EC Environmental Policy

The World Wildlife Fund launched a research initiative that aims to identify and address the sources of pre-consumer food waste. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the Walmart Foundation are supporting the research initiative through a $1.3 million grant contribution.

oday marks Earth Overshoot Day - the day by which the human race will have used more of Earth's natural resources than the planet can renew in the whole year.

An organic activist group and a subsequent article in The New York Times said testing has shown small amounts of the weed killer glyphosate in some Ben & Jerry's ice cream samples. Traces of the widely used pesticide can be found in many food products, and the company says it is working to determine how amounts from 0 to 1.74 parts per billion got into its supply chain.

Potent, climate-warming gases are being emitted into the atmosphere but are not being recorded in official inventories, a BBC investigation has found. Air monitors in Switzerland have detected large quantities of one gas coming from a location in Italy. However, the Italian submission to the UN records just a tiny amount of the substance being emitted. Levels of some emissions from India and China are so uncertain that experts say their records are plus or minus 100%.

Now Google, the longtime business leader, is taking lessons from behavioral economics and becoming a sustainability leader. For almost a year, the company has been nudging its employees to eat less meat, and it's working. Google has teamed up with the Better Buying Lab, a division of the World Resources Institute, which uses the nudge theory to "enable consumers to buy and consume more sustainable foods."

Los Angeles County approves the start of the Newhall Ranch master-planned community north of the city of Los Angeles. The state has never seen a community quite like Newhall Ranch, proposed by California developer FivePoint. It will be a carbon-neutral development in the Santa Clarita Valley that tackles such critical challenges as climate change, water conservation, and the dire housing shortage that is severely threatening our economic competitiveness.

Research published in the American Journal of Primatology earlier this month finds that the overall Western Chimpanzee population declined by six percent annually between 1990 and 2014, a total decline of 80.2 percent. The main threats to the Western Chimpanzee are almost all man-made. Habitat loss and fragmentation driven by slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial agriculture (including deforestation for oil palm plantations as well as eucalyptus, rubber, and sugar cane developments), and extractive industries like logging, mining, and oil top the list. In response to the finding that the Western Chimpanzee population has dropped so precipitously in less than three decades, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elevated the subspecies' status to Critically Endangered on its Red List of Threatened Species.

Apple says that 320,000 acres of working forest in China have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and that the company is now protecting and creating enough sustainable working forest to cover the paper use in its packaging for all products.

Taking plastics recycling to a whole new level, Procter & Gamble (P&G) has pioneered a new technology that restores used polypropylene plastic (PP) to 'virgin-like' quality. Developed in P&G labs, the patented technology is being licensed to PureCycle to deploy in a new recycling plant in Lawrence County, Ohio and will allow consumers to purchase more products made from recycled plastic.

The logistics of how the world copes with its mounting waste were just thrown a wicked curve ball from the Pacific Rim. And the case for embracing a circular economy became stronger. Last week China announced that it would no longer accept many imports of garbage from other countries.

Canada is one of the world's largest beef producers, with its 60,000 ranches and feedlots contributing CAD $33 billion (US$26.2 billion) to the country's economy. But that is not stopping the federal government in Ottawa from issuing new dietary guidelines in an effort to promote healthy eating. Gone are the recommendations to eat a certain amount from various "food groups." Also eliminated, period, is any suggestion to consume dairy products. "Regular intake of water," is what a summary of the eating guidelines advise Canadians.

Britain will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2040 in an attempt to reduce air pollution that could herald the end of over a century of reliance on the internal combustion engine. Britain's step, which follows France, amounts to a victory for electric cars that if copied globally could hit the wealth of oil producers, as well as transform car industry jobs and one of the icons of 20th Century capitalism: the automobile itself.

The Department of Defense is clear-eyed about the challenges climate change poses. "The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world," the most recent Quadrennial Defense Review, issued in 2014, states. "These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions-conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence."

The supermarket giant formally has joined Greenpeace's DETOX campaign, pledging to deliver "toxic-free" clothing under its own-brand range F&F and release a full list of suppliers in its clothing supply chain.

Last year, Michelin announced it no longer would procure rubber from deforested lands. It set about working with suppliers and regional governments to encourage sustainable forestry. Michelin's zero deforestation policy led other tire makers Bridgestone, Goodyear and Continental to also begin working towards zero deforestation in rubber procurement. Now, GM is also adopting a zero deforestation stance in its tire procurement policy. The largest U.S. automaker (in market capitalization) in June declared that it would buy only tires with rubber sourced from sustainably grown forests. In addition, the company announced plans to work with other automakers and tire manufacturers to come up with an industry response

Retailers including J.C. Penney, H&M and Target are promoting clothing made from recycled water bottles and other waste materials for back-to-school this year in a push to appeal to parents and kids concerned about environmental sustainability. Price is still top-of-mind as consumers shop for green products and secondhand goods, industry experts say.

One of the most complicated supply chain issues for companies is deforestation. Why? Because deforestation may take place in areas distant from company headquarters in countries that may not have the strongest government regulations.

MillerCoors used new tools and irrigation initiatives, along with increased brewing efficiencies, that helped the brewing giant reduce its water consumption by 15 billion gallons in 2016, the company announced today. Wet weather also contributed to the 2016 reduction, the company acknowledged. MillerCoors used 16.9% less water compared to 2015 - equivalent to more than 500 million kegs of beer.

REI stepped up the fight to preserve public lands with an email blast to its customers, and it was very successful. In uncertain federal times, brands continue to take stands - and they are moving merchandise right along with policy.

Stella McCartney, long an advocate for ethical fashion, has been busy over the last several months trying to drive the industry away from a take-make-waste model; the luxury label recently announced plans to use Parley for the Oceans' recycled plastic yarn and Aquafil's ECONYL® fiber in its line of shoes, accessories and outerwear. In its latest bid to call attention to the cause, the vegetarian brand has shot its entire Autumn/Winter 2017 campaign on a landfill site on the Eastern Coast of Scotland.