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    From Used Balloons and Gloves to New Rubber Products

    Sunday, July 5th, 2009

    Researchers from the Forest Products Laboratory (LPF) of Brazil’s Forestry Service (SFB) have demonstrated that they can recycle used latex gloves and party balloons by combining them with sawdust, in the process turning them into floor tiles, shoe soles, floor mats and other rubber artifacts. The cost of producing a floor sheet from these wastes […]

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    Trash Photos XIX: A Visit to Minas’ Center on Waste

    Thursday, June 25th, 2009

    Yesterday I visited an institution in Belo Horizonte (BH) that, to my knowledge, is unique in Brazil, if not the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).   The Minas Waste Reference Center (Centro Mineiro de Referência em Resíduos – CMRR) opened in 2007 with the mission to serve as the focal point in the […]

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    Eye on Ads: Latin American Idol Urges Paper, Tetra-Pak Recycling

    Friday, June 19th, 2009

    An interesting ad from Panama, featuring Margarita Henriquez Vuela, the 2008 Latin American Idol winner (this is the Latin American version of the hit US television contest, American Idol) from Panama.  Paper packaging manufacturers and Tetra-Pak, the lead manufacturer of aseptic packaging, are pushing a recycling campaign with Margarita as one of their spokespersons.

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    Ceará Adopts Lamp and Battery Take-Back Law

    Friday, June 19th, 2009

    Yesterday the governor of the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará (CE) signed a law that would require the take-back of fluorescent lamps, batteries and piles. The very brief and simple law requires vendors of such products in the state to provide collection bins on their premises for consumers to drop off those at the end […]

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    Trash Photos XVIII: Fluorescent Lamp Collection in Brasilia

    Thursday, June 18th, 2009

    I’m in Brasilia now, and had some time between meetings, so I wandered through Patio Brasil, one of the shopping centers here.  If times allows, I like to wander through shopping centers in the cities that I visit.  I do it not so much for actual shopping or even window-shopping in the usual sense, but […]

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    Trash Photos XVII: Color-Coded Selective Collection

    Monday, June 15th, 2009

    Today I interviewed someone in the University of São Paulo’s (USP) Public Health Faculty (FSP) (the lead author in a study about catadores, as a matter of fact) and I spotted this in the mini-park in front of the building. These days it’s not hard to find color-coded collection bins in Brazil, particularly in the […]

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    São Paulo Adopts a WEEE Law

    Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

    The state assembly of the state of São Paulo (SP) today passed a law on “technological trash” (lixo tecnológico) that is likely to have a significant impact on the electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) product and component business in Brazil. SP is Brazil’s biggest EEE market and home to much of its EEE industry, and […]

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    The Most Sustainable Bank in Emerging Markets?

    Saturday, June 6th, 2009

    When the Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) announced the winners of their annual Sustainable Banking Awards two days ago, guess who won among the emerging markets, beating out competitors from 37 countries? Brazil’s Itaú Unibanco.  Last year the winner also was a Brazilian bank, Banco Real (now part of Grupo Santander Brasil).  […]

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    Oaxaca Gets a Comprehensive Waste Law

    Friday, June 5th, 2009

    The legislature of the Mexican state of Oaxaca (OX) just sent the governor a gift for World Environment Day: a comprehensive state solid waste law. Since Mexico adopted its federal General Law for the Prevention and Integrated Management of Wastes in 2003, the Federal District (DF) and many states have adopted their own general waste […]

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    A Bill to Require EIAs Before Packaging Drinks in Plastic

    Saturday, May 30th, 2009

    Last 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 […]

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