Group items tagged

Unilever has plead guilty to two counts of violating the US Clean Water Act and will pay a $1 million fine under an agreement reached with the EPA and the US Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut (USAO).

IKEA, the world's leading home furnishings retailer, today announced it had officially plugged-in Kansas' largest rooftop solar array, atop the recently opened IKEA Merriam. The 92,000-square-foot solar array consists of a 730.17-kW DC system, comprised of 2,394 panels, and will produce approximately 986,800 kWh of electricity annually for the store, the equivalent of reducing 680 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) - equal to the emissions of 143 cars or providing electricity for 94 homes yearly (calculating clean energy equivalents at www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/calculator.html).

The Environmental Protection Agency's power plant emissions rules would save about 3,500 lives a year and have many other positive health effects, according to researchers at Syracuse and Harvard universities. The emissions reductions mandated by the rules would lead to 1,000 fewer heart attacks and other hospitalizations from air-pollution-related illness annually, the study found. 

The EPA proposed strengthening 2008 air quality standards to reduce smog. The new standards would drop the limit on pollution-forming ozone from the current 75 parts per billion (ppb) to within 60-70 ppb.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose tightening limits on ozone, the lung-damaging ingredient in smog, to between 65 to 70 parts per billion. The current standard of 75 parts per billion has been in place since 2008.

General Mills, Unilever and the Food Waste Reduction Alliance have joined the USDA's Food Waste Challenge as founding partners.

In a delay for the EPA's Clean Power Plan, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit yesterday said the full court will hear oral arguments on the carbon emissions rule on Sept. 27. A three-judge panel had been scheduled to hear the case on June 2.

Researchers from Harvard University published a study that analyzes the economic and public health benefits of implementing a U.S. power plant carbon standard similar to the Clean Power Plan. The study estimates that a U.S. power plant carbon standard could bring net benefits close to $38 billion annually.

Wegmans Food Markets and other grocers, businesses and communities are working with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture to cut 50% of food waste by 2030. Municipal and state efforts to reduce waste are being accompanied by grocers' food-donation and recycling programs.

The EPA's National Stormwater Calculator (SWC), which can help site developers and landscape architects reduce runoff from a property, has been updated.

Consumer electronics recycling in the US went up from 30.6 percent in 2012 to 40.4 percent in 2013

In a sweeping initiative to curb pollutants blamed for global warming, the Obama administration unveiled a plan Monday aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by nearly a third by 2030.

The House is expected to vote on a pair of Congressional Review Act resolutions that would stop the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan and a separate rule for new power plants. The Senate approved its own resolutions before the Thanksgiving break