A Green IT Law for Brazil?
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Yesterday the Environment Committee and Consumer Protection (CMA) of the Brazilian Senate discussed a draft committee opinion on a green IT bill just introduced last May. The committee rapporteur for Senate bill (PLS) 173/2009 recommended its approval. The CMA decided to hold a hearing on the bill before deciding on the draft opinion, with invitations […]
Toward Brazilian Environmental Norms for Electro-Electronics
Saturday, August 15th, 2009Several jurisdictions in Brazil — most notably the States of São Paulo (SP) and Mato Grosso (MT), and the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro (MRJ) — have recently adopted e-waste laws, and several states look interested in following suit (here, here and here). There’s rumors that the National Environment Council (CONAMA) will soon decide to […]
An E-Waste/RoHS Bill For Uruguay
Monday, September 29th, 2008Earlier this month a bill was introduced in the Uruguayan legislature to “create a management system for waste from electrical and electronic apparatuses.” Uruguay, it seems, is joining Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Costa Rica among the Latin American nations finally moving to tackle the WEEE issue. The bill is relatively short (2 pages) and simple, […]
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 […]
Greener Cell Phones?
Saturday, January 13th, 2007Last weekend while catching up on my reading I ran across an article in TierrAmérica entitled “Cell Phones Getting Greener.” Its gist is that that the European Union’s (EU) RoHS Directive will result in cell phones with less toxic material circulating in Latin America and the Caribbean, and that more and more end-of-life (EOL) phones […]
Toxics in Electronics Redux: Greenpeace Responds
Monday, October 30th, 2006As I noted here previously on the Temas Blog, a few weeks back Treehugger invited me to guest blog about my reservations concerning Greenpeace’s handling of its report on the testing of laptops for certain substances. My entry drew quite a few comments, including a long, detailed reply reputedly penned by the scientist who did […]
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 […]
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, […]