Group items tagged

Massachusetts recently enacted the most aggressive mandatory composting program in history, to affect supermarkets, colleges, nursing homes, and prisons.

The White House last week outlined plans to get the US offshore wind industry off the ground. The White House has awarded Maine, Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts each a grant of $600,000 to support offshore wind development. It has also established an interagency group in support of offshore wind. As part of that effort, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management plans to offer areas off the coasts of North Carolina and New Jersey. GovTech.com (10/2) 

Nike on Friday announced two efforts to reduce its environmental footprint and enable business growth: a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Climate CoLab to bring innovation in materials to the forefront of the climate conversation, and a commitment to reach 100-percent renewable energy in company-owned and operated facilities by 2025.

Drone boats will soon hit the famous, rusty bike-filled canals of Amsterdam. The ambitious "ROBOAT" project, a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS), will start a five-year trial of the vessels from 2017 to give the multi-purpose boats all sorts of interesting tasks for the busy waterways. The boats will support an array of sensors that can measure water pollution and quality, making assessments about how best to improve the environment. "Water is the bearer of life," says Arjan van Timmeren, professor and scientific director at AMS. "By focusing on the water system of the city, ROBOAT can create opportunities for new environmental sensing methods and climate adaptation."

Offshore wind is slowly taking off in the US, according to this analysis. Observers say that this trend can be seen in Massachusetts' proposed offshore wind bill, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's plan to hold an offshore wind auction for a tract of space off the coast of New York and Maryland's continued work on the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act. Some say these advances and several others could help the nation's fledging offshore wind industry reach critical mass.

Adobe, IKEA North America, Mars, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts filed briefs in the U.S. Court of Appeals in support of the EPA's Clean Power Plan. The companies stated they "view the Clean Power Plan and its emissions reduction program as a component of their domestic and international business risk mitigation strategies."

Precision Castparts, DuPont, Biomet, the Bayer Group and Dow Chemicals are the top five corporate air polluters in the US, say researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Lawmakers in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont aim to introduce carbon pricing legislation, including carbon taxes and market-based carbon cap-and-trade measures,

The Governors of California, New York, and Washington have formed the United States Climate Alliance-a bipartisan coalition of nine states committed to upholding the Paris Agreement despite President Trump's decision to end U.S. participation. The nine states - California, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Oregon, and Hawaii - represent nearly a third of U.S. annual GDP.

On Tuesday, the Humane Society of the United States introduced a ballot initiative called the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act, which calls for a requirement that all pork and veal sold in California be produced without restrictive crates, and that all eggs produced and sold in the state be cage-free. It would make California the only state other than Massachusetts, which passed similar legislation last year, to have such regulations on farm animal welfare.