São Paulo Offers Packaging Bill for Public Comment
Friday, May 22nd, 2009The Environment Secretariat (SMA) of São Paulo (SP) today published for public comment on its website a draft bill for a law on post-consumer packaging. The bill would create a rather complex shared responsibility system to ensure that post-consumer packaging in SP is either recycled or reused. Anyone wishing to submit comments or suggested changes to the […]
Taking the Campaign on Advertising to Kids to the Streets of Santiago
Sunday, March 15th, 2009LAC Consumer Groups Target “Junk Food”
Thursday, December 25th, 2008In my earlier post about the Mexican industry code on advertising of food and beverages directed to children, I discussed efforts in Latin America (here, here, here, here, here and here) to get high-calorie and/or high-fat and/or high-sugar and/or salty foods out of schools and the push by consumer groups, led by Consumer International (CI), […]
A Mexican Code on Food/Beverage Advertising to Children
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008Recently the food and beverage industry in Mexico agreed on Code of Self-Regulation on the Advertising of Food and Beverages Directed at Children (Código de Autorregulación de Publicidad de Alimentos y Bebidas dirigida a Público Infantil – PABI). The code of conduct, signed by companies representing about 70% of advertising in Mexico in the sector […]
Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Valley of Mexico
Monday, September 22nd, 2008Earlier this year the City of Mexico released an inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2006 in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico (Zona Metropolitana del Valle de México – ZMVM) to accompany its new plan of action on climate change (something I’ll cover separately in a forthcoming blog entry). I found […]
Brazil: Government & Industry Discuss Changes in Processed Foods
Monday, August 11th, 2008Synopsis in English: Brazil’s Health Minister, José Gomes Temporão, has launched an open and public dialog with Brazil’s food industry about lowering the salt, sugar and trans-fat levels of the processed foods that they offer to the Brazilian market. Temporão revealed that a Ministry study suggests that up to 260,000 Brazilian deaths every year could […]
If You Can’t Find It Here, You May Not Find It
Friday, February 1st, 2008Quite a few Temas Blog readers noticed the absence of new posts for several weeks. I was fully occupied with work day-and-night on the final stages of the total revamp and re-launch of my main site, temasactuales.com Although work continues on the Spanish and Portuguese versions (coming soon!), the burden has lightened enough that I […]
Giving LAC’s First Plastic Packaging Law Teeth
Saturday, November 3rd, 2007An interesting thing happened over the last two weeks. Well, interesting to people like me who’ve been following the packaging waste debate for decades, at least. Environment enforcement officials for Rio de Janeiro (RJ) state “blitzed” supermarkets in Rio de Janeiro city — first on 19 October in the well-to-do Leblon section, then on 23 […]
AmBev Opens Huge Recycling Center
Saturday, November 3rd, 2007Synopsis in English: The Brazil-based beverage giant, Beverage Company of the Americas (AmBev), has just inaugurated a huge recycling center in Rio de Janeiro state. AmBev is the largest beverage producer in Brazil, one of the largest in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the largest bottler of Pepsi outside the US, and the fifth […]
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 […]