Florida-based microbrewery as a pragmatic solution to repurposing waste in the brewing process. It also hopes they can help combat the growing problem of ocean plastic pollution.
The packaging starts to disintegrate within two hours of being in the ocean, which prevents fish or other sea animals getting stuck in the rings. They take two to three months to completely disappear in the ocean, and it takes a similar amount of time to compost if left on the beach, although this varies slightly depending on soil, composition, humidity and temperature.
While alternatives to traditional plastic rings exist – PakTech’s recycled plastic can carrier, which is 100% recyclable, and Fishbone’s cardboard holder, for example– these don’t reduce the risk of entangling wildlife or being ingested.
Saltwater Brewery decided to collaborate with advertising agency We Believers to engineer an alternative.
Read more The Guardian.
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category : Topics
May 28, 2016
Nairobi, 27 May 2016 - The world's environment ministers, gathered at the second session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-2) in Nairobi on late Friday, passed far reaching decisions on issues such as marine litter, the illegal trade in wildlife, air pollution, chemicals and waste, and sustainable consumption and production - which are an integral part of the global action needed to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, "The environment has always been, and will always be, at the heart of humanity's prosperity. World nations recognized this in 2015 with global accords, such as the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.
"What we have seen in the last five days is the same political will and passion for change that brought about the groundbreaking international agreements of 2015. With global consensus affirmed, we are taking steps to bring about a real transformation of our development models. The United Nations Environment Assembly is providing leadership and guidance the world needs to take these unprecedented steps.
"In the decisions made here at this assembly for the environment, we see a significant directional shift that will inform Ministers' decisions in their home countries. We will now need to see the bold and decisive commitment observed at UNEA transmitted at the national level to drive forward the 2030 Agenda and ensure a brighter future for people and planet."
Thousands of delegates from 174 countries, 120 at the ministerial level, took part in UNEA-2 and associated side events on issues of global importance, including the Sustainable Innovation Expo and the Science-Policy Forum.
Read more at UNEP News Centre.
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category : Topics
May 27, 2016
The World Health Assembly – the high level meeting of the World Health Organisation (WHO) – has adopted a resolution on the role of the health sector in the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (Saicm) towards the 2020 goal and beyond.
Argentina, Canada, Monaco, Panama, Thailand, the US, Uruguay, and EU member states proposed the resolution. It will see a roadmap prepared over the next year. This will outline key activities where the health sector can contribute towards:
>> achieving the 2020 goal of minimising the negative impacts of chemicals on human health and the environment; and
>> the relevant targets of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
Read more at Chemical Watch.
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category : Topics
May 26, 2016
By Vaidehi Shah
Thursday 26 May 2016
Melbourne’s La Trobe University on Wednesday announced that it will end its investments in major coal, oil, and gas companies over the next five years, becoming the first university in Australia to do so.
The university said it had recently endorsed a plan to phase out its investments in companies which have a strong involvement in fossil fuels, and will also be more transparent about the carbon footprint of companies under its portfolio.
John Dewar, La Trobe University’s vice-chancellor, said in a statement that “we are committed to divesting from the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel companies ranked by the carbon content of their fossil fuel reserves within five years.”
He added: “At La Trobe, we believe economic profitability and environmental sustainability are not mutually exclusive.”
The university is working with new fund managers to reduce the carbon exposure of its investments, and will publish annual reports of its divestment progress.
Read more at Eco-Business.
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category : Topics
May 26, 2016
Arthur Neslen
Thursday 26 May 2016 13.19 BST
An alliance of companies including Ikea, Nestle and Heathrow airport have called on the EU to pass new laws cutting truck emissions within two years, to meet promises made at the Paris climate conference.
Heavy duty vehicles make up less than 5% of Europe’s road traffic but chug out a quarter of the sector’s carbon emissions – more than airplanes – and their fuel efficiency has hardly changed in two decades.
The EU’s climate commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete has said that fuel efficiency targets for vehicles after 2020 are “essential” and a commission paper in July is expected to signal that they will be brought forward.
In a letter to the EU president Jean-Claude Juncker, seen by the Guardian, the clean corporate alliance says that CO2 test procedures and emissions monitoring alone will not kickstart the market for low carbon freight transport.
Read more at The Guardian.
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category : Topics
May 26, 2016
26th May 2016 / Mike Gaworecki
Norway is a leader in funding forest conservation around the world (see here, here, and here, for example), and has also taken a stand for the human rights of forest communities. But now the country has announced that it will walk the walk itself.
In what’s being hailed as a groundbreaking move, the Norwegian parliament pledged today that the government’s public procurement policy will be going deforestation-free.
The Rainforest Foundation Norway, which has worked for a number of years to secure a zero deforestation commitment from the Norwegian government in regard to its supply chains, said in a statement that “Norway is the first country in the world to commit to zero deforestation in its public procurement.”
The Norwegian parliament’s Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment made the pledge in a recommendation on the government’s Action Plan on Nature Diversity. The Committee requested in the recommendation that the government “impose requirements to ensure that public procurements do not contribute to deforestation of the rainforest.”
Further details on what those requirements will actually entail will have to be elaborated upon by the government as a follow-up to the decision made today by the parliament, according to Rainforest Foundation Norway.
Read more at MONGABAY.
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category : Topics
May 26, 2016
London, 26 May 2016- Leading credit ratings agencies are joining an initiative to look at Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) in a more systematic way, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) announced today. To kick-start that initiative, 100 investors managing $16 trillion assets under management, and six credit rating agencies have signed a Statement on ESG in Credit Ratings and Analysis.
The credit ratings agencies taking part in the initiative include S&P Global Ratings, Moody's, Dagong, Scope, RAM Ratings and Liberum Ratings.
The launch of the Statement marks the start of a two-year programme funded by The Rockefeller Foundation to bring investors and credit ratings agencies together in a series of 'ratings forums' around the world to discuss the links between ESG and creditworthiness. The project has been initiated by the PRI with support from the UNEP Inquiry and a committee of PRI signatories, which include some of the world's largest fixed income investors.
"Credit rating agencies are a crucial part of the puzzle for identifying systemic ESG risks in debt capital markets," said Fiona Reynolds, managing director of the PRI. "By signing this Statement, these organisations are affirming their commitment to more systematic and transparent consideration of sustainability and governance factors in credit ratings and analysis."
"This joint statement by ratings agencies and investors marks another important step towards a sustainable financial system," said Nick Robins, co-director of the United Nations Environment Programme Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System (UNEP Inquiry).
Read more at UNEP NEWS CENTRE.
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category : Topics
May 25, 2016
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative kicks off today with an inaugural workshop that brings together more than 40 leading companies including Amcor, Coca-Cola, The Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, Indorama Ventures, Marks & Spencer, MARS, Natureworks, Novamont, Sealed Air, SUEZ, Unilever and Veolia, as well as front-running cities such as Copenhagen, and London’s Waste and Recycling Board.
Building on the recommendations of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics report, launched at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos in January, the three-year initiative is taking a concrete first step towards the design of a plastics system grounded in circular economy principles. The report, which attracted global media attention, arguably provides the first comprehensive view of the global plastic packaging value chain, highlighting its contributions but also revealing significant drawbacks. With material value loss running at $80-120 billion a year in the industry and negative environmental externalities costing at least $40 billion a year — a figure greater than the plastic packaging industry’s profit pool — the opportunity for the global economy of transforming the system is clear (not to mention Trucost’s recent estimate that scaling up companies’ use of recovered plastics and alternative materials could deliver additional environmental savings of $3.5 billion).
Read more at Sustainable Brands.
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category : Topics
May 23, 2016
Adam Vaughan in Nairobi
Monday 23 May 2016 11.47 BST
Biodegradable plastic water bottles and shopping bags are a false solution to the ubiquitous problem of litter in the oceans, the UN’s top environmental scientist has warned.
Most plastic is extremely durable, leading to large plastic debris and “microplastics” to spread via currents to oceans from the Arctic to the Antarctic, a UN report published on Monday found.
Greener plastics that breakdown in the environment have been marketed as a sustainable alternative that could reduce the vast amount of plastic waste that ends up in the sea after being dumped. But Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist at the UN Environment Programme, told the Guardian that these biodegradable plastics were not a simple solution.
“It’s well-intentioned but wrong. A lot of plastics labelled biodegradable, like shopping bags, will only break down in temperatures of 50C and that is not the ocean. They are also not buoyant, so they’re going to sink, so they’re not going to be exposed to UV and break down,” she said.
Speaking at the the UN environment assembly in Nairobi, where 170 countries are meeting and expected to pass a resolution on microplastics later this week, she added: “We have detected plastics in places as far away as the Chagos Islands [in the Indian Ocean]. Even if you are remote, you are not safe from it.”
More than 300m tonnes of plastic were produced in 2014 and that is expected to swell to nearly 2,000m tonnes by 2050 on current trends, the UN report said. While the exact amount that reaches the oceans is not known, the report concluded: “plastic debris, or litter, in the ocean is now ubiquitous.”
Read more at The Guardian.
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category : Topics
May 19, 2016
By David Thorpe, The Fifth Estate
Thursday 19 May 2016
Thirty-nine Italian municipalities are now meeting 100 per cent of their energy demands with renewable energy, proving that it is fully possible in this type of climate for urban areas to completely decarbonise and provide cheap energy for citizens and businesses.
The change over the last 10 years has been remarkable. Italy as a whole has brought its consumption of renewable energy up from 15 per cent to 35.5 per cent. This has been largely due to a distributed production model with the addition of over 850,000 generation plants all over the country.
It has brought about an increase in clean production of 57.1 terawatt hours a year. The number of municipalities with at least one plant supplying renewable energy has increased from 356 to 8047.
In 2660 of these municipalities, the production of clean electricity often exceeds that consumed, allowing them to export to neighbouring areas for profit.
Read more at Eco-Business.
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category : Topics
May 17, 2016
Fiona Harvey
Tuesday 17 May 2016 00.49 BST
New evidence that poorer countries will suffer the worst effects of climate change has shown that the number of hot days in tropical developing countries is likely to increase markedly as global warming takes hold.
It has long been expected that poor people would bear the brunt of climate change, largely because so many more of the world’s poorest live in tropical latitudes whereas, wealthier people tend to live in more temperate regions.
This is inverse to the generally accepted responsibility for climate change, which falls mainly on rich countries that benefited early on from industry, and thus have historically high emissions, compared with poorer countries that have only begun catching up in the past few decades.
It was only in 2014 that China’s per capita emissions caught up with those of people in the EU, even after years of above-average economic growth in China.
Read more at The Guardian.
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category : Topics
May 16, 2016
Toyama, Japan, 15 May 2016 - UN Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner was in Toyama, Japan this weekend, where he joined G7 Environment Ministers for their meeting to prepare the outcomes for the 2016 G7 Leaders Summit in Japan later this month.
Mr. Steiner joined the G7 ministers to present and discuss UNEP's work and perspectives on the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals, resource efficiency, climate change & biodiversity.
On the margins of the meeting, the Executive Director met with Environment Ministers from Japan, Germany and Canada, along with the EU's Commissioner for the Environment and France's Ambassador for the Environment.
In Toyama, Mr. Steiner joined UNEP International Resource Panel's Co-Chair, Janez Potočnik and lead report author Paul Ekin in presenting the summary of a report on resource efficiency to G7 Environment Ministers, represented by Japan's Environment Minister, Tamayo Marukawa, and Germany's Environment Minister, Barbara Hendricks. Last year, G7 leaders at their summit in Schloss Elmau asked the UNEP-hosted panel of experts to develop the report to analyze the potential impact of greater resource efficiency on resource use, greenhouse gas emissions and economies. The report, called Resource Efficiency: Potential and Economic Implications, indicates that greenhouse gases and resource consumption can be greatly decreased, and economies grown, with better resource efficiency policies and international climate action.
Read more at UNEP News Centre.
Read the final communique of the G7 Environment Ministers meeting here.
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category : Topics
May 12, 2016
By Lynda Hong
Thursday 12 May 2016
Plastic is widely used to wrap and protect consumer goods, but the use of petrochemical-based plastic is costing society an estimated US$75 billion of environmental damages every year.
By switching to just two readily-available sustainable plastics, environmental costs can be reduced by about US$3.5 billion, with the potential for more savings if the private sector and business work together to seek sustainable plastic alternatives.
According to a discussion paper published last week by the London-headquartered environmental data consultancy Trucost, this cost is largely derived from petrochemical-based plastic causing climate change and pollution, in particular, marine pollution.
The paper titled ‘Scaling “Sustainable Plastics: Solutions to Drive Plastics towards a Circular Economy’ said waste plastic has been undervalued in the economy because the environmental cost has not been properly valuated.
Read more at Eco-Business.
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category : Topics
May 12, 2016
The official version of the chemical database from Japan and other Asian countries is now available online, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Meti) has announced.
Meti has been working with the officials of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) to develop the Asean-Japan Chemical Safety Database (AJCSD). It provides information on chemical substances, and related laws and regulations in these countries.
The official version replaced the trial version, which ran from April 2015 until 28 April this year. The current operator is the National Institute of Technology and Evaluation (Nite), which provides Japan’s chemical risk information platform (CHRIP).
Read more at Chemical Watch.
Database Link: ASEAN-Japan Chemical Safety Database (AJCSD)
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category : Topics
May 11, 2016
posted by Andrew Allen
Purchasing professionals with proposals about how to radically transform public procurement may find a platform for their ideas in a new government consultation survey.
As part of its “call for ideas” for the National Innovation Plan, the government is seeking suggestions from the public to help develop innovation in the UK – and one of the main categories is how public procurement can be transformed.
A questionnaire asks respondents to suggest how the UK should develop a framework that encourages innovation and the power of procurement and customer demand to stimulate the development of innovative products.
Read more at the CIPS website.
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category : Topics
May 10, 2016
UNEP, ICLEI and KEITI, cordially invite you to participate in the 2016 Global Review of SPP Stakeholder Survey.
This Survey forms an important part of the 10YFP SPP Programme’s ongoing effort to identify and map the policies, activities, drivers and challenges for sustainable public procurement and sustainable procurement worldwide. This is the second Survey conducted on global trends in SPP published by UNEP. We are seeking opinions of those stakeholders involved in SPP and will analyse the data to examine trends in different countries and organisations, as well as from an overall global context. The Coordination Desk of the 10YFP SPP Programme, UNEP, ICLEI and KEITI thank you in advance for your participation.
You can participate in the survey here.
The survey is open until June 10, 2016.
Results will be shared in the forthcoming 2016 Global Review of Sustainable Public Procurement.
If you have any questions about the survey or the broader 2016 Global Review of SPP, please contact Dr. Anastasia O’Rourke at aorourke [at] indecon.com or Irina Uzun at Irina.Uzun.Affiliate [at] unep.org.
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category : Announcement
May 9, 2016
by Rina Chandran
Monday, 9 May 2016 12:03 GMT
BUDHPURA, India, May 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Amid the ancient forts and stunning palaces of India's Rajasthan state is a less alluring sight: hundreds of workers in stone quarries, many dying of silicosis from cutting and polishing the sandstone tiles that adorn gardens and patios here and abroad.
Much of the sandstone used in kitchen counter tops and as cobblestones comes from the state's Kota and Bundi districts, where workers toil under extreme conditions, with hardly any protective gear and for very little money.
About half the state's 2 million mine workers suffer from silicosis or other respiratory diseases, according to labour rights campaigners.
Although there is no comprehensive data, hundreds, possibly thousands, have died of silicosis, an incurable lung disease caused by long-term exposure to silica dust given off in the mining and processing of sandstone and limestone.
Rajasthan's human rights commission last year asked the state government to modernise mining and conduct regular medical tests to contain the disease. Activists say the state must also do more to ensure there are no child workers, whose vulnerable bodies are even more susceptible to silicosis.
Read more at the Thomson Reuters Foundation News.
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category : Topics
May 9, 2016
Forty-one companies have joined the Science-Based Targets initiative since the COP21 climate negotiations in December. On the eve of the Climate Action Summit in Washington, D.C. last week, the initiative announced that a total of 155 companies have now committed to set emissions reduction targets in-line with the global effort to keep warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.
The 41 new signatories include Ben & Jerry’s, SunPower Corporation, Owens Corning, Toyota Motor Corporation, and large European retailer Metro AG.
The Science-Based Targets initiative, which is a partnership between CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project), the United Nations Global Compact, the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), exceeded its goal to recruit 100 companies to make commitments by the end of 2015. 114 participants signed on before the COP21 negotiations concluded, including Ben & Jerry’s’ parent company Unilever.
Read more at Sustainable Brands.
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category : Topics
May 6, 2016
6th May 2016 / Philip Jacobson
In the war on opaque management of Southeast Asia’s natural resources, reformers gained ground on Tuesday, when Indonesia’s land minister affirmed the right of oil palm companies to publish their own concession maps. Doing so would violate no law, Ferry Mursyidan Baldan said in an official letter to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the world’s largest association for ethical production of the commodity. The pronouncement came two-and-a-half years after the RSPO committed to sharing the maps of its grower members, a resolution that Indonesian and Malaysian firms have resisted due to what they have portrayed as uncertainty over whether publishing the information is legal.
If transparency advocates were excited by this latest development, the companies’ reaction might give them pause. Edi Suhardi, chairman of the RSPO’s Indonesian Growers Caucus, said his side remained unconvinced the maps could be released without running afoul of the law. He pointed to a different letter issued a year ago by the agriculture ministry’s plantations chief, Gamal Nasir, which stated that the intended disclosures were illegal. Unless that dictum were expressly revoked or superseded, Suhardi told Mongabay on Wednesday, the growers could not condone publication.
Even that would not be enough. Last December, when the RSPO, having deemed Gamal Nasir’s objection absent of any legal weight, announced it would proceed with publication, it allowed an exemption for Malaysia, where the legality of sharing maps “continues to be ambiguous within the laws of the country.” That the same did not apply to Indonesia was a “double standard” to which the archipelago’s growers could not abide, Suhardi maintained. Until an “equal commitment” from all growers was secured, his side would “maintain the status quo.”
Read more at Mongabay.
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category : Topics
May 5, 2016
by Joe Iles
May 5, 2016
The circular economy represents a fundamental shift in the way resources, energy and information flow through our economy. A key characteristic of this framework is that products and components remain at their highest levels of integrity and performance. So is recycling part of the picture?
There’s some perception that a circular economy is just ‘recycling on steroids’ — recycling more stuff, and doing it a bit better. This confusion is understandable. Since the 1970s, recycling has become synonymous with ‘doing good.’ What’s more, many businesses have invested in recycling practices that seem like a natural starting point for more involved circular economy activities. However, the characteristics of a circular economy — and existing research — suggest that returning a product to the material level would be ‘the loop of last resort,’ with a more fundamental shift required to decouple growth from finite resources and move to a circular development path.
Economic analysis conducted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and McKinsey & Co. has demonstrated how, in a circular economy, greater value can be obtained by operating in the ‘inner loops’ of a technical cycle. Activities such as sharing, service, maintenance, refurbishment and remanufacturing preserve the integrity of a product. We often hear about how a company has recovered a product and then processed the materials so they can be used as a resource. But think about it — by returning a product to its constituent materials you lose all the energy, labour and expense that went into creating it in the first place. In some cases, the recycling process may even be more costly than extracting virgin resources. This can severely undermine recycling efforts — in the current context of depressed commodity prices, for example.
Read more at Sustainable Brands.
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category : Topics
May 5, 2016
Washington DC, May 5 2016 – Cities, business and government will come together to scale up solutions for climate action at COP22 in Marrakesh, Morocco, following an announcement today that four leading organizations will present a Low Emissions Solutions Conference in order to accelerate the implementation of solutions under the historic Paris Agreement.
The Government of Morocco will host the conference in partnership with UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, World Business Council for Sustainability and ICLEI. The parties formalized their collaboration on the conference by signing a Memorandum of Understanding today at the Climate Action 2016 summit in Washington DC.
The Low-Emissions Solutions Conference is part of the overall global agenda to bring together the stakeholders that can design and implement Nationally Determined Contributions and Low-Emission Development Strategies (LEDSs) under the Paris Agreement.
The conference will convene the key players for delivering coordinated solutions to emissions reduction - cities, business, academics and government – as all stakeholders must work together to help solve the climate challenge. Integrated collaboration helps to produce commercial business solutions that overcome policy barriers and can be scaled up rapidly for global implementation, thereby strengthening the ability of governments around the world to make their emissions reduction targets a reality.
Read more at the WBCSD website.
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category : Topics
