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Loading ...Government Study Calls for Mexican Battery Regulation / Estudio recomenda normatividad sobre las pilas en México
Friday, March 13th, 2009Mexico’s National Ecology Institute (INE) has just released an “environmental diagnosis” of portable batteries in that country. The study looks at the growth of battery consumption in Mexico, a recent analysis of the chemical composition of both formal and informal (“pirate”) batteries (looking particularly at heavy metal content and any other aspects that may make […]
Tienda Inglesa Helps Uruguay Eliminate Mercury Thermometers
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009Last year I posted about Health Care Without Harm‘s (Coalición Salud Sin Daño) campaign to get the health care sector in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to get mercury-containing medical instruments [primarily thermometers and sphygmomanometers (blood pressure monitors)] out of hospitals, clinics and homes. At that time, they were primarily having success in Argentina. […]
Finally, a Chance for a Global Mercury Accord / Por fin, un chance para un acuerdo global sobre el mercurio
Saturday, February 21st, 2009When the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Governing Council (GC) considered and agreed on the draft decision on chemicals management, including mercury, this past Thursday, I was in the room. It’s difficult to say which emotion filled the conference room more — joy or excitement. There was plenty of both. This decision had been many years […]
Getting Mercury Out of Healthcare
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008In July the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA) proudly announced that all public hospitals within city limits had eliminated their inventory of old fashioned mercury thermometers and replaced them with digital ones. Why is that significant? A 2006 study done by CABA’s Environmental Health office found that the City’s public hospitals emitted about 40 […]
Mexican Teens Win Stockholm Water Prize
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007It’s World Water Week, and this year’s winners of the Stockholm Water Foundation’s annual Junior Water Prize have just been announced: a group of teens from Mexico with an ingenious, low-cost solution for removing lead from water. That’s them in the picture at right receiving the award from Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria. They also received […]
Judging the Electronic Firms Revisited
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006Since I wrote my prior Temas blog entry on the Greenpeace “report card” on “greener electronics,” I have read a number of interesting reviews of the GP report written by other blogs. Two examples I suggest reading: Treehugger’s analysis and the debate in Dan Dilger’s “Roughly Drafted” blog on all things Apple. Reading these have […]
The Other Side of the Cell Phone Revolution
Monday, September 4th, 2006Not Our Problem? A few years ago I was chatting with someone who is involved with the process of formulating a national policy on the management of solid wastes in Brazil. We had gotten to the question of which, if any, end-of-life (EOL) products should be declared to be “special wastes” and therefore subject to […]
Judging the Electronic Firms
Monday, September 4th, 2006Last week Greenpeace released an interesting report on the environmental performance of 14 major mobile and computer manufacturers. I recommend that anyone interested in environmental management, waste policy and corporate social responsibility to take a look at it, and I am adding it to the Temas reading list. To read and/or download the report yourself, […]
The Need for Better Reef Protection, Part I: Why Should I Care?
Saturday, September 2nd, 2006Although my snorkeling experience is limited, and I’m only just now learning to scuba dive, and I have never worked on reef protection issues in my job, even I had some idea of the beauty and value of coral reefs and the pressures facing them. But in the process of preparing a blog series on […]