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Friday, September 21st, 2007Tomorrow, Saturday 22 September, is World Carfree Day. The annual event begun in France in 1998 and now worldwide, is intended as a day when everyone leaves their car at home and utilizes public transport, walks or rides a bicycle. The resulting quiet, lack of traffic congestion and cleaner air is intended to make people […]
Consumer Protection in LAC V – A Sample Panorama of LAC Consumer News
Friday, May 11th, 2007When I started this series, I promised a five-part overview of consumer protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). So far I’ve looked at how consumer agencies and consumer NGOs in the region celebrated World Consumer Rights Day, how intergovernmental bodies have influenced the development of consumer law in the region, the panorama of […]
PAC’ing Brazil III: Energy, Petrochemicals and Biofuels
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007In Part I, I provided an overview of what the Program for Accelerated Growth (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento – PAC) proposed by President Lula is and why it matters to the issues I discuss in The Temas Blog. I also discussed its most direct impact on environment policy, the proposed changes in environmental licensing. […]
More Coconut Recycling / Mais Reciclagem de Coco
Thursday, March 1st, 2007In “Recycling Coconuts” Parts I and II, I mentioned that a number of Brazilian municipalities and states were looking at the experiences of Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza (Ceará) in recycling green coconut husks — most of them collected after people sipped agua de coco from the coconuts — to make useful products (plant pots, […]
Cans and Bottles for Electricity
Monday, January 22nd, 2007I just read a fascinating article in an online regional news service in Brazil. “Material reciclável pode ser trocado por desconto na fatura de energia” in yesterday’s edition of RMT Online discusses an innovative approach to encouraging people to recycling used packaging. I’ve heard of many experiments in Brazil and elsewhere to encourage people, especially […]
Recycling Coconuts I: More Than Just a Vessel for Agua de Coco
Saturday, October 28th, 2006The Next Time You Have a Cool Agua de Coco… Photos Courtesy of Coco Verde Have you ever stopped at a street vendor’s stand, a kiosk along the Malecon or at a shopping mall to have a coconut hacked open by machete so you can sip a cool agua de coco? And perhaps after you […]