June 17, 2013
The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, is preparing to roll out a new composting plan for the city, aimed at diverting some of the 100,000 tons of food scraps that ends up in landfill every year.
The city has hired a composting plant to handle up to 100,000 tons of food scraps a year – or about 10% of the city’s total food waste, according to the New York Times, which first reported the story. Last April, about 100 city restaurants joined a voluntary composting plan, the food waste challenge. By next year, 150,000 households will be on board along with 100 high-rise buildings and 600 schools. The entire city could be recycling food scraps by 2015 or 2016.
The composting program will at first be voluntary. But a city official told the Times that after a few years, New Yorkers who do not separate out their food scraps could be liable to fines – just as they would be now if they do not recycle paper, plastic or metal. The composting plan will make up a big part of New York’s efforts to divert up to 75% of its solid waste from landfills by 2030. Reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills also reduces greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. Food waste from all sources makes up about a third of the 20,000 tons of trash the city generates everyday.
Read more at The Guardian.
category : Topics
June 14, 2013
For a country blessed with bountiful oil supplies, it may appear incongruous. But Norway is importing as much rubbish as it can get its hands on in an effort to generate more energy by burning waste in vast incinerators.
The Eurotrash business may sound like an unpromising enterprise, but it’s one that is increasingly profitable. The UK paid to send 45,000 tons of household waste from Bristol and Leeds to Norway between October 2012 and April this year. “Waste has become a commodity,” says Pal Spillum, head of waste recovery at the Climate and Pollution Agency in Norway. “There is a big European market for this, so much so that the Norwegians are accepting rubbish from other countries to feed the incinerator.”
Norway is not alone. Waste to energy has become a preferred method of rubbish disposal in the EU, and there are now 420 plants in Europe equipped to provide heat and electricity to more than 20 million people. Germany ranks top in terms of importing rubbish, ahead of Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands. But it’s Norway that boasts the largest share of waste to energy in district heat production, according to Danish government-funded State of Green.
There are worries that burning rubbish may discourage recycling. Julian Kirby, of Friends of the Earth, says: “Waste for energy isn’t as green as it’s made out to be. We estimate that 80% of what’s in the average waste stream is easily recyclable.” Kirby argues that the incineration system creates confusion: “If you think your waste being burned is a good thing then you are more inclined to just chuck things away rather than recycling them.”
Read more at The Guardian.
category : Topics
June 13, 2013
Ford has produced its first zero emission Focus car in Europe, as it seeks to accelerate into the ultra low emissions vehicle market. The auto giant confirmed the first Electric Focus had rolled off the production line at its Saarlouis plant in Germany, where it already makes the internal combustion engine Focus, Focus ST, and Kuga.
Ford has integrated Focus Electric production directly into the established Ford Focus production line at Saarlouis. As such orders will be taken on a case-by-case basis, with the production line remaining the same for both the conventional Ford Focus and the new Focus Electric.
Offering a 100-mile range, the Focus Electric features an advanced electric motor and lithium-ion battery power train that achieves a top speed of 84mph. It is the latest in a string of electric plug-in hybrid vehicles that should hit European roads in growing numbers over the next year, including the new version of the Nissan Leaf, the Toyota plug-in Prius, and the Tesla Model S.
Read more at Business Green.
category : Topics
June 13, 2013
Sainsbury’s announced that it has met its target for sending none of its waste to landfill, just three years after the initial goal was set.
Alongside trading results that showed that like-for-like sales for the first quarter rose 0.8 percent excluding fuel, the supermarket giant released a quarterly progress report on its high profile 20x20 sustainability program in which it confirmed it had followed last year’s milestone of diverting all food waste from landfill by now avoiding all landfill waste from its operations.
The company revealed that it had reached the target through a variety of partnerships with charities, recycling firms, and energy-to-waste facilities. For example, a long-standing partnership with charity FareShare has meant that usable food is donated to charity, while waste bakery products that are not fit for human consumption are now processed into high energy biscuit meal for animal feed. Additional food waste is sent to anaerobic digestion facilities where it is used to generate energy and produce fertilizer, while all non-food waste is sorted for recycling, with non-recyclable material turned into fuel for waste-to-energy plants.
The company also stressed that it was taking steps to help its customers reduce waste levels, by cutting down on unnecessary packaging and improving labeling to help limit food waste.
Read more at Business Green.
category : Topics
June 12, 2013
Warning that the world is not on track to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has urged governments to swiftly enact four energy policies that would keep climate goals alive without harming economic growth.
“Climate change has quite frankly slipped to the back burner of policy priorities. But the problem is not going away – quite the opposite,” IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said in London at the launch of World Energy Outlook Special Report, Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map, which highlights the need for intensive action between 2020.
Noting that the energy sector accounts for around two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, she added: “This report show that the path we are currently on is more likely to result in a temperature increase between 3.6C and 5.3C but also finds that much more can be done to tackle energy-sector emissions without jeopardizing economic growth, and important concern for may governments.
The new IEA report presents the results of a “4-for-2C Scenario”, in which for energy policies are selected that can deliver significant emissions by 2020, rely only on existing technologies and have been already been adapted successfully in several countries. In the 4-for-2C scenario, global energy related greenhouse gas emissions are 8% lower than 2020 than the level expected otherwise.
Read more at CleanBizAsia.
category : Topics
June 11, 2013
The Green Investment Bank (GIB) has said anaerobic digestion (AD) projects are “at the heart” of waste investment strategy, revealing that it is currently considering direct investment of up to £50m in the sector.
The news comes in a report the government-owned institution published yesterday assessing the investment potential of the UK’s AD sector, which currently amounts to around 106MW of capacity in operation or under construction, with a further 148MW in the latter stages of planning.
The UK’s AD plants process over five million tonnes of food and farm waste each year, generating electricity, biogas, and a nutrient rich fertilizer known as digestate. AD has been hailed as a sustainable way of dealing with food and agricultural waste and according to the industry the technology is capable of meeting 10 percent of the UK’s gas domestic demand, while contributing up to £3bn to the economy and creating 35,000 jobs.
Read more at BusinessGreen.
category : Topics
June 11, 2013
Pursuing recycling and more efficient resource use could lead to a UK industry with net exports of more than £20bn and 10,000 new jobs in the recycling sector by 2020. Business outside the sector could also reduce their costs by £50bn a year on savings in raw materials and energy, says the report, Going for Growth, published by the Environmental Services Association (ESA) and the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap).
If activities such as the research and development of new design techniques that would minimize the need for recycling, and better ways to reuse materials are included, the opportunity could be for 50,000 new jobs and a £3bn boost to the UK’s annual GDP.
The findings reflect the potential opened up by a “circular economy” – one in which used material is not regarded as waste but as a resource, to be reused first, as that is the most efficient option then recycled as necessary. As raw material prices rise owing to increasing global competition for resources, the UK could reduce its reliance on key raw materials – including rare earths, used in wind farms and electronics – by as much as one-fifth by 2020.
Liz Goodwin, chief executive of Wrap, said a circular economy would keep resources in the use for as long as possible. “Reuse makes sure we get the maximum value from materials and brings significant business benefits. It is the complete opposite of make, use, throw away, make another – the way of doing things now,” she said.
Read more at The Guardian.
category : Topics
June 10, 2013
The world cannot afford to wait for a new global climate change agreement to come into force in 2020, because doing so will mean an end to hopes of limiting global warming to moderate levels, one of the world’s foremost authorities on energy has warned.
Carbon dioxide emissions from energy rose by 1.4% in 2012 to a record high of more than 31bn tonnes, according to a report from the International Energy Agency. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, and one of the world’s most respected energy experts, expressed that greenhouse gas emissions were continuing to rise so fast that pinning hopes on a replacement for the Kyoto protocol would set the world on a path to 5C of warming.
Birol urged governments to take urgent action on improving energy efficiency, replacing fossil fuels with low-carbon power, stopping the construction of inefficient power plants and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, as low or no-cost ways of reducing emissions quickly. “This will not harm economic growth, and they are policies that can be taking in fragile economic context,” he said.
Governments are negotiating under the United Nations to forge a global deal on emissions that would be signed in 2015 but not come into force until 2020. Until then, most countries have their own voluntary goals to curb carbon, but these fall well short of the cuts that scientists say are needed to limit temperature rises to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, which is regarded as the limit of safety beyond which warming is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.
Read more at The Guardian.
category : Topics
June 5, 2013
Dell has been leading on using sustainable packaging for its computers and other products and today announced a goal to achieve a waste-free packaging stream by 2020.
It will do that in two ways: 100% of packaging will be sourced from sustainable materials, including recycled and rapidly renewable content or material that was formerly part of the waste stream; and 100% of packaging will be either easily recyclable or compostable at the end of its life. More than half of Dell’s packaging already meets the criteria.
“Packaging is often the first part of our products that customers see and touch. From that first interaction, we want to ensure our customers know we’re dedicated to operating in an environmentally responsible manner, and we want to make it easier for them to be sustainable as well,” says Trisa Thompson, vice president of corporate responsibility for Dell.
As of last year, Dell cut the size of packaging by 12%, increase the amount of recycled and renewable content by 40% and met its goal of ensuring that 75% of packaging can be recycled at the curb. This work eliminated more than 20 million pounds of packaging material and saved $18 million since 2008.
Read more at Sustainable Business.
category : Topics
May 22, 2013
Defra will today seek to bring together investors, bankers, entrepreneurs and waste management firms at a “growth summit” designed to help identify how to accelerate investment in the waste, recycling, and resource management industry.
Hosted by Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, the meeting is designed to explore how government and industry can build on the recent success of the waste sector, which has recorded growth rates of between three and four percent throughout the economic downturn. The industry is now worth £12bn a year and employs over 100,000 people, and Paterson said he was keen to attract to more investment to a sector that is not only critical to meeting the UK’s various environmental target but also offers significant export opportunities.
“There is a huge global market in waste and recycling and I want to see UK businesses leading the way on this,” he said in a statement. “Dealing with waste and recycling properly is good for business as well as the environment and has the potential to boost economic growth and create jobs. To make it happen I want to break down the barriers businesses face to ensure they can compete and lead in the global race.”
The UK has delivered drastic improvements in its recycling rates over the past decade, but there is evidence that progress has stalled in recent years, as well as concerns that over £5bn worth of recyclable materials are exported each year, primarily as a result of a shortage of recycling capacity in the UK.
Read more at Business Green.
category : Topics