Category: News

It’s not only P2 Week, but the 20th anniversary celebration of the Pollution Prevention Act. I hate to say it, but I’ve been in the P2 business long enough to remember when the law was created (I even had a bit of role in helping create it…but that’s another story). I remember the endless discussions on definitions, the role of P2 in regulations, the importance of P2 accounting, and even debates on whether it should be called “pollution prevention” at all.

Back in the day, P2 was an idea that received a lot of attention and a lot of discussion, but there wasn’t a heck of a lot of activity on the ground that one could point to and say “Here’s P2 in action!” In fact, when I began my environmental career by studying P2 in the chemical industry, we were hard-pressed to come up with actual examples.

It’s a sign of the success of the P2 Act and P2 programs around the country that the situation has totally reversed. P2 may not be the endless gab-fest it was two decades ago, but source reduction activities are happening all over the place, and really having an impact.

The generation of hazardous wastes, TRI wastes, and priority chemical wastes have all decreased, even as the economy has grown. Compliance and enforcement activities have driven P2 solutions, and so has EPA’s P2 grants to states. Programs like Energy Star, Design for the Environment and EPEAT increasingly find themselves using “billions” rather than “millions” to describe their impact on waste streams and cost savings.

With all that’s been accomplished, though, I can’t help feeling that we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. If companies, communities and consumers make a concerted effort at eliminating wastes at the source, then perhaps the theme of P2 Week in 2020 can be the arrival of the zero-waste society, one where greenhouse gas emissions, toxic exposures in the home and workplace, waste disposal in landfills and underground wells, and nutrient dumping in our nation’s waters are all a rapidly fading memory.

Let’s hope so.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it will phase down services the agency offers under its Climate Leaders program over the coming year and encourage participating companies to transition to state or non-governmental programs. Factoring into the agency’s plans for the program are the many new developments in regulatory and voluntary programs that address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including the first-ever mandatory greenhouse gas reporting rule that took effect on January 1, 2010. In addition, several states and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) now offer climate programs that are now robust enough to serve companies in the Climate Leaders program.

As EPA phases down services the agency provides under the program – including technical assistance and setting greenhouse gas reduction goals – the agency will also take steps to assist the transition of the partners into non-federal programs that will allow them to go above and beyond mandatory reporting requirements to meet their goals. The agency will work with these programs to continue to stay involved in important initiatives related to corporate greenhouse gas accounting and to support companies’ actions to reduce their GHG emissions, in particular through other EPA programs such as Energy Star and the Green Power Partnership. The agency will also seek new ways to promote, support and recognize climate leadership.

EPA is confident that this transition will allow the agency to realign resources to better assist companies in learning from the emissions data collected under the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.  This data will facilitate the exchange and application of best practices and innovative technologies across a wide range of industries.  EPA’s other voluntary programs will remain in place and continue to work with partner organizations to reduce emissions and increase sustainability.

Climate Leaders was started in 2002 as a voluntary program for organizations to complete a corporate-wide greenhouse gas inventory, set a reduction goal and meet that goal. 

More information: http://www.epa.gov/climateleaders/

As part of what it calls “it’s commitment to rigorous enforcement,” the U.S. Department of Energy is fining 27 companies over $3.5 million for selling products without certifying that they meet energy and water efficiency standards, DOE announced Monday.

The companies, which include manufacturers, importers and resellers of appliances and plumbing and lighting products, can reduce their fines if they comply with certification requirements within 30 days.

If the companies fail to meet the certification requirements in 30 days, DOE said it will file actions either in the United States District Court or with an Administrative Law Judge to demand payment of the proposed penalties.

Sanyo Electronics has received the largest single fine of over $300,000 for failing to certify a number of refrigerator and freezer models.  Other companies that received fines include Daewoo International, DeLonghi America, General Electric Appliances and Stiebel Eltron.

DOE said that its’ “aggressive energy efficiency enforcement” has resulted in 75 enforcement investigations and actions  in the past year, including the 27 penalty cases. These investigations removed 66 products from the market that failed to meet federal energy efficiency standards, and lead to the certification of over 600,000 products, the agency said. 

Read the complete article at Environmental Leader

Fresh research from GE indicates that most U.S. consumers—77 percent—don’t know that, starting in 2012 and continuing through 2014, federal government legislation aimed at reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions will ban the manufacture of standard incandescent light bulbs. In sum:

• 100-watt bulbs will no longer be manufactured starting January 1, 2012;
• 75-watt bulbs will no longer be manufactured starting January 1, 2013; and
• 60- and 40-watt bulbs will no longer be manufactured starting January 1, 2014.
• State of California laws preempt the federal laws by essentially taking effect a year earlier

GE Lighting has businesses covered each step of the way with online resources such as its newly launched informational Legislation Web site and its Legislation Product Replacement (LPR) tool, click here to learn more. In concert with GE Lighting’s award-winning Environmental Information Center (www.gelighting.com/EIC), these sites provide details on mandates, energy-saving calculators and product replacement guides that professionals can use to make informed decisions about which products are most energy-efficient—in light of the new laws—for a wide range of applications.

“Our goal is to help people make better lighting decisions today,” says Heather Coode, Marketing Manager, GE Lighting. “We want customers to know that alternatives such as halogen, compact fluorescent and LEDs from GE already meet looming federal efficiency standards.”

MODERN tools of data analysis — fast computers, smart software and vast troves of digital information — often open the door to new insights. Consider the subject of jobs in America.

For decades, the assumption has been that small business is the economy’s dynamic engine of job generation. Look at the numbers broadly, and that is the irrefutable conclusion: two-thirds of net new jobs are created by companies with fewer than 500 employees, which is the government’s definition of a small business.

But research published last month by three economists, working with more recent and detailed data sets than before, has found that once the age of the businesses is taken into account, there is no difference in the job-producing performance of small companies and big ones.

“Size plays virtually no role,” says John C. Haltiwanger, a co-author of the study and an economist at the University of Maryland. “It’s all age — start-ups are where the job-creation action really occurs.”

FOREIGN-BORN entrepreneurs have long played a big role in American start-ups. A study that tracked technology and engineering start-ups from 1995 to 2005 found that one quarter of them had a foreign-born chief executive or head technologist; by 2005, the surviving companies generated $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers.

There are signs that policy makers are looking to accommodate highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs, says Robert Litan, an economist at the Kauffman Foundation. As one example, he points to legislation proposed this year by Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana. Called the Start-Up Visa Act, it would grant visas to immigrant entrepreneurs who create jobs in the United States.

Read the complete article at The New York Times Business Day:

By Michael Bloch, Green Living Tips.com

(first published December 2007, updated August 2010)

If you visit a lot of environmental forums, no doubt you would have come across people claiming that recycling isn’t all that effective – that it can take as much energy to recycle materials as it does to extract and produce them in the first place.

I don’t claim to have any special knowledge or education, but here’s some information I researched on the energy savings involved with various common materials from what I believe to be fairly good sources.

Energy savings – recycling metals

These figures also take into account the sorting and transportation of materials.

Aluminium – 95%
Copper – 85%
Lead – 60%
Steel – 62 – 74%
Zinc – 60%

Data from the British Metal Recycling Association

Aside from the energy savings, the more metals that can be recycled, the less (or slower) destruction of the environment from mining. While the recycling process may produce toxic materials; mining certainly does – and in far greater volumes.

Energy savings – recycling plastics

Post-consumer products may contain as many as 20 different types of plastic material; so one of the biggest challenges is sorting it all. However, according to Dr. Mike Biddle, President of MBA Polymers, recycling plastics uses only roughly 10 percent of the energy that it takes to make a pound of plastic from virgin materials.

Again, the savings aren’t just in energy – plastics are still mostly made from petrochemicals; i.e. crude oil. Nearly 10 percent of U.S. oil consumption, which equates to approximately 2 million barrels a day – is used to make plastics. Recycling plastics also means saving oil – through the production process and base materials.

Energy savings – recycling glass

According to Waste Online, for every ton of recycled glass, 1.2 tons of raw materials are not required and after taking into account transport and processing needed to recycle glass, nearly 700 pounds of carbon dioxide is saved per ton of glass melted for the purposes of making bottles and jars.

The Glass Packaging Institute states recycled glass uses only two-thirds the energy needed to manufacture glass from raw materials

Recycled glass isn’t just used for making more bottles – it can be turned into fiberglass (which is also used in house insulation), and as a component of bricks; requiring less energy to create the bricks and as the product is lighter, less energy is used in transport. Glass can be recycled indefinitely.

Energy savings – recycling paper

The Department of Energy states that a ton of paper made from recycled fibers conserves 7,000 gallons of water, up to 31 trees, 4,000 KWh of electricity and up to 60 pounds of air pollutants (not including carbon dioxide).

Overall, recycling paper uses about 60% less energy than making paper from new materials.

In case you’ve heard that there is a glut of old newspapers around and therefore paper is now often shipped to landfill and burned; that used to be the case in some parts of the world, but through new techniques, products and widespread consumer acceptance, demand has caught up with supply.

The recycling trap

Here’s a trap that many people fall into – because an item can be recycled, they might feel that extra consumption is no longer a bad thing. Recycling is the last of the 3R’s i.e. Reduce, Reuse… lastly, Recycle.

Recycling is also a blanket term, but in its strictest definition, it means to use waste to make more of a same product. In the case of plastics, they often aren’t recycled, but downcycled.

Reduction of consumption is where we can make the most difference. It means that less needs to be produced in the first place (and you’ll save a stack of cash too). Reusing gives old products new life with little or no energy being used for repurposing, whereas recycling still does require substantial energy.

Green Seal, a nonprofit organization with 20 years’ experience in developing eco-labels, has expanded its scope with its a new pilot standard that seeks to certify the sustainability of an entire company.

The group’s new GS-C1 certification is aimed at consumer product manufacturing firms, and aims to speed the greening of the consumer market — which makes up about 70 percent of the U.S. economy, Green Seal said in an announcement of the standard.

As the public comment period winds down for GS-C1 — comments from the public will be accepted through September 30th at GreenSeal.org/Standards — Green Seal is hosting a free webcast walking through the certification on Wednesday, Sept. 15.

The webcast, which runs from 1pm to 4pm, Eastern Time, will guide companies through the certification’s requirements for environmental and social sustainability. Among the criteria included in the standard are:

• Transparency and accountability on environmental and social policies at the corporate level;
• Aggressive goals, commitments and achievements on environmental and social issues, including greenhouse gas reductions, water and waste, indigenous peoples’ rights and biological diversity;
• Supply-chain management and accountability practices;
• Life-cycle analysis of product lines and commitments to reduce environmental and health impacts from manufacturing, packaging, transport and end of life; and
• Third-party certification requirements to verify environmental and social responsibility of products.

For more details on the GS-C1 standard, visit Green Seal’s website; registration for the webcast on September 15 is available at greenseal.org/certification/gs-c1_webinar.cfm.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2010) — Using carbon nanotubes (hollow tubes of carbon atoms), MIT chemical engineers have found a way to concentrate solar energy 100 times more than a regular photovoltaic cell. Such nanotubes could form antennas that capture and focus light energy, potentially allowing much smaller and more powerful solar arrays.

Solar panels generate electricity by converting photons (packets of light energy) into an electric current. Strano’s nanotube antenna boosts the number of photons that can be captured and transforms the light into energy that can be funneled into a solar cell.

The antenna consists of a fibrous rope about 10 micrometers (millionths of a meter) long and four micrometers thick, containing about 30 million carbon nanotubes. Strano’s team built, for the first time, a fiber made of two layers of nanotubes with different electrical properties — specifically, different bandgaps.

Read the complete article at ScienceDaily.