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Brett Rohring

Terrorist Tungsten in Colombia Taints Global Phone-to-Car Sales - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...global-phone-to-car-sales.html

Tungsten illegal minerals mining

shared by Brett Rohring on 08 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Tungsten, in particular, is in high demand.
  • The dark, heat-resistant and super-hard metal is inside the engines of some of the most popular cars in the world. It’s used for screens of computers, phones, tablets and televisions. It helps mobile phones vibrate when they ring. Semiconductor makers use the metal to provide insulation between microscopic layers of circuitry.
  • Tiger Hill rises above the rain forest in an area ruled by armed FARC fighters more than 220 kilometers (137 miles) from the nearest road, town or police station.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The mine is illegal in three ways: It’s inside a forest preserve, it’s banned by Colombian law because it’s on an Indian reservation, and it’s run by the FARC, which is classified by Colombia, the U.S. and the European Union as a terrorist organization.
  • While Tiger Hill is illegal, it’s the only known tungsten mine in Colombia, according to the police and Environment Ministry officials responsible for regulating mining.
  • China produces the most tungsten -- about 85 percent of global output -- authorities there impose tight controls on the metal to assure domestic manufacturers have enough. That’s forcing companies to scour the globe for mines elsewhere, the USGS says.
  • Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and Samsung Electronics Co. purchase parts from a firm that buys from the company that imports tungsten ore from Colombia, company records show.
  • the Environment Ministry’s director whose jurisdiction includes much of Colombia’s Amazon region, says the shippers are hiding the tungsten ore’s true origins.
  • “They falsify the source of illegal metals,” Melendez says. “This is how they launder tungsten.”
Del Birmingham

Incineration Versus Recycling: In Europe, A Debate Over Trash by Nate Seltenrich: Yale ... - 0 views

e360.yale.edu/...2686

incineration recycling europe debate trash yale

shared by Del Birmingham on 29 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • recycling most materials from municipal solid waste saves on average three to five times more energy than does burning them for electricity.
  • As it turns out, countries with the highest rates of garbage incineration — Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, for example, all incinerate at least 50 percent of their waste — also tend to have high rates of recycling and composting of organic materials and food waste. But zero-wasters argue that were it not for large-scale incineration, these environmentally Zero-waste advocates say a major problem is the long-term contracts that waste-to-energy plants are locked into.conscious countries would have even higher rates of recycling. Germany, for example, incinerates 37 percent of its waste and recycles 45 percent — a considerably better recycling rate than the 30-plus percent of Scandinavian countries.
  • (In the United States, more than half of all waste is dumped in landfills, and about 12 percent burned, of which only a portion is used to produce energy.)
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  • In Flanders, Belgium, an effort to keep a lid on incinerator contracts has led nearer to zero waste, said Joan Marc Simon, executive director of Zero Waste Europe and European regional coordinator for GAIA. Since the early 1990s, when recycling rates were relatively low, the local waste authority in Flanders has decided not to increase incineration beyond roughly 25 percent, Simon said. As a result, combined recycling and composting rates now exceed 75 percent, GAIA says. "They stabilized and even reduced waste generation when they capped incineration," Simon said.
  • Without incineration, he believes, most European countries could improve current recycling rates of 20 or 30 percent to 80 percent within six months. Hogg agreed, saying that rates of 70 percent should be “easy” to attain. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which calculates recycling and composting together, puts the current U.S. rate at 35 percent, compared to a combined European Union figure of 40 percent.
  • Del Birmingham on 29 Aug 13
     
    Increasingly common in Europe, municipal "waste-to-energy" incinerators are being touted as a green trash-disposal alternative. But critics contend that these large-scale incinerators tend to discourage recycling and lead to greater waste.
Brett Rohring

Los Angeles Proposes Banning GMOs - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...angeles-ban-gmo_n_4137166.html

los los angeles angeles climate GMO GMOs

shared by Brett Rohring on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Los Angeles is considering banning the cultivation and sale of genetically modified organisms. If it does, the second-largest U.S. city would become the country's largest GMO-free zone.
  • Two LA city councilmen on Friday introduced a motion that would ban the growth, sale and distribution of genetically engineered seeds and plants.
  • The motion would not affect the sale of food containing genetically modified ingredients.
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  • O'Farrell said he thinks the worldwide decline of honeybees is the "canary in the coal mine" for GMOs. U.S. World commercial beehives declined 40 to 50 percent in 2012, with the suspicions of some beekeepers and researchers falling on powerful new pesticides incorporated into plants themselves. In California, almond agriculture, which depends on bees, has been hit especially hard. About 80 percent of the nation's almonds are produced in central California.
  • The LA motion comes weeks before Washington state will vote on ballot initiative 522, which calls for labeling food products that contain genetically modified ingredients. Last November, Californians narrowly defeated Proposition 37, which would have made California the first state to require that genetically modified food be labeled.
  • The U.S. has no requirement to label genetically modified food.
Adriana Trujillo

eceee press release - European business, cities, NGOs and trade unions call for EU lead... - 0 views

www.eceee.org/...2016-03-04

add environmental news international EU

shared by Adriana Trujillo on 22 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Adriana Trujillo on 22 Mar 16
     
    The Coalition for Higher Ambition issued a statement calling on EU officials to "act on the Paris Agreement and ensure that EU climate policies are coherent with its goals." The Coalition for Higher Ambition is an informal group of businesses, investors, NGOs, and others working together to promote leadership on climate change mitigation in the EU.
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