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  • Rio’s Commitment to Tackle Sewage and Trash

    Friday, December 26th, 2008

    It’s a bit of an open secret that the state of Rio de Janeiro, beautiful as it is, has a serious trash problem.  Litter is ubiquitous.  Trash (particularly drink containers) choke many waterways and drainage systems.  While the state has a reasonably good record in providing waste pick-up services to its residents, disposal has been […]

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    Brazilian Resistance to Beer in PET Bottles

    Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

    Brazilian brewers wanting to market their beers in PET bottles are not having a good year.  First a court ruling that such bottles pose a significant risk to the environment, and therefore require environmental impact studies and licensing.  Then a state ban on pigmented PET, and now a looming state ban on PET bottles for […]

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    Giving LAC’s First Plastic Packaging Law Teeth

    Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

    An 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 […]

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    PAC’ing Brazil III: Energy, Petrochemicals and Biofuels

    Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

    In 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. […]

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    Mapping Brazil’s Basins to Prepare Against Oil Spills / Atlas de bacias sedimentares vão garantir segurança contra vazamento de petróleo

    Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

    Synopsis in English: In the year 2000, a major oil spill in Rio’s Guanabara Bay finally stirred Brazil out of complacency about planning, preparing and protecting against such releases, whether from tankers or platforms. In addition to normative work (such as Law 9966 and recent National Environment Council work on discharges from maritime platforms), the […]

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    Trash Photos XI: A Visit to the Landfill

    Thursday, February 8th, 2007

    Someone recently asked whatever happened to my “Trash Photo” series. No, folks, I did not run out of trash- or recycling-related photos — not likely to happen anytime soon! No, I didn’t tire of posting in the series. I’m always ready to “talk trash.” (All right, keep the groans about my puns to a minimum!) […]

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    IBD to Help Rio Improve Its Water and Sanitation Services

    Thursday, January 18th, 2007

    From the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB): IDB Technical Cooperation will Support Program to Improve Efficiency of Rio de Janeiro State Water and Sewerage Company US$960,000 grant from the Japanese Trust Fund for Consultancy Services The Inter-American Development Bank announced today the approval of a US$960,000 grant to Rio de Janeiro’s State Water and Sewerage Company […]

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    “Trash Photos” III: Houses Made of PET

    Monday, September 25th, 2006

    Photo: Rodrigues Moura, in Eco-Pop I mentioned in my prior “Trash Photos” post some of the creative ways Brazilians are thinking about reuse and recycling of materials from end-of-life products and their packaging. Here’s another one: constructing houses utilizing empty PET bottles. Yes, those plastic bottles everyone’s soft drinks come in these days, particularly the […]

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