Have a Happy New Year, readers, wherever you are!

We will return tomorrow on the 1st of January, 2011.

Italy, one of the top users of plastic shopping bags in Europe, is banning them starting January 1, 2011, with retailers warning of chaos and many stores braced for the switch.

Italian critics say polyethylene bags use too much oil to produce, take too long to break down, clog drains and easily spread to become eye sores and environmental hazards.

Italians use about 20 billion bags a year -- more than 330 per person -- or about one-fifth of the total used in Europe, according to Italian environmentalist lobby Legambiente.

Starting on Saturday, retailers are banned from providing shoppers polyethylene bags. They can use bags made of such material as biodegradable plastic, cloth or paper.

Italy's rubber and plastics federation estimated the cost of changing over machines to make biodegradable bags was 30,000 euros to 50,000 euros per plant, the paper said.

Shops and shoppers seem prepared. The mid-size Billa supermarket on Milan's bustling Via Torino is ready with white biodegradable bags costing 10 euro cents, twice the price for existing yellow plastic bags, Billa manager Aldo Vismara said.

(Source: Italy to ban plastic shopping bags on January 1 [Reuters])

A grassroots revolt is growing over a new generation of controversial incinerators planned across the UK, which would see the amount of household waste sent to be burnt more than double. Incinerators are currently being planned on more than 80 sites under the so-called "dash for ash".

The Coalition Government must decide this summer whether to give its blessing to the £10bn roll-out of the new incinerator chimneys, which continue to meet fierce levels of local resistance from those who would live in their shadow. Concern over possible health risks and impact on property prices looks likely to make incineration one of the most toxic political issues of 2011 in the United Kingdom.

Vehement opposition also comes from environmentalists, who claim that incinerators contribute to greenhouse gases and discourage councils from meeting more ambitious recycling goals.

Julian Kirby, Friends of the Earth's resource use campaigner, rejects industry claims that incinerators could help remove 34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by preventing rubbish being buried in the ground where it continues to produce harmful greenhouse gases. "Scratch the surface and you see that, because of all the oil-based materials they burn, such as plastics, they emit a third more carbon dioxide than gas-fired power stations. Add in emissions from biogenic materials such as paper, textiles and food, and they can be more than twice as bad as coal-fired power stations," he said.

But with further capacity for 1.2 million tonnes of waste-burning already planned, the industry is not having it all its own way – despite the backing of business leaders including the CBI, which earlier this year urged councils to bury their objections to building new incinerators.

Both coalition parties are committed to the growth in the emerging anaerobic digestion industry in which biodegradable matter is recycled into renewable energy.

David Sher, policy adviser for the Environmental Services Association, which represents the waste industry, acknowledged the level of opposition.

"While all large infrastructure projects are challenging to deliver, energy from waste projects are still shaking off occasionally held misconceptions that increase that challenge," he said. "These surround their impact on recycling rates and uncertainty over the health and environmental effects of emissions.

"In recent years, significant work has gone into debunking the myths surrounding energy from waste, notably by the Health Protection Agency, showing that any potential damage for well-regulated incinerators is very small or so small as to be undetectable."

Mr Sher insisted: "Energy from waste is a clean, proven and reliable technology and must form a component of sustainable waste management and energy strategies."

(Source: Waste crisis means 80 giant furnaces set for go-ahead in 2011 [Independent])

The Magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti almost one year ago levelled more than 250,000 homes and left countless more damaged beyond repair. Under the stewardship of former U.S. president Bill Clinton, a US$4-billion fund has been established to help jump-start the rebuilding process, and Innovative Composites International Inc. (ICI) from Canada was recently named one of less than a dozen finalists.

The Toronto-based company is hoping to popularize the concept of a plastic house. Namely that such houses are actually cheaper, stronger, greener and far easier to assemble than those built using more traditional materials.

"Plastics now are a great structural material," said Terry Ball, the founding chief executive of ICI.

"We've developed a bunch of products that take high-strength fibres, we combine them with low-cost plastics and provide structural applications to replace steel, concrete and wood with something that lasts [longer], is stronger, lighter and is completely recyclable."

"When we think about Canadian technology we usually think about wood-frame technology, but there is other technology [such as plastics] making its way into the framework as well," said Don Johnston, senior director of technology and policy for the Canadian Home Builders Association.

"But wood has challenges in tropical and warm climates in terms of having to be treated for decay and other things that aren't typically a problem here in Canada, so perhaps a plastics approach can overcome some of those challenges."

Jerry Olszewski, vice-president of engineering for ICI, believes it will. He boasts ICI components as being nearly impervious to common wood-afflicting ailments such as moisture, insects, rot and mould.

"What we're doing is constructing a building panel that is totally superior to any wood product," said Mr. Olszewski. "We can make [the material] hurricane proof and if necessary, earthquake proof."

It would seem ICI's attractiveness in Haiti goes beyond the technical specifications of the product. Brian Eames, manager of large export projects for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), notes that the company's final assembly procedure -- whereby an ICI-produced home can be erected by four unskilled labourers in about two days -- will prove important as ICI vies for a contract.

In addition to Haiti, the company is involved in the initial stages of low-cost housing projects in Iraq, Libya, Mexico and Columbia. Even beyond housing, ICI envisions a broad range of applications for its technology.

"Anywhere that you currently use a sheet product, so anything that you use a piece of plywood for, you could probably substitute our material for," Mr. Olszewski said.

(Source: Canadian firm bids to build homes in Haiti [Financial Post])

The economic recovery, modest as it may be, is pumping new life into the American recycling industry.

Since the market for recyclable commodities such as cardboard, plastic and aluminum bottomed out two years ago in the United States, prices have gradually rebounded to the point that companies that trade in recyclables are seeing stability and hope for the future, said Susie Gordon, an environmental planner with the Fort Collins Natural Resources Department in Colorado.

Throughout the recession and price crunch, recyclable materials still were moving, albeit slowly, said Jerry Powell, editor and publisher of Resource Recycling magazine in Portland, Oregon. The magazine tracks recycling trends and markets across the country.

The number of recycling programs across the country increased as communities examined how to deal with their waste streams, he said. But the rate of increase in recycling grew at a slower pace than in the previous 20 years.

The goal of recycling more is going to get harder and more expensive, he said.

"We've figured out how to get the low-hanging fruit," said Powell. "We've done all the suburbs, all the big distribution centers, all the big office buildings. Now we need to figure out what's next."

The key to the recovery and the future of recycling lies across the ocean in China, the largest importer of recyclables from the United States, he said.

The demand for recyclables in China is a reflection of its economic growth and changing society, said Powell. Instead of just importing material, converting it into other products, such as tennis shoes, and exporting them, the Chinese are shipping more products internally.

"It's a remarkable how much the situation has changed with the growth of a middle class in China," he said. "They need our stuff so they can sell tennis shoes to their own people."

Nationally, the recycling rate in 2008 was about 33 percent, or 82.9 million tons of material, according to Resource Recycling. The highest recycling rates were for materials in general circulation, office type paper, steel cans and aluminum cans. The lowest rates were for glass containers and low-grade plastics.

The country still throws away about $6.5 billion worth of materials that could be recovered every year, according to Resource Recycling.

(Source: Recycling market rebounds [Coloradoan])

An emerging surfeit of natural gas, methane, has chemists and engineers studying how to turn it into pricier commodities, like diesel fuel or other oil substitutes.

A San Francisco start-up company in western United States, Siluria Technologies, is pursuing a newly developed method of converting natural gas to an oil substitute.

Siluria has decided not to go after gasoline or diesel but instead to produce ethylene, a building block for plastics, fertilizers, pesticides, beverage bottles, tires and lots of other materials that are now made from oil. Ethylene can also be turned into alkanes, a class of hydrocarbons that are a component of gasoline.

In Siluria's newly developed conversion process, using a new kind of catalyst, the conversion from the natural hydrocarbon molecule, methane, to the synthetic one, ethylene, gives off heat instead of requiring it. Further, their conversion process would also involve releasing less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than traditional conversion methods such as the Fischer-Tropsch process.

For the time being, Siluria has not yet demonstrated its method beyond the laboratory, but the company hopes to open a pilot plant in 2012 or 2013.

Limits on carbon dioxide emissions would encourage the new technology, although at the moment the big draw is the price of natural gas, which is running at a discount to oil approaching 80 percent, on an energy basis.

(Source: A Lower-Carbon Route to Replacing Oil [New York Times])

Christmas, more so than most seasonal festivals, is an annual orgy of plastic. Children's toys, plastic-encased gadgets, box sets and bubble bath. These days everything is either made of plastic, wrapped in plastic, or transported in plastic. Sometimes it is all three.

Plastic is an inescapable fact of modern life, and they have revolutionised the world during the past 50-60 years-in many good ways. They offer environmental benefits by preventing food or other goods from being ruined in transit, as well as being far lighter to transport than alternative materials. Increasingly a portion, albeit a small one, of the world’s plastic waste is actually recycled. The problem is that a not only does a great deal of it not get recycled, much of it escapes into the environment and ends up in the ocean.

The almost unbelievable reality, said charity Science and Technology against Ocean Plastics (STOP), is that large areas of our oceans now contain more plastic than plankton. The plastic graveyard in the North Pacific is well known, covering an area twice the size of the continental United States, and stretches from about 500 miles (800 kilometres) off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. It is all held on one place by swirling underwater currents and is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or "trash vortex".

The news, however, gets worse. Oliver Harris, a co-founder of STOP, said that the researchers they are working with have also recently proven that trash vortices are also found in the South Pacific, North and South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Although it had been thought that the principle worry about plastic in the ocean was that it chokes or strangles wildlife, or is actually eaten, Mr Harris said that when plastic is suspended in water it also attracts free floating chemicals, including PCBs and DDT. As these are otherwise dispersed in low concentrations, the worry is that these chemically-laden plastic fragments are being ingested by plankton and fish and are then becoming further concentrated as they work their way up the food chain. More research is undoubtedly needed, and STOP is going to send an expedition to the South Pacific and Indian Ocean gyres in 2011.

Next year 250 billion pounds of plastic will be created and much of it will end up in our oceans. Can anything else be done to solve this growing global problem? While governments debate issues such as deposits on plastic bottles and charging consumers for plastic bags—some of which may help—Mr Harris argues that the problem is only going to be solved with the help of the innovative muscle of the plastics industry.

(Source: A New Year's wish for less trash [Economist])

A company in Victoria, Canada, that uses milk jugs, laundry detergent containers and other blue-box plastics to make synthetic lumber has won the largest single contract in its 12-year history.

Syntal Products Ltd. is producing 43,500 lineal feet for a rail bridge and underpass that is part of the massive Asia Pacific Gateway project around the Port of Vancouver.

The $100,000 contract is about halfway complete and keeping a staff of six employed full-time over a four-month period.

But Syntal general manager Brian Burchill said it could produce more of its popular Altwood lumber - and add additional employees, retail partners and contracts - if it had a better stream of clean recycled material.

As it stands, Syntal is getting its blue-box plastics from Nanaimo and some Gulf Islands as well as at its own gate in Central Saanich and from private collectors.

The company can't use the motherlode from the Capital Regional District's blue boxes because Metro Waste Paper Recovery Inc. has an eight-year contract with the Capital Regional District expiring in April 2012. Metro ships the materials to buyers on the Lower Mainland, some of whom send the plastics to markets overseas.

That leaves Burchill wondering about the long carbon footprint left by Victoria milk jugs and discarded yogurt containers, which he said could be better used at home.

"How much pollution is caused by shuffling our recycled plastics around the planet? I wonder how much of it ends up in landfills over there?" he said.

Syntal uses high-pressure technology to turn certain types of plastics into dimensional lumber. The 2x4 and 2x6 lengths as well as 4x4 posts are considered a longer-lasting and environmentally friendly alternative to pressure-treated wood.

The company was started in 1998 by Richard Jablonski who imported the technology from Europe and set up the $2.6-million plant with "an understanding" the regional district would provide sorted plastic, said Burchill.

Altwood lumber is much more dense and heavier than wood products, but durable and resistant to rot. A 12-foot 2X6 weighs about 38 pounds and retails for about $45, nearly three times the price of pressure-treated lumber.

"We're not trying to replace lumber," says Burchill. "But it can replace it in certain applications because of its durability and resistance to mold."

Burchill has also submitted a proposal to the provincial government to have plastic lumber included in the B.C. Building Code for use as sill plates that run along floors and anchor studs in woodframe buildings. Burchill believes the code should be changed to allow plastic wood as it can better withstand earthquakes. He cites the Kobe, Japan earthquake in 1995 when wood sill plates "shattered" and contributed to the collapse of buildings.

Burchill would not disclose the company's annual sales, but says sales are up more than 450 per cent this year from 2009. The company, he said, was not running at full speed after Jablonski became ill.

"We've got the cost of production down a bit," said Burchill, adding much of the overhead has been labour to separate the plastics.

The company's major weakness is it does not have its own collection system. This holiday season, Syntal hopes the public can drop clean rigid plastic at either Alpine or at Syntal's facility in Victoria.

(Source: Synthetic lumber maker hindered by lack of recyclables [Times Colonist])

Have a Merry Christmas, readers, wherever you are!

We will return next week on the 28th of December, 2010.

John Bissell can turn raw sewage into water bottles, raincoats, diapers and other everyday products. But can he turn it into a $10 million industrial plant?

Mr. Bissell owns MicroMidas Inc., a Sacramento, California, start-up that makes plastic out of waste using a technology it developed two years ago. He's now looking to move into a large manufacturing facility from a pilot plant, but says lenders are reluctant to provide the $10 million in capital he needs to make that transition.

"We're stuck in between development and full-scale production," said Mr. Bissell. "It's tough finding lenders who will bet on a first plant."

To bridge that gap, Mr. Bissell and other emerging clean-tech entrepreneurs are eyeing the U.S. Department of Energy's loan-guarantee program. The five-year-old funding initiative is expected to sharpen its focus next year to less-developed ventures in areas such as carbon capture, biofuels and biomass processing as more conventional solar and wind projects gain the attention of private investors.

"We're really focusing on transformative projects that can be grown to scale," said Jonathan Silver, the head of the agency's loan-program office. At the same time, the agency should "back away" from maturing sectors, like onshore wind and smaller solar plants, as private-sector support expands, he added.

The Energy Department's loan-guarantee program is open to clean-tech businesses of all sizes, which in the past have sought loans between $16 million and $1.3 billion. But Mr. Silver says the agency will be casting an even wider net for less-developed technologies in the new year.

Much like the U.S. Small Business Administration 7(a) loans, the Energy Department doesn't disburse cash. Rather, it agrees to cover a venture's debts with a commercial bank in the event of a default.

That provides firms with the kind of access to capital needed to scale up to full commercial production—a stage when new technologies are able to prove their commercial viability and attract outside investors.

Without the government's support, venture-capital firms would be left to shoulder the risk of investing in clean-tech innovators, said Ira Ehrenpreis, a partner with Technology Partners, a Palo Alto, California, investment firm specializing in renewable-energy ventures.

"There's never been more activity in the clean-tech sector than there is right now, and the venture-capital industry is focused on early-stage technology," he said.

(Source: Clean-Tech Entrepreneurs Eye Funding Shift [Wall Street Journal])

Indian President Pratibha Patil on Wednesday said the country needed another Green Revolution as the population growth is set to increase on already scarce resources.

"The land is limited but the demand for foodgrains has been increasing consistently. The Green Revolution enabled us to meet the rising demands so far, but now in the 21st century there is a need to usher in a new Green Revolution," said President Patil.

She said dryland farming could be the cradle of the second Green Revolution. She began her speech recalling Mohan Singh Mehta, an educationist from Udaipur, who proposed the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), a Farm Science Centre, when he was the head of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research committee.

Since then, KVKs have been established and they are working today from Kargil to Car Nicobar. President Patil said by 2050 India's population would be 1.6 billion.

"We have to plan for the food requirements of such a large population," she said.

The President said strategies to make small holdings more productive should be made. A farmer is a stakeholder in every sphere of agriculture, she added. Their rights need to be protected. She also said this is the decade of innovations and the farm innovations made should be cost-effective and locally planned.

Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot called for the application of IT services in agriculture, and Punjab governor Shivraj Patil talked of the advanced measures to be adopted for developing agriculture.

He said each district should have a farm science centre like the KVK and private agencies and corporates should come forward in setting these bodies.

(Source: Another Green Revolution needed: Prez Patil [Times of India])

A Christmas tree made from 80,000 used plastic spoons from fast-food outlets has won Taiwan's eco-friendly Christmas tree design contest, organizers said last Tuesday.

The spoons discarded by customers at Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets were used to build a tree that stands 12 metres tall, the Taichung City Government said. The tree is destined to be recycled at the end of the festive season.

Students from Douliu's TransWorld University designed the tree.

A total of 227 Christmas trees - made from recycled objects like clothing, cans, bottles, drinking straws, computer discs and bamboo chopsticks - were entered in the contest.



(Source: Christmas tree made from used spoons wins Taiwan design contest [Monsters and Critics])

Waste Management is America's biggest trash hauler, but amidst the current environmental climate, where organizations such as Subaru, Wal-Mart, and various city governments embraced the idea of zero waste, the company is facing a threat of reduced waste. Indeed, in a world where people throw less stuff away, the future of a traditional garbage company looks bleak.

That's why David Steiner, Waste Management's chief executive, is turning the company in a new direction. Instead of simply trucking trash to the dump, the Houston-based firm will look for ways to extract value -- energy or materials -- from the waste stream. "Think green," is now Waste Management's tag line.

"Picking up and disposing of people's waste is not going to be the way this company survives long term," said Steiner. "Our opportunities all arise from the sustainability movement."

The company is shifting capital investment away from landfills and toward recycling plants, known as MRFs (materials recovery facilities), that enable "single-stream recycling." It allows consumers to place all recyclables into one bin; paper, cardboard, glass, plastic, and metals are then separated using forced air, optical scanning, and heavy-duty magnets.

As well, of particular interest to Waste Management is organic materials -- food scraps, yard trimmings, and wood. Organic materials account for about 30% to 35% of the waste stream and represent its single largest untapped resource.

To better capture the value of the rotting tomatoes, banana peels, and chicken bones that now end up in landfills, Waste Management has invested in a number of companies that are trying to turn organics into cash. In September it bought a majority interest in Garick, a 30-year-old Ohio-based company that makes compost and mulch at facilities in six U.S. states.

This year Waste Management took a stake in Harvest Power, a Massachusetts-based startup that turns organic waste into compost and biogas, which can then be burned to generate electricity.

Two other companies backed by Waste Management -- Terrabon and Enerkem -- are generating transportation fuels from waste, albeit on a very small scale. Houston-based Terrabon is making green gasoline from paper waste and chicken manure at a pilot plant in College Station, Texas, while Enerkem, a Canadian firm, is developing a commercial-scale facility in Edmonton, Alberta, to turn mixed solid waste into ethanol.

Unlike the traditional collection and disposal business, all these ventures depend on proprietary technology or the kind of scale that gives Waste Management an edge over its competitors. "This is not David Steiner on some quest to save the planet," said the CEO. "I don't get paid to do that. I get paid to generate shareholder value." Now you know what Waste Management means by "Think green."

(Source: Waste Management's new direction [Fortune])

The U.S. corn (maize) crop is enormous. But about a third of it doesn't go to cereal or cows — instead, it helps run cars. To boost American's use of renewable fuels, the federal government subsidizes corn-based ethanol.

This has the American meat and dairy industries up in arms over the high cost of their main feed. The rise of ethanol has pitted livestock producers against the oil industry.

"The prices of beef and pork have definitely gone up the last few months," said Chris Stelzer, a chef in Ames, Iowa. "Tenderloin's gone up about two dollars in the past month or two — a pound — and pork's gone up about a dollar or so."

According to the United States Department of Agriculture data, meat now costs as much as 12 percent more than last year. The reason for this, said economics professor Bruce Babcock, of Iowa State University, is that ethanol plants increase the demand for corn, thus driving up the prices for other buyers — like livestock producers.

The U.S. government required that Americans use about 13 billion gallons of ethanol in 2010. In addition, to further boost using corn to fuel cars, Congress created subsidies paying gasoline blenders for every gallon they blend with ethanol.

The American Meat Institute's J. Patrick Boyle said the current system is unfair, because the ethanol industry is benefiting from a trifecta of government subsidies.

And economist Babcock said the mere fact that ethanol comprises about 8 percent of fuel consumed in the United States has already changed the ebb and flow of the commodity market behind food.

"We've now hitched the price of corn, inextricably linked the price of corn, to the price of crude oil, and I think we can't turn the clock back, that's the way it is."

With corn prices more closely tied to oil prices, when the price of gas goes up, it raises the demand for ethanol — and that means consumers will feel it in two places: at the gas pump and on the dinner table.

(Source: Fuel Vs Food: Ethanol Helps Boost The Price Of Meat [NPR])

Remember those plastic booms floating for miles and miles in the Gulf of Mexico trying to corral the oil gushing from BP's disastrous oil leak? General Motors has found another use for them in the new plug-in Chevrolet Volt.

GM is working with its suppliers to recover those floating plastic booms, clean them up and recycle them into plastic auto parts rather than watching them go to a landfill, where they would start to break down in about 100 years. "The spill was already taking a toll on the environment in the Gulf," said Michael Robinson, GM's vice president of environment, energy and safety policy. "We wanted to do something to help, if we could." By recycling the booms, GM helped divert about 100,000 pounds of plastic waste from landfills.

Instead, that waste was turned into 100,000 pounds of plastic resin, which was then blended with other recycled materials, including old tires and other plastics and polymers, and molded into baffles that deflect air around the vehicle's radiator. The recycled boom material makes up about 25 percent of the part. Recycled tires from GM's test tracks make up another 25 percent. The remaining is a mixture of recycled plastics and other polymers.

GM worked with several suppliers on the effort. Heritage Environmental collected the booms along the Louisiana coast. Mobile Fluid Recovery then used a massive high-speed drum to spin out all the absorbed oil and waste water from the booms. Lucent Polymers then transformed the boom material into the physical state necessary for plastic die-mold production. Finally, GDC, another supplier, combined the resin with other plastic compounds to produce the components.

(Source: Oil-soaked Booms From Gulf Find New Use in Chevy Volt [Forbes])

Just inside the entrance to the National Design Triennial, at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, sits the Solvatten, a shiny, black rectangular plastic container resembling an ordinary gasoline canister. Your first reaction upon seeing it might be to wonder why it's sitting inside a design museum; however, the nondescript package masks world-changing functionality. When the container is set out in the sun, it purifies water — no energy required.

After past shows celebrating futuristic forms, translucent plastic, and high-tech gizmos, all designed largely to fuel consumer lust, this year's triennial has decidedly different ambitions. Named Why Design Now?, it even questions the very purpose of design. Is its role in contemporary society to sculpt a more stylish toothbrush, or to do something more meaningful? Judging by the 134 projects on display, from a lamp powered by soil to a speedy condom applicator that aims to reduce the spread of HIV in South Africa, it's clear the Cooper-Hewitt's curators have decided on the latter.

But it's not just the curators. The exhibition reflects a fundamental shift in the design industry. Traditionally, designers are the people who style the plastic water bottles, soon-to-be-obsolete electronic devices, and throwaway furnishings that clog our landfills, chew through resources, and help us exploit foreign workers. Now, however, influenced by images of suffering in developing countries, news about global warming, and disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, they're suddenly feeling guilty. On their own time, they've begun identifying social and environmental problems, and looking for solutions. Call it the new designer conscience.

"I think designers are finally understanding the real impact they can have, both negative and positive, in various parts of the world," says Matilda McQuaid, deputy curatorial director at the Cooper-Hewitt. In addition to the work they do for corporate clients, "There's an understanding that they also have a responsibility to the public," she says.

The challenge for designers will be to balance their altruistic desires with their traditional role of responding to consumer demand for drool-worthy products. Those considerations aren't mutually exclusive — the Bauhaus school of the early twentieth century, and mid-century modern designers like Charles and Ray Eames, believed design could affect social change and improve living conditions for ordinary people, yet they also succeeded in realizing objects that are still coveted as design classics. The task for today's designers will be to develop a new voice — to respond to twenty-first-century issues without losing their sense of joy.

(Source: Conscious Designs [Walrus])

Sales of fake trees are expected to approach 13 million this year in the United States, a record, as quality improves and they get more convenient, with features like built-in lights and easy collapsibility. All told, well over 50 million artificial Christmas trees will grace living rooms and dens this season, according to the industry's main trade group, compared to about 30 million real trees.

Kim Jones, who was shopping for a tree at a Target store in Brooklyn this week, was convinced that she was doing the planet a favor by buying a $200 fake balsam fir made in China instead of buying a carbon-sipping pine that had been cut down for one season's revelry.

But Ms. Jones and the millions of others buying fake trees might not be doing the environment any favors.

In the most definitive study of the perennial real vs. fake question, Ellipsos, an environmental consulting firm in Montréal, Canada found that an artificial tree would have to be reused for more than 20 years to be greener than buying a fresh-cut tree annually. The calculations included greenhouse gas emissions, use of resources and human health impacts.

"You're not doing any harm by cutting down a Christmas tree," said Clint Springer, a botanist and professor of biology at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. "A lot of people think artificial is better because you're preserving the life of a tree. But in this case, you've got a crop that's being raised for that purpose."

While artificial trees can theoretically be recycled, most municipal recycling programs do not recycle artificial trees — and for good reason: artificial trees are largely made from polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, which is in most cases prohibitively expensive to recycle.

"Ultimately trees are likely to end up in landfills until cities offer recycling programs," said Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association.

(Source: How Green Is Your Artificial Christmas Tree? You Might Be Surprised [New York Times])

Australia's New South Wales government plans to introduce biodegradable bags to supermarket checkouts and open more waste collection centres to reduce landfill.

They are part of a draft waste avoidance plan to be released this week by the state's Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water. It encourages businesses to recycle more and invest in waste infrastructure.

If the draft is adopted, compostable bags would be trialled in several supermarkets to gauge public acceptance.

Food scraps wrapped in compostable bags would be mixed with garden refuse and councils would be encouraged to combine collections for the two.

"By separating food scraps for compost we can greatly reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill," the Environment Minister, Frank Sartor, said.

The government will also increase the number of council waste collection centres for difficult items such as gas bottles, car batteries or paint. A scheme for electronic waste such as televisions and computers will start next year.

The manager of sustainability at Veolia Environmental Services, Peter Shmigel, called on the government to follow Victoria and provide infrastructure subsidies. New South Wales collects more than $300 million Australian dollars a year in landfill levies but reinvests little in recycling, he said.

The action plan is designed to push New South Wales closer to its goal of recycling about two-thirds of waste by 2014. In 2008-09 the state recycled 59 per cent of the waste generated.

(Source: Plastic out, biodegradable bags in to reduce landfill [Sydney Morning Herald])

Though worldwide honey bee health has been on the decline since the 1980's, it wasn't until the fall of 2006 that beekeepers nation wide began noticing honey bee colonies disappearing in large numbers without known reason. This syndrome, named Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD, is characterized by the inexplicable disappearance of the hive's worker bees, leaving the newborns to fend for themselves.

Researchers globally have been trying to pin down the cause or causes of this mysterious ailment. Most entomologists believe a combination of factors are involved: exposure to pesticides, urbanization, disruption of habitat, water pollution, climate change, the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, the Varroa mite and literally trucking bee hives around the world to pollinate crops. However, more and more evidence is pointing to sub-lethal pesticide exposures as critical contributing factors.

Beekeepers and environmentalists called on the US EPA to remove the pesticide Clothianidin, manufactured by Bayer Crop Science, earlier this December, citing a leaked EPA memo that discloses a critically flawed scientific support study. The Huffington Post reported that the November 2nd memo identifies a core study underpinning the registration of the insecticide Clothianidin as unsound after EPA quietly re-evaluated the pesticide just as it was getting ready to allow a further expansion of its use.

According to a Guardian article, one-third of all our food staples only grow after pollination. In the United States alone, the cost of replacing this "free service" which nature has provided for hundreds of thousands of years, is put at anything between £14bn and £92bn.

While Albert Einstein most likely did not create the fatuous statement that "if bees were to disappear from the surface of the earth, humanity would have no more than four years to live," it is nevertheless hard to dispel the significance of insect pollinators, such as bees, in crop production.

(Source: Beekeepers Ask EPA to Remove Bayer Pesticide Linked to Colony Collapse Disorder [Huffington Post])

Investment bankers have come in for more abuse – not over their bonuses this time but for allegedly driving up the price of Christmas turkeys.

Paul Kelly, the poultry industry's "turkey man of the year", blames them for driving up the cost of wheat-based animal feed from £95 per tonne to £177.

The increase in feed prices comes despite strong commodity supplies. Wildfires destroyed some Russian wheat during the summer, but the US and other grain producing regions have had good harvests.

Since the financial crisis began, market analysts have watched speculative money pouring into commodity derivative markets, including food. Many experts link this activity by banks and hedge funds to recent volatility and sudden inflation in the retail costs of food and energy.

"As City traders enjoy their Christmas bonuses, their speculative activities are fuelling food price inflation," said Deborah Doane of the World Development Movement.

"This is bad news for the millions who live on the breadline in developing countries, as well as for hard-working families struggling to get by here in the UK... Even on Christmas Day, the British public is facing higher food bills at a time they can least afford it, as again we bear the brunt of bankers' greed."

(Source: Investment bankers blamed for driving up the price of turkeys [Guardian])

Scientists at Britain's Imperial College London have sequenced the genome of a major fungal disease that affects barley and other cereal crops. The research, published in December in Science, suggests that parasites within the genome of the fungus help the fungus to adapt and overcome plant defences. The findings could advance our understanding of how plant diseases evolve and improve food security.

The research, led by Dr Pietro Spanu, decodes the genome of Blumeria, which causes powdery mildew in barley. Plants become covered in powdery white spots that prevent them from cropping, which has a devastating impact on agricultural yield.

Blumeria often evolves too rapidly for current prevention methods, such as fungicides and crop rotation, to be effective. The new research suggests that this rapid evolution occurs because the fungus genome contains multiple parasites, known as transposons, which help the fungus disguise itself and go unrecognised by the plant's defences. It is as though the transposons confuse the host plant by changing the target molecules that the plant uses to detect the onset of disease.

The researchers discovered that Blumeria had unusually large numbers of transposons within it. "It was a big surprise," said Dr Spanu, "as a genome normally tries to keep its transposons under control. But in these genomes, one of the controls has been lifted. We think it might be an adaptive advantage for them to have these genomic parasites, as it allows the pathogens to respond more rapidly to the plant's evolution and defeat the immune system."

(Source: Genome of barley disease reveals surprises [Imperial College London])

Global food security was on the top of the agenda at last week's International Grains Forum in Perth, Australia.

The forum provided a global-scaled opportunity for growers, traders, millers, terminal operators, governments and other industry representatives to rub elbows with a diverse range of people involved in the grains business and discuss issues considered likely to effect the future of the global grains industry.

Food security was charged as being the greatest challenge in our history by master of ceremonies and author, Julian Cribb.

He said it was an issue greater than world wars and the global financial crisis and meant a lot more than simply putting food on the table.

"It has been particularly challenging for the global grains industry, especially in view of the crop shortfalls in parts of the world, most notably in the Black Sea region," said Etsuo Kitahara, International Grains Council (IGC) executive director. "Prices also have moved sharply higher since the council last met in June."

Meanwhile, he said despite this season's problems, global grain availabilities in the council's five year global supply and demand projections to 2015/16, appeared to be higher than assumed at the same time last year. Although the consumption figures had been revised upward, Mr Kitahara believed it hadn't resulted in major changes to the overall projected balance of supply and demand.

Mr Kitahara was joined on stage by a number of industry speakers including vice president of overseas operations for the US Wheat Associates, Vince Peterson.

Although Mr Peterson had a slightly different perspective on the attributes of the current global wheat industry, Mr Kitahara and his fellow presenters were all very frank about the seriousness of a potential global food shortage.

(Source: Global food security mooted as No 1 issue [Farm Weekly])

This year in California, December 16th is declared Day Without a Bag by non-profit environmental group Heal the Bay. The event is designed to give municipalities information on enacting single-use bag bans, similar to the one approved for unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County last month.

More than 6 billion single-use plastic bags are used by L.A. County residents each year, according to a 2007 report. Heal the Bay said an average Californian uses 500 to 600 plastic bags each year. Only 5% of single-use plastic bags are recycled, according to the California Integrated Waste Management Board. A reusable bag that lasts two years, said Heal the Bay, holds the potential to save 1,000 plastic bags.

(Source: Day Without a Bag targets holiday shoppers [Los Angeles Time])

On average, each Briton consume 120 grammes of plastic wrapping on Christmas gifts, most of which is of a type that is almost impossible to recycle. Now researchers at the University of Warwick have devised a new technique which makes it potentially possible to recycle 100% of plastic wrappings.

The lead researcher on the project, University of Warwick Engineering Professor Jan Baeyens, said: "We envisage a typical large scale plant having an average capacity of 10,000 tonnes of plastic waste per year. In a year, tankers would take away from each plant over £5 million worth of recycled chemicals and each plant would save £500,000 a year in land fill taxes alone. As the expected energy costs for each large plant would only be in the region of £50,000 a year, the system will be commercially very attractive and give a rapid payback on capital and running costs."

Nevertheless, for the time being, most recyclers will still throw away the majority of their gift wrap and packaging collections, according to WSAW.

"Plastic, metallic with foils, the little sprinkles and sparklies that they put on the paper so that it makes it look great under a Christmas tree, all of that is junk to a paper mill," said Cory Tomcyzk, owner of one recycling plant in Mosinee, WI.

(Source: 100% of most challenging Christmas plastic wrapping could be recycled by new tech [PhysOrg])

The region of Kristianstad is a farming and food-processing powerhouse in southern Sweden that effectively no longer uses fossil fuel for heating. Over the course of the last decade, Kristianstad's government has orchestrated a conversion from mostly oil heating to various "green" fuels like biomass, food processing waste and wood pellets.

It is so easy to think "Impossible!" when some environmental policy experts suggest that countries should cut emissions by, say, 20 or 30 percent by 2020, but some methods for drastically reducing emissions do exist, only that they come with economic costs (at least in the short term) and require a political commitment.

Many parts of Europe have figured out how to heat with much less fossil fuel than before. Heating is in fact a relatively low-hanging fruit in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is the example of Kristianstad, of course. But there are also other kinds of innovations like passive houses and trash-fueled district heating programs.

Could towns elsewhere follow the trend? And if not, why?

(Source: Green Heating? Not So Impossible After All [New York Times])

Three artists in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe have come up with a project to recycle plastic and use it to come up with life-size wildlife sculptures.

The artists, Methembe Tshongwe, Prince Ncube and Busisani Tshuma, are based at the Victoria Falls Garage in Richmond suburb.

Tshongwe told NewsDay reporters that they collected waste plastics at the Ngozi mine dumpsite.

They displayed their works, life-size images of lions and kudus, along the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls highway.

"People like what we do. They often stop their cars here and marvel while others buy the art pieces for display in their gardens," said Tshongwe, adding that locals constituted the bulk of their customers.

Their concern was that the arts in Zimbabwe lacked full support, with which they could have gone far.

This has seen some locals with international contacts buying the pieces and reselling them abroad for a profit.

The problem could, however, be redressed if artists were adequately resourced. Tshongwe said it took a great deal of time to work on the colourful pieces. He said: "To create a lion, it can take up to one month."

He added that they first make a model of the animal using clay before covering it with molten plastic, which they later remove.

They use wire to work on the feet.

Tshongwe, however, said their works are sometimes confiscated by council rangers as they say that the displays are unlawful.

(Source: Artists create beauty from 'junk' [NewsDay])

The Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest landfill in the world, is not alone in the oceans. The vertices of trash also accumulate in the Indian and the North Atlantic Oceans, according 5 Gyres Institute's investigations.

The plastic contaminants are ingested by marine animals, which in turn enter parts of the human food-chain. According to calculations made by the United Nations and the 5 Gyres Institute, they estimate that this pollution kill more than one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles that mistaken plastic for food.

Co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, Markus Eriksen, said that 80% of ocean trash come from the inadequate or the absence of waste treatment on land, while the remaining 20% are sourced from fishing boats or other vessels. World production of plastic is about 225 million tonnes annually, of which only 5% are recycled.

(Source: El confeti plástico invade los océanos [El País])

Scientists have announced a plan to collect and store the wild plant relatives of essential food crops, including wheat, rice, and potatoes.

The project, co-ordinated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, will collect and catalogue seeds from across the globe. The aim is to safeguard valuable genetic traits that the wild plants contain, which could be bred into crops to make them more hardy and versatile. This could help secure food supplies in the face of a changing climate.

All of the plant material collected will be stored in seed banks in the long term, but much of it will also be used in "pre-breeding trials" to find out if the wild varieties could be used to combat diseases that are already threatening food production.

In the 1970s, for example, an outbreak of grassy stunt virus, which prevents the rice plant from flowering and producing grain, decimated rice harvests across Asia.

Scientists from the International Rice Research Institute screened thousands of samples of wild and locally-cultivated rice plants looking for genetic resistance to the disease. They found it in a wild relative, Oryza nivara, which grows in India. The gene has been incorporated into most new rice varieties since the discovery.

Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust explained: "All our crops were originally developed from wild species - that's how farming began... But they were adapted from the plants best suited to the climates of the past... Climate change means we need to go back to the wild to find those relatives of our crops that can thrive in the climates of the future."

(Source: Wild food crop relatives to be 'rescued' [BBC])

The United Fisherman and Allied Workers Union wants all members of parliament to support an Opposition motion banning oil tanker traffic in northern B.C. waters.

The motion would legislate a ban on oil tanker traffic covering Dixon Entrance, Queen Charlotte Sound and Hecate Strait and will be presented Tuesday.

At present there is only a moratorium against tanker traffic in the area which has been in place for 38 years.

"Our coastal communities depend on a healthy environment and an oil spill in the north coast could devastate coastal economies and communities," said union spokesman Arnold Nagy.

He said the fishing industry in the north and central coast was worth over $135 million a year.

(Source: Fishermen's union opposes oil tankers in B.C. waters [Vancouver Sun])

The Floral Reflectance Database (FReD) was created by researchers at Imperial College London and Queen Mary, University of London. Now researchers are being offered a glimpse of how bees may see flowers in all their ultra-violet (UV) glory.

Users of the database can then calculate how these plants appear to different pollinating insects, based on studies of what different parts of the spectrum different species see.

"This research highlights that the world we see is not the physical or the 'real' world - different animals have very different senses, depending on the environment the animals operate in," said Professor Lars Chittka from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

"Every third bite that you consume at the dinner table is the result of insect pollinators' work. In order to utilise insects for commercial pollination purposes, we need to understand how insects see flowers," said Professor Chittka.

"We need to understand what kind of a light climate we need to generate in commercial glass houses to facilitate detection of flowers by bees," he said.

(Source: Database shows how bees see world in UV [BBC])

If you have been in a restaurant kitchen, you have seen how much food, water and energy can be wasted there. Chef Arthur Potts-Dawson shares his very personal vision for drastically reducing restaurant, and supermarket, waste - creating recycling, composting, sustainable engines for good.

Speaking at TED, Arthur Potts-Dawson stresses that it is important that we reduce, reuse, refuse and recycle.

"So nature doesn't create waste, doesn't create waste as such. Everything in nature is used up in a closed continuous cycle with waste being the end of the beginning. And that's been something that's been nurturing me for some time. And it's an important statement to understand. If we don't stand up and make a difference and think about sustainable food, think about the sustainable nature of it, then we may fail. But - I wanted to get up and show you that we can do it if we're more responsible. Environmentally conscience businesses are doable," he said.

(Source: A vision for sustainable restaurants [TED])

The American recycling rate for PET plastic bottled water containers now stands at 31 percent for 2009, according to new data from two new studies produced by the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) for the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA).

"Recycling rates for bottled water containers had a modest but positive increase in 2009; steady as we go," said Tom Lauria, vice president of communications at IBWA in a prepared statement.

"We're glad to see a significant, 37 percent jump in the use of RPET, both in bottled water products and PET bottles in general. The doubling of the recycling rates for bottled water containers over the past five years is encouraging but also a reminder that more needs to be done to expand recycling efforts and collection methods across the country. It's clear that bottled water recycling rates are consistently heading in the right direction year after year, while delivering the convenience, safety and refreshing hydration that made bottled water one of the most popular packaged beverages," said Lauria.

(Source: Recycling Rate For Plastic Bottled Water Increases To 31 Percent Nationwide [Vending Market Watch])

Research at the University of California student farm on wild sunflowers, shows they are home to lady beetles and parasitic wasps, which are good bugs that kill bad bugs, said Mark Van Horn, director of the student farm.

"The sunflowers help us provide a bed-and-breakfast for beneficial insects and keep them going year round," he said. "And native sunflowers are a lot better at it than domestic. There's a lot more insect biodiversity in wild sunflowers."

While conventional farmers have a quiver full of chemical arrows to battle the invasion of weeds and pests, the organic farmer has a tougher row to hoe. There simply aren't organic bug sprays that can match the power of synthetic chemicals and almost nothing in the way of organic herbicides.

Instead, there's a growing understanding among organic farmers of ways to harness natural systems as part of what is called integrated pest management.

A paper published in Nature this year confirmed what organic farmers have long suspected — that conventional farming can make the pest problem worse. David Crowder, an entomologist at Washington State University and an author of the paper, says that if there are more varieties of plants around the field, and no broad-spectrum pesticides, as in organic farming, it promotes balance among insect species, rather than letting one species dominate. "There are more natural enemies and they do a lot better job in organic fields controlling pests," Dr. Crowder said.

The scientific search continues for a blend of systems that will grow food naturally and be good for nature on and beyond the farm field. "That's the holy grail," says Mr. Van Horn. "An agricultural system that mimics a natural system."

(Source: Farmers Find Organic Arsenal to Wage War on Pests [New York Times])

At Whistler, Canada, all film plastics, including plastic bags, are headed for the landfill as of 1 January, 2011.

Nicolette Richer, environmental coordinator for the Resort Municipality of Whistler, explained to council on Tuesday night that the reason behind the decision was due mainly to contamination of the plastic.

All plastics, once they are recycled, are sold to Asia, one of the world's largest buyers of the product. China has a law demanding that all plastic packaging be clean, and if a company is found with contaminated plastic three times, their business license is revoked.

The waste management company for the Resort Municipality of Whistler has found that most of the plastic bags and other film plastics coming through the recycling bins are not clean enough to be resold.

(Source: Plastic bags won't be accepted at recycling centres [Pique])

Food scraps, along with leaf and yard wastes fall into the "organic waste" category. In the United States, organic waste accounts for nearly 80 million tons of the total solid waste stream. While this organic waste comprises much of our waste stream, it is also energy-rich and can provide extraordinary benefits to the environment and help in the creation of alternative energies, especially in light of emerging technologies in the waste industry.

Much of the organic material recycled today is done so via composting. The market for compost, mulch and organic soil amendments is growing as consumers are increasingly demanding alternatives to conventional fertilizers for lawn and garden care, and as municipalities and companies are seeking to increase the recycling of organic materials for beneficial use. In fact, organic compost is considered a part of the green retail market, which has been growing at 20 percent annually in the United States.

A more advanced technology, anaerobic digestion, accelerates the decomposition of organic materials and can convert food and other organic waste into heat and power. This process also throws off a solid residue, which too can be added to compost to extract the most value. There is also the chemical conversion of organics whereby new technologies are being developed to convert organics residuals into low-carbon, high-quality transportation fuels.

Both composting and anaerobic digestion are used today in organics recycling. However, more advanced technologies are just around the corner. At the highest end of the value chain are processes that utilize gasification and fermentation technologies to convert organic waste to biofuels or chemicals. As countries look to reduce their dependence on foreign oil, the opportunity to create fuels from renewable sources, such as the high volume of organic waste in various countries, becomes all the more valuable.

(Source: What Happens to Your Organic Waste? [Earth & Industry])

Scientists at the University of British Columbia (UBC) will lead a research project that aims to give people a look into the future of the world's oceans, using 3D gaming technology.

"We've all heard how there is a big problem in the ocean. But we need to get the attention of policy makers," says Dr. Villy Christensen in an interview from Tokyo. "As scientists we're good at going out with spreadsheets, but now we will use 3D gaming as a credible way of creating this underwater world, not just by numbers, but by showing it."

He says rather than showing politicians and members of the public reports that line up rows of statistics to represent how fisheries are declining, they will translate the data into animations "that take them on a field trip under the ocean."

"One of the biggest challenges for conservation of fisheries is that most people can't see the state of our oceans with their own eyes because from the surface everything seems unchanged," says Dr. Daniel Pauly, who in 1998 developed a groundbreaking theory on measuring the decline of fisheries globally.

The UBC Fisheries Centre just last week published a research paper that concluded the Earth has run out of room to expand fisheries.

That paper, published in the journal PLoS ONE, says fisheries expanded at a rate of one million square kilometres a year from the 1950s through the 1970s. During the same period, there was nearly a fivefold increase in catch, going from 19 million tonnes in 1950 to a peak of 90 million tonnes in the late 1980s, before dropping to 87 million tonnes in 2005.



(Source: B.C. scientists map out the ocean's destiny [Globe and Mail])

Environment Recycling Technologies (ERT) holds the rights to a neat process that turns mixed waste plastics into commercially viable products. ERT calls this Powder Impression Moulding – or PIM for short.

The interesting thing about this method is that it enables the recycling of unsorted and mixed plastic waste, meaning less leg work and lower costs.

2K Manufacturing, which makes industrial products using the PIM process, has begun large scale production of EcoSheet, an environmentally friendly alternative to plywood that is fully recyclable at the end of its lifespan

In addition to plywood, PIM has the potential to become roof tiles and pallets and, further out, it could even be applied to making body armour for the defence sector.

(Source: PIM turns plastic into plywood [Independent])

In a novel way of protest against the village government body, the panchayat, for its failure in tackling the plastic waste menace, volunteers of the Benaulim villagers action committee (BVAC) in Goa, India, on Monday morning offloaded two pickup loads of plastic garbage collected by them on Sunday, right in front of the panchayat premises.

What irked the BVAC members was the affidavit filed by the panchayat in the high court hearing the petition with regard to the garbage issue stating that the panchayat has put in place a mechanism for collection and disposal of plastic waste from the village.

Rudolf Barreto of the BVAC who oversaw the garbage collection drive said that the exercise was aimed at "sensitising the panchayat about the enormity of the plastic waste problem in the village."

"They can't run away from the problem by filing a false affidavit that they have taken steps to solve the issue just to escape strictures from the court. The very fact that we managed to collect two pickup trucks of plastic waste from various parts of the village in a single day nails the panchayat's lie. As there has been no proper agreement signed between the panchayat and the contractor over garbage collection, the panchayat's claims sound hollow," Barreto told Times of India.

Further picking holes in the affidavit, Barreto said that the panchayat's claim of setting up a composting unit near the panchayat building, was in fact a pit dug by a building contractor to store water.

(Source: Irked BVAC dump plastic waste in front of panchayat [Times of India])

Paijit Sangchai dropped a small piece of laminated paper into a jar of cloudy liquid which he hopes will transform his start-up into a multi-million dollar company and help revolutionize recycling.

"Now this is the fun part," he said a few minutes later, holding it under the tap to wash away soggy paper pulp and revealed a clear plastic film.

His Thai firm, Flexoresearch, has developed a series of blended enzymes that can recover pulp or fiber from laminated paper such as cigarette packets, stickers or milk cartons that were previously hard or impossible to recycle.

The resulting pulp, he said, can be used to produce new paper products — thus saving trees — or turned into building materials that can be used as an alternative to asbestos, which is potentially hazardous to human health.

In developing countries such as Thailand, laminated paper is usually thrown away, said Paijit.

"Most people burn it illegally and that causes toxic fumes which harm people's health," he said at his small laboratory in a science park on the northern outskirts of Bangkok.

"For people in developing countries who suffer from the fumes and don't know why they are sick ... it can help improve their lives," he added.

And while developed countries like the US are able to incinerate laminated paper such as fast food wrappers safely, they do not have any commercially viable way to recycle it either, he said.

(Source: Thai tech pioneer converts waste into wealth [Taipei Times])

In the United Kingdom, 40,000 tonnes of mixed plastics – including items not previously accepted – were recycled in 2009, up almost 50% in a year.

Barry Turner of the Plastics 2020 Challenge, which represents the three main trade bodies involved with the manufacture and use of plastics in packaging, said: "We welcome the fact that many councils are enabling their voters to participate in this local recycling revolution, which our research shows they have a great desire to do when it is made easy and simple. This trend must continue next year but still has a very long way to go to reach the 23m homes now putting out plastic bottles for kerbside collection. This shows what can be achieved when the system joins up to deliver environmental benefits for all."

(Source: Campaigners hail 'recycling revolution' as plastics collection soars [Guardian])

Businesses could save an average of 4-5% of their turnover through avoided landfill costs, according to the UK's environmental regulations advisor NetRegs. Among those quick to cash in on the savings have been United Biscuits, PepsiCo and InterfaceFLOR, using techniques such as recycling, composting and waste-to-energy incineration.

For example, leading snacks manufacturer, United Biscuits, achieved its target of zero food waste to landfill in 2009, and in the same year cut non-food waste to landfill by 44%, on track to cut out landfill altogether by 2012. They employed a mix of tactics including improving recycling facilities across all sites, making packaging out of recyclable materials, printing boxes in house according to demand, as opposed to buying them in pre-printed and quickly out-dated bulk, and working closely with suppliers to eliminate inefficiencies right down the chain.

Meanwhile, the UK's landfill tax offers a sturdy stick to drive the change, with planned increases of £8 per tonne each year until 2013, from the current rate of £48 per tonne.

(Source: Businesses profit from reducing landfill waste [Guardian])

Melting glaciers. Disappearing coastlines. Extreme weather. Climate scientists have been warning for years about the possible effects of global warming -- and have a long list of future horrors in store for mankind.

Some effects of climate change, however, are more difficult to see. And with representatives from around the world currently gathered in Cancun, Mexico in yet another attempt to forge an international agreement on how best to tackle the climate problem, the United Nations on Thursday released a study pointing to one of those less visible catastrophes: the state of the world's oceans.

According to the report, released by the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), the chemistry of the oceans is changing at a rate not seen for 65 million years. Should the rate of change continue unaltered, our oceans could be 150 percent more acidic by the end of this century, the study says.

"We are seeing an overall negative impact from ocean acidification directly on organisms and on some key ecosystems that help provide food for billions," said Carol Turley, the lead author of the new report, in a press release. Furthermore, according to the study, an increase in acidification could have a devastating effect on coral reefs, which provide a home for 25 percent of all marine species and provide food and jobs to some 500 million people around the world.

(Source: Oceans Threatened by Rising Acidity and Overfishing [Der Spiegel])

Waste Management, Inc. headquartered in Houston, Texas, has launched a first-of-its-kind new Food and Organic Recycling Facility in Orange County, California. The new facility, located at an existing company transfer and processing facility in Orange, will process food and organics collected from local businesses, for conversion into a material that can be used as a source of energy.

The process employs a specially designed bio-separator that removes contaminates from organic waste, which is then transformed into a slurry that can be mixed with other complementary liquids to maximize its use in creating green energy.

The California waste department (CalRecycle) estimates that food waste accounts for nearly 16 percent of the overall waste stream in California, over 6 million tons per year.

(Source: Waste Management Launches New Food & Organic Recycling Technology [Waste Business Journal])

Plastic trash is still the No. 1 source of pollution in Manila Bay, an audit of the garbage collected by various environmental groups showed.

The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (Gaia), Greenpeace, Ecowaste Coalition, and other civil society groups said they examined 728 liters of polluted water from the bay early this week and found that 75.55 percent of debris gathered was composed of plastic garbage.

Biodegradable trash was the next largest pollutant at 10.99 percent. It was followed by glass, 5.77 percent; metals, 2.2 percent; hazardous waste, 1.38 percent; and rubber, 0.55 percent.

The garbage audit was among the activities held to mark the ninth Global Day of Action against Waste and Incineration. The Greenpeace flagship boat, Rainbow Warrior, traveled to the bay for the event, which mainly entailed the cleanup of Manila Bay’s shores and waters.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources said that it recently recovered 756,986 kilograms of trash from the country’s shoreline and waterways. Of that number, 622,448 kg consisted of plastic and rubber items.

About half of the plastic items thrown in the waters—300,716 kg—were plastic bags, the DENR said. It was followed by food wrappers/containers at 110,939 kg.

(Source: Plastic trash still top Manila Bay pollutants [Inquirer])

Children today are likely to reach old age in a world that is 4C warmer, where the 10,000-year certainties of the global climate can no longer be relied on, and widespread crop failures, drought, flooding and mass migration of the dispossessed become a part of everyday life.

The greatest concern is that a 4C increase in global average temperatures – a temperature difference as great as that between now and the last Ice Age – would create dramatic transformations in the world, leading to water shortages, the collapse of agriculture in semi-arid regions and triggering a catastrophic rise in sea levels in coastal areas.

Another concern to scientists is the speed of climate change. A study found that a global temperature rise of between 2C and 4C could be so rapid that it would coincide with the expected peak in global population, which is expected to reach nine billion by 2050 before it begins to fall.

This would mean that the problems of water shortages and food production caused by climate change will occur at precisely the same time as the world is having to cope with feeding the greatest number of people in its history. A slower rate of climate change, on the other hand, will see the highest temperature increases occurring after the global population has peaked.

Niel Bowerman of the United Kingdom's Oxford University, who led the study into the rate of climate change, said it highlighted the urgency of having emissions peak in coming years. "Our study shows we need to start cutting emissions soon to avoid potentially dangerous rates of warming within our lifetimes, and to avoid committing ourselves to potentially unfeasible rates of emissions reduction in a couple of decades time," he added.

(Source: Crop failures and drought within our children's lifetimes [Independent])

The Chatham-Kent Health Alliance in Canada has teamed up with a recycling company to divert 18 tonnes of non-biodegradable polypropylene plastic from the landfill. These plastic instrument tray wraps, which are common in operating rooms and emergency departments, can be processed into other plastic products in the hands of the recycling company.

Although CKHA is one of the first hospitals in Canada to make this environmental commitment, the initiative came about after learning of a similar program at a Tennessee hospital in the United States.

Taylor Purdy, a student in the environmental engineering program at the University of Windsor, began looking into the recycling program 15 months ago while doing a work term at CKHA.

She said she called several hospitals to see if they had a program in place and found there were none.

Purdy also found other hospitals had doubts about being able to recycle the instrument wraps. "Everyone thought it was just impossible," she said.

(Source: CKHA partnership diverting plastic from landfill [Chatham Daily News])

Research from Sweden's University of Gothenburg found that the 3,000 consumers surveyed in Beijing and Guiyang used an average of 21 new plastic bags per week before China began requiring stores to charge some fee in June 2008. After the ordinance, they used 49% fewer bags and almost half of them were re-used.

In Washington, D.C., stores began charging a nickel in January for each disposable bag and managers have since reported a drop in bag sales. Ireland's plastic bag tax, begun in 2002, has reduced usage to about 20 bags per year per shopper, compared with 330 bags per year before the fee.

(Source: Study: Plastic bag fee cuts bag use in China by half [USA Today])

Almost 10 per cent of what Calgarians throw into their blue carts ends up in a landfill because the items are not accepted in the city's recycling system.

Items that are not accepted in the Calgary recycling program are either made of materials the city does not recycle, they are contaminated with food or other liquids, or they contain two or more types of materials.

For instance, only the metal lid or bottom of a frozen concentrated juice container is recyclable. The cardboard body will always end up in the trash because it contains both cardboard and a metal coating.

Adding to the confusion, is that many items with mixed materials feature the recycle symbol on them, said Paula Magdich, the city's program director for recycling.

Christina Seidel, executive director of the Alberta Recycling Council, added that people don't throw the wrong items in recycling bins to be difficult.

"They do it because they want to do the right thing."

(Source: 10% of what Calgarians put in blue carts can't be recycled: City [Calgary Herald])