EU parliament approves ban on single use plastics

Yahoo – AFP, March 27, 2019

In addition to the ban on a dozen kinds of disposable plastic products, such as straws,
cutlery and cotton buds, the EU will encourage member states to reduce the use of
plastic packaging and introduce stricter labelling rules (AFP Photo/Patrick Pleul)

Brussels (AFP) - European lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday for an EU-wide ban on single-use plastic products such as the straws, cutlery and cotton buds that are clogging the world's oceans.

The text had already been approved in negotiations with member states and EU officials and it will now be rapidly approved into law. The ban comes into effect from 2021.

EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans said Europe was not the worst source of plastic pollution, but that the pioneering measure could serve as an example to the world.

"Asian countries are very much interested in what we're doing. Latin American countries too," he said.

"Even though our share of the pollution is relatively limited, our change of the economic model has a global impact."

Types of single-use plastics to be banned by the European Union (AFP Photo/

Simon MALFATTO)

The law passed by 560 votes to 35 in the Strasbourg assembly.

Aside from the ban on a dozen kinds of disposable products for which alternatives exist, the EU will encourage member states to reduce the use of plastic packaging and introduce stricter labelling rules.

The law sets a target that 90 percent of plastic bottles will be gathered for recycling by 2029 and that they should be produced with 25 percent recycled material by 2025, 30 percent by 2030.

Rules insisting that polluters pay the costs of a clean-up are strengthened, particularly for cigarette manufacturers, who will have to support the recycling of discarded filters.

According to the EU Commission, the products prohibited under the law represent 70 percent of the waste that pours into the world's oceans, posing a threat to wildlife and fisheries.

Dismantling Germany’s 275,000-tonne nuclear industry, piece by piece

Yahoo – AFP, Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Eyes fixed on a screen, joystick in hand, the operator of a remote-controlled saw painstakingly dismantles metal rods at one of Germany’s mothballed nuclear reactors.

Time-consuming and costly, the operation to methodically carve up the core of EnBW’s Obrigheim reactor in the country’s southwest is now more than half way through.

In total, 275,000 tonnes of machinery, pipes and other equipment that enabled the power station to operate for 37 years must be stripped down. Of that, almost one percent, or about 2,000 tonnes, is radioactive material.

Even as EnBW sees its days as a nuclear operator come to an end, it now envisions a future as an expert in nuclear scrapping.

Nuclear dismantling can prove to be a “new field of activity,” said company spokesman Ulrich Schroeder, at a time when countries including Switzerland and Italy have also decided to end their reliance on atomic energy.

“We now have a real competence in dismantling, managing and recycling waste,” said Schroeder.

Under Germany’s “Energiewende” or energy transition, a phased exit from nuclear power and embrace of green energy, the entire site is expected to be disassembled by 2025, two decades after it stopped producing nuclear energy.

“Every step is carried out manually, remotely,” site engineer Michael Hillmann told AFP at the control room of the power station nestled in the undulating Neckar valley.

What remains of the reactor is submerged under water in a room that hardly anyone enters, at least not without protective gear and not for more than 10 minutes at a time.

The pieces are mechanically removed to a separate “packaging” room where they are stored in yellow casks designed to safely hold radioactive waste.

- New inhabitants? -

Ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s centre-left government decided early last decade to phase out atomic power. The push was initially reversed by his conservative successor Chancellor Angela Merkel, who then revived it after Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Dismantling the Obrigheim reactor began in 2008 following a long preparatory stage which involved various authorities painstakingly planning and okaying every step of the process down to the last detail.

Each piece that is cut away is carefully recorded while the work is carried out in a stipulated order, with the aim of leaving behind an entirely safe site.

One day the now empty offices, warehouses and even the huge dome that housed the reactor could even interest new inhabitants, said Manfred Moeller, the site’s operative manager.

EnBW, Germany’s third-biggest power supplier, is cutting its teeth with Obrigheim.

Like its competitors, the operator has to gradually shutter all its nuclear power stations and dismantle them following the government’s decision to turn its back on the energy source.

Two of the company’s four other reactors were halted soon after the Japanese accident, while the other two still have several years to run.

Of the total nine still operating in Germany, EnBW’s Neckarwestheim II reactor is set to be the very last to close by 2022.

Germany’s nuclear power operators finance the dismantling through provisions set aside over years.

EnBW has put on the side more than seven billion euros ($9.5 billion), its part in a total 30-billion-euro pot from Germany’s four operators.

The company predicts it will have dismantled all its reactors by the 2040s, but questions remains over where the radioactive waste will be permanently stored.

The issue of where to put the waste has split Germany since the 1980s, which saw large protests near temporary storage sites. The hunt for a permanent waste depot has been relaunched under Merkel. In the meanwhile, the waste is held at temporary sites.

“We must have the possibility to get rid of waste,” said Moeller. “That’s part and parcel of the energy transition.”

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Highly radioactive substance found in Swiss dump: report

Yahoo – AFP, 1 June 2014

File picture taken on November 22, 2011

 shows a radioactivity warning symbol on

 a container carrying highly radioactive

 nuclear waste at a train station in

Valognes, northwestern France (AFP

Photo/Kenzo Tribouillard)

Geneva (AFP) - A highly radioactive substance, emitting in some places radiation 100 times the permitted amount, has been discovered in Switzerland, local media reported Sunday, adding that authorities had covered it up for 18 months.

Swiss weeklies Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung reported that federal, regional and local officials decided not to reveal the fact that they had found radium deposits in an old dump in the town of Bienne so as not to scare the 50,000 local inhabitants.

"120 kilogrammes of radioactive waste was obtained after sorting. We measured doses of several hundred microsieverts at the source," Daniel Dauwalder, a spokesman for the Swiss federal office for public health (OFSP), told Le Matin Dimanche.

In certain places, measurements of 300 microsieverts per hour were taken, more than 100 times the permitted amount for an old dump, the newspapers reported.

Exposure for three hours to that level of radiation would be equivalent to the tolerable level over a whole year.

The waste came from a paint used by the watch-making industry to illuminate the numbers on watch faces.

The substance, which has been banned since 1963 due to its radioactive nature, was discovered when roadworks were started at the site.

The OFSP judged the risk to public health "weak", although SonntagsZeitung said that tests on the water table would begin next month.

Public health authorities have shifted the blame back and forth, with local officials saying the OFSP should have informed the public about the incident, and the OFSP saying the responsibility lay with municipal authorities.

The president of the federal commission in charge of monitoring radiation (CPR), which was not informed of the incident, said the various authorities had made a "mistake".

"This will all come back to bite us and it is much more difficult to stay credible and win back the public's trust," Francois Bochud told Le Matin Dimanche.

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Ghana accuses UK recycling firm Environcom of illegal fridge imports

Country impounds huge shipment and claims British companies are using it as dumping ground for toxic old appliances

The Guardian, Afua Hirsch, west Africa correspondent, Monday 4 November 2013

 

A computer dump in Accra, Ghana, in 2009, since when the country has clamped
down on the import of waste electrical goods. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

One of the UK's largest recycling companies has imported thousands of banned second-hand fridges into Ghana, according to the west African country's energy regulator.

Thousands of fridges discarded by British households have been shipped to Ghana by Environcom, which describes itself as the UK's largest electrical re-use and recycling company, flouting rules designed to protect the country's environment against harmful chemicals, according to the Ghanaian authorities.

"Environcom have sent a shipment of about 37 containers – almost 4,000 second-hand fridges – to Ghana," said Victor Owusu, public affairs spokesman for Ghana's energy commission.

Environcom has links to British retailers Dixons and Argos, which supply used appliances to the company for recycling. It admitted exporting the fridges to Ghana but said it did so before the ban came into place.

"Environcom stopped exporting fridges to Ghana some months ago in line with the introduction of the ban, however some containers that left us on time got delayed in transit and arrived in Ghana late and containers that were received prior to the ban were also impounded," said a company spokesperson.

The Guardian has seen documents which show the fridges were shipped from Britain to Ghana in August this year, almost two months after the ban came into force. Environcom says it sells second-hand fridges to third parties to ship to Ghana, and that it could not be held responsible for delays during the process.

The Guardian has seen an email exchange between Environcom and the Ghanaian authorities in which the company threatened to withdraw plans to invest in a recycling plant in the country if it was not allowed to import parts from second-hand fridges.

"Environcom have been working on a multimillion GBP investment in Ghana … Your latest feedback has led us to question whether we withdraw from this project and look at alternative markets within west Africa," wrote Graeme Parkin from Environcom, in an email dated 21 June.

Environcom says it had been seeking to clarify the law in Ghana and was now working on a new agreement to invest in recycling facilities in the country.

There is increasing criticism of the practice of sending second-hand electrical goods to African countries, where many end up in toxic rubbish dumps scavenged by children and poisoning local environments.

A study by Greenpeace found that as much as 75% of "second-hand goods" imported to Africa could not be reused, and that in Ghana, goods that had been dumped were releasing hazardous substances into the environment, including toxic metal lead; chemicals such as the phthalates DEHP and DBP, which are known to interfere with sexual reproduction; and chlorinated dioxins known to promote cancer.

Second-hand fridges have been banned in Ghana since 1 January, after officials became increasingly concerned about the number of old electrical products no longer wanted by British households which were ending up in the country.

Ghana is the first country in the region to introduce a ban on old fridges, and officials hope it will reduce the quantities of toxic and ozone-unfriendly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and reduce the energy burden on its already squeezed national grid, where old fridges suck up more than half of the national energy output of 2,000 megawatts a year.

Ghanaian officials say numerous British companies are still importing second-hand fridges to Ghana in violation of the ban. "Since the ban came into force, we have made about 177 seizures of second-hand fridges," said Owusu. "Most of those have come from the UK – over 90% of the imports are coming from there. They know about the regulations, but they are errant companies that want to defy the law."

Environcom said discussions with the Ghanaian authorities about its impounded fridges were continuing. But Ghanaian officials said the shipment would be destroyed, and accused Britain of being the main exporter of unlawful second-hand electrical goods to the country.

"We are also determined that this ban of second-hand fridges into Ghana becomes a success story," said Owusu. "Now that energy is becoming so critical, who would allow their country to become a dumping ground for used refrigerators from the rest of the world?"

Environcom has come under the spotlight for sending second-hand electrical goods to Africa in the past.

Earlier this year company director Sean Feeney, a former senior Dixons executive, admitted Environcom had exported old-fashioned cathode-ray tube TVs to Africa when they became "hazardous" products, which could not be safely disposed of.

"In the past unscrupulous companies have used west Africa as a dumping ground," the Environcom spokesperson said. "In fact, when the new management came on board, Environcom stopped exporting refurbished TVs to Africa for many years because of the difficulties in controlling the end results and the impact on the local environment."

But as shipments of second-hand British fridges continue to arrive at its ports, Ghana said it would be making a complaint to the British government.

"We are going to file a complaint to the EU, and to the British high commission," Owusu said.

"I know that in the UK itself this kind of thing would not happen. I think they think it's Africa, so they can get away with it."

German village generates 321 percent more renewable energy than it needs, earns millions selling it back to national power grid

Natural News, Monday, December 19, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

German village of Wildpoldsried generates 321 percent more renewable
energy than it needs

(NaturalNews) Developing a renewable energy system that creates energy independence and even a considerable new source of revenue is not some sort of sci-fi pipe dream. BioCycle reports that the German village of Wildpoldsried, population 2,600, has had such incredible success in building its renewable energy system. Wildpoldsried generates 321 percent more renewable energy than it uses, and it now sells the excess back to the national power grid for roughly $5.7 million in additional revenue every single year.

By utilizing a unique combination of solar panels, "biogas" generators, natural wastewater treatment plants, and wind turbines, Wildpoldsried has effectively eliminated its need to be attached to a centralized power grid, and created a thriving renewable energy sector in the town that is self-sustaining and abundantly beneficial for the local economy, the environment, and the public.

You can view some amazing pictures of the Wildpoldsried village at: (http://inhabitat.com/german-village-produces-321-more-energy-than-it-needs/wildpoldsried-germany).

Possessing admirable vision for the town and strong motivation to see the project as a whole succeed, Mayor Arno Zengerie has led the way for many years in making Wildpoldsried's energy independence efforts a success. As far back as 1997, the village has been investing in building and promoting new industries, maintaining a strong local economy, generating new forms of revenue, and ultimately staying out of debt. And the best way it saw fit to accomplish much of this was through the implementation of self-sustaining, renewable energy technologies.

Not only did Wildpoldsried successfully reduce the amount of time expected to generate the necessary funds to build local treasures like a sports hall, theater stage, pub, and retirement home with the revenue generated by its thriving renewable energy sector -- the village has already successfully built nine community buildings, with more on the way -- but it also achieved all this and more without going into debt.

"We often spend a lot of time talking to our visitors about how to motivate the village council (and Mayor) to start thinking differently," said Mayor Zengerle, who now gives talks around the world about the successes of his award-winning village. "We show them a best practices model in motion and many see the benefits immediately. From the tour we give, our guests understand how well things can operate when you have the enthusiasm and conviction of the people.

Be sure to read the full, inspiring account of Wildpoldsried's history of, and successes in, renewable energy at: (http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/002409.html).

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Finnish Neste Oil launches renewable diesel plant in Rotterdam

English.news.cn   2011-09-21

HELSINKI, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- Finnish Neste Oil Corporation has started up Europe's largest renewable diesel plant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, according to a press release of the company on Tuesday.

With its current capacity of 800,000 tons per year (t/a), the Rotterdam plant will help increase Neste Oil's total renewable diesel capacity to 2 million.

"We are very proud of the new plant in Rotterdam," said the Nest Oil's President and CEO Matti Lievonen in the statement. "It will help us meet demand in the European market, the world's largest for renewable diesel."

According to the press release, the plant can make use of almost any vegetable oil or waste fat in the production of premium-quality renewable diesel utilizing Neste Oil's proprietary NExBTL technology.

The plant employs approximately 150 people, with 110 Neste Oil employees and 40 service provider personnel.

Editor: yan

Puma puts a price on its environmental footprint

Deutsche Welle, May 19, 2011

Puma sees environmental
accounting as an investment

Sportswear maker Puma has published details of the environmental cost of its business activities. It's part of a larger project to reduce the company's impact on the environment and manage future risk.

While it might seem difficult to put a price tag on an old-growth forest or a wetland area, German sportswear maker Puma has come close, calculating the environmental cost of its business, including its entire supply chain.

With the help of consultancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers and research group Trucost, the world's third-largest sportswear manufacturing company determined that in 2010, the combined cost of the carbon it emitted and water it used was 94.4 million euros ($134.3 million).

The analysis, which looked at Puma's entire supply chain in detail, covered everything from the CO2 emissions from the cows that provide the leather for its shoes to the water needed to grow the cotton used in its shirts and shorts.

"We wanted to look at where our biggest effects on the environment are," Kerstin Neuber, Puma deputy spokesperson, told Deutsche Welle. "We've recognized that our current business model is not sustainable in the long run because we'll eventually run up against a shortage of resources."

The analysis looks at the whole
supply chain - from cows to cotton

The lion's share of Puma's environmental costs originates with its suppliers, many of whom are based in Asia. The company hopes that by looking at environmental impacts in detail, it can work with those suppliers – along with other companies who use them - and make sure outsourced processes are subject to the same kinds of environmental standards that its own production is.

Costs and benefits

A subsequent section of Puma's impact report due this fall will go beyond carbon and water to include additional factors such as acid rain, smog and land use. In 2012, the company plans to release a further report on the social impacts of its business, including wage levels, working conditions and living standards.

A final section will focus on the other side of the equation, looking at job creation, wages and tax contributions. The benefits will then be offset against the environmental and social costs of the first two sections to create the complete environmental profit-and-loss statement.

"It is a kind of risk management that we can use for our future procurement strategy while also reducing our impact on the environment," Puma spokesperson Neuber said. The company, whose headquarters are in Bavaria, aims to reduce its energy and water use, carbon emissions and waste by 25 percent by 2015.

The Puma initiative has attracted interest from several major corporations. German companies like Daimler, Siemens and BASF as well as US-based Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical have all been watching closely, Puma said.

Smart business

According to Richard Mattison, CEO of Trucost, the UK-based environmental research firm that helped Puma determine its environmental impact, more companies these days are examining what is called "integrated reporting," which incorporate the positive and negative environmental and social effects into their financial statements.

Most of Puma's environmental
costs originate in Asia, where
it has based production

They are doing so, he said, simply out of a sense of altruism. Puma's systematic approach to examining all the risks across the supply chain will help them make better business decisions in the future, he added.

"It will help them adapt to how the world will look in 2020 or 2030," Mattison told Deutsche Welle. "In a world of increasing demand and decreasing availability of natural resources, it's a very wise thing to do."

Such analysis can help companies avoid the rising cost of raw materials in the future, or to re-engineer their facilities, products or supply chains to be more environmentally friendly.

"By understanding the relationship between nature and commerce, business can understand how to reduce their risk," he said.

In addition, Puma can benefit from its profit-and-loss statement when it comes to future regulation. As resources become scarcer, it many observers believe it is likely that companies will be required to report in a detailed fashion the environmental impact on their business.

"We'll be one step ahead of companies that have to start from scratch," Neuber said.

First step

Environmentalists have welcomed the new approach, saying it is an important first step in the corporate world's rethinking how it uses natural resources, which were once considered to be there for the taking.

"If Puma, for example, sees that its water-intensive cotton farming operation in India is in a dry region, it needs to change its practices or move or look for a substitute product," Roland Gramling of WWF-Germany told Deutsche Welle.

Puma chief Zeitz says sustainability
is essential to his company's future

He said economists started giving nature and natural resources a monetary value at the end of the 1990s. While there had always been a concrete value placed on raw materials such as gold, no one had really taken into consideration the value of a wetland located next to an Indian textile factory using large amounts of water.

"But now we have to," Gramling said.

Several other firms in Germany are looking at the issue of sustainability and their future business viability. Supermarket chain Edeka has announced it wants to ensure that all its fish products come from sustainable fisheries. The company's fear is that if they do not, overfishing could make it difficult to meet customer demand further down the road.

Some, however, have accused Puma of hypocrisy, pointing to the company's sponsorship of the Formula 1 and MotoGP racing series – hardly the greenest of sports.

But Puma's Neuber said the company was thinking in bigger terms – looking at the whole transportation chain and not about "ten cars driving around in circles."

"This report details how we damage the environment," she said. "We have tried to create as much transparency as we can."

Author: Kyle James

Editor: Sam Edmonds

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