A Bill to Require EIAs Before Packaging Drinks in Plastic
Saturday, May 30th, 2009Last year in a post about efforts in Brazil to stop the sale of beer in PET bottles, I explored some of the possible ramifications of an April 2008 rejection by a federal judge of all challenges to a 2002 ruling that brewers wishing to bottle their beer in PET or any other plastic must […]
Paraná Ratches Up Pressure on Packaging
Monday, November 3rd, 2008I’ve discussed several times here in The Temas Blog the carrot-and-stick approach the environmental authorities of the southern Brazilian state of Paraná (PR) take on different post-consumer waste streams, including electronics, glass packaging, long-neck beer bottles, Tetra Pak aseptic packaging, fluorescent lamps and pesticide packaging. You might notice that most of these categories are packaging […]
Brazilian Resistance to Beer in PET Bottles
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008Brazilian 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 […]
Brazil: Government & Industry Discuss Changes in Processed Foods
Monday, August 11th, 2008Synopsis in English: Brazil’s Health Minister, José Gomes Temporão, has launched an open and public dialog with Brazil’s food industry about lowering the salt, sugar and trans-fat levels of the processed foods that they offer to the Brazilian market. Temporão revealed that a Ministry study suggests that up to 260,000 Brazilian deaths every year could […]
Argentina Lurches Toward an Obesity Law…
Monday, August 11th, 2008By all accounts, Argentina’s Senate will pass an “obesity law” this coming week. If President Cristina Fernandez signs it, Argentina will become the first Latin American or Caribbean (LAC) country to adopt a national law or regulation directly addressing the issue. [Some Brazilian states have laws on aspects of the issue, and several nations currently […]
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 […]
AmBev Opens Huge Recycling Center
Saturday, November 3rd, 2007Synopsis in English: The Brazil-based beverage giant, Beverage Company of the Americas (AmBev), has just inaugurated a huge recycling center in Rio de Janeiro state. AmBev is the largest beverage producer in Brazil, one of the largest in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the largest bottler of Pepsi outside the US, and the fifth […]
Alcohol Consumption in Brazil III: Adolescent Drinking
Friday, October 12th, 2007At end-2005, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) resolved to undertake a regional effort to combat alcohol consumption under the guidance of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). As they do, they’ll likely study the efforts of Brazil to take the lead on the issue. This past spring Brazil adopted a national policy and not […]
ANVISA Proposes Criteria for Recycling PET / Anvisa propõe critérios para reciclagem de plásticos PET
Friday, August 17th, 2007Synopsis in English: Brazil’s National Sanitary Vigilance Agency (ANVISA) has published for public comment a proposal for a technical regulation setting out criteria for the recycling of packaging and equipment containing the plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET). In essence, the proposal would replace a 1998 regulation not allowing recycled post-consumer PET to enter into contact with […]
Brazil Decides to Take on Alcohol
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Synopsis in English: Last week Brazilian authorities published in the official gazette the presidential decree setting out the new National Policy on Alcohol. The policy tackles not only alcohol dependency, but also social problems associated with alcohol consumption such as traffic accidents (drinking and driving) and violence. It was created by an inter-Ministerial group containing […]