Colombia Gets Producer Responsibility Agreement for End-of-Life Lighting
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008Colombia’s Environment Ministry (MAVDT) has signed a convenant with nine of the most important lamp manufacturers and importers — Osram, Philips, GE, Havells Sylvania Colombia, Carrefour, Greenlight, Mecanelectro, Sodimac Colombia — to take charge of electrical and electronic lighting at the end of their product life. The companies agree to: Advance efforts to design and […]
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 […]
Bahia to Adopt Paraná’s Zero Waste Program Model
Saturday, October 13th, 2007I’ve mentioned here several times the innovative Zero Waste Program (Programa Desperdício Zero) of the southern Brazilian state Paraná, such as how it applies to glass recycling, pesticide packaging, aseptic packaging and finding new ways to reuse/recycle plastic (PET) bottles (such as building solar water heaters). At some point I should do a comprehensive post […]
Certifying Efficient Public Lighting
Friday, August 17th, 2007Synopsis in English: Brazil’s certification entity, the National Institute for Meteorology, Standardization and Industrial Quality (Instituto Nacional de Metrologia, Normalização e Qualidade Industrial – INMETRO) recently announced that, starting in 2008, it and the mixed capital (but majority state-owned) electricity distribution company (the largest in Latin America) Eletrobrás a certification and labeling program for the […]
Honduras busca buenos hábitos de consumo de energía / Honduras Seeks to Changes Its Energy Consumption Habits
Monday, July 30th, 2007Synopsis in English: The President, together with the Secretariat of Natural Resources and the Environment (SERNA), the Secretariat of Education (SE) and National Electrical Energy Company (ENEE), of Honduras have launched a national campaign called “Learning Rational use of Electrical Energy” (AURE) to promote energy conservation and energy efficiency. Beyond educational efforts to change the […]
Tetra-Pak Chooses to Deal
Thursday, July 26th, 2007Synopsis in English: In May the environment officials of the southern Brazilian state of Paraná called in Tetra Pak officials and told them to come up with a proposal to solve the post-consumer waste problem in that state associated with their long-life (aseptic) packaging — or face drastic action by the government, such as banning […]