Uruguay Closer to Plastic Bag Law
Saturday, September 19th, 2009This week Uruguay came one step closer to restricting the use of plastic carry bags in the nation’s retail establishments. On the 17th the Chamber of Deputies approved a law that would require all supermarkets, hypermarkets, shopping centers, markets and stores in general to only use carry bags for their merchandise that is either degradable, […]
Walmart Goes Solar in Puerto Rico
Monday, July 27th, 2009From Wal-Mart: Walmart and SunEdison Announce Solar Energy Pilot in Puerto Rico Largest Solar Energy Project to Help Puerto Rico Reach its Solar Potential Walmart Puerto Rico and SunEdison, North America’s largest solar energy services provider, today announced plans to deploy rooftop solar systems on five Walmart PR stores with the potential for 23 stores […]
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 […]
Wal-Mart’s Commitment to Reduce Plastic Bag Use in LAC
Friday, September 26th, 2008Perhaps you’ve heard of Wal-Mart’s commitment to reduce plastic shopping bag use (or “carry bags” as my British friends call it) in its US stores 25% and in its international stores by 50% by 2013. Some people are not impressed. I am — at least regarding the international commitment as it applies to Latin America […]
Time to Turn in Your Old Refrigerators, Bogotá
Monday, June 9th, 2008Synopsis in English: One of the downsides of being so long away from regular blogging is the tremendous backlog of things I wish to cover. This is one — the good news that at the end of April, Colombia launched the pilot phase in Bogotá of a program to encourage consumers to voluntarily turn in […]
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 […]