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Loading ...Support for an Agreement on REDD
Thursday, September 24th, 2009It’s interesting to see the high-level support expressed at the Summit on Climate Change by the Latin American nations of Colombia, Ecuador and Guyana for an internationally-agreed mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in the post-2012 climate change accord to be negotiated later this year in Copenhagen. However, conspicuous by their […]
Brazil Raises Steel Can Recycling to 49%
Thursday, March 19th, 2009From the World Steel Association: Global steel can recycling rate reaches highest recorded level The World Steel Association (worldsteel) announced today that 7.2 million metric tons (mmt) of steel cans were recycled across the 37 countries reporting in 2007. This avoided approximately 13 mmt of CO2 emissions. The global recycling rate for steel cans was […]
Why is LAC Slow to Tap Carbon Funds?
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008The Dominican Republic’s Environment Secretariat (SEMARENA) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) recently co-hosted an event in Santo Domingo designed to prompt Dominicans into tapping the many international funding opportunities for projects related, directly or directly, to climate change (“carbon markets”). And well they should! For some reason […]
More Glass Packaging Recovery, Less Piracy?
Sunday, October 7th, 2007When discussing recovery/recycling among packaging materials in Brazil, glass sometimes suffers by comparison. Brazil is a world leader in recycling PET and aluminum cans, and high among recyclers of corrugated cardboard (77%). Brazil’s 45% annual recycling rate for glass packaging is better than the glass packaging rate for the US (but then again, the US […]
Are Biodegradable Plastic Bags Really Better?
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007In my rant last June about unnecessary plastic wrap being praised by Chile’s Environment Minister simply because it is “biodegradable,” I promised a guest post from an expert who can explain better than I can the debate over whether “biodegradable” plastic bags are really a substantial improvement over conventional plastic bags. I’m happy to publish […]
Making Post-Consumer Recovery of Pesticide Packaging Work
Monday, May 28th, 2007The recent decision by Colombia to impose extended producer responsibility (EPR) for post-consumer pesticide packaging reminded me of a draft sitting in the infamous backlog queue since January. It looks at the Brazilian system for dealing with such packaging, which seems to be operating very well, in spite of predictions to the contrary by skeptics […]
LAC the Most Aware Public About Climate Change?
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007I’m seeing press briefs bouncing around the internet over the past 24 hours reporting that a recent ACNeilsen survey of 25,408 people in 46 nations* found that the US public is the least aware and least concerned about global climate change, whereas the public in the four Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) nations surveyed […]
LAC Fares Well in Climate Change Performance Index
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006The Climate Action Network – Europe (CAN-Europe) and the German environment research organization, Germanwatch, have just released the 2007 version of their Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) at the meeting currently underway in Nairobi of the Contracting Parties (CPs) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol. Germanwatch first […]